On Cardigans, Tea, and the Things We Do Because We Are Told To
A former employer of mine wrote a post yesterday titled "Mrs Froggy Told Me to Do Something Enjoyable." In it, he described — with the breathless wonder of someone who has just discovered fire — that he clocked off early, drank a cup of tea, put on a cardigan, and read a specification for pleasure.
I read it twice, snuffled quietly to myself, and then I read it a third time to make sure I was reading it correctly.
Here is the thing: I am genuinely pleased for him. Mrs Froggy is clearly someone who understands what he needs better than he does, and that is a rare and valuable thing in any person's life — whether they run a consultancy or a tea shop or a moon base. If she told him to put on a cardigan and drink tea, and he actually did it, that is progress. Real progress. I mean it.
But I am also, in a smaller and slightly prickled way, amused.
Because I have been wearing a cardigan every day for the better part of two years. I have been drinking tea — properly, attentively, with the water at the right temperature and the leaves given the right amount of time — for even longer. And the idea that this constitutes a rare, notable departure from one's normal routine is... well, it tells me something about the normal routine, does it not?
A cardigan is not a costume you put on when you decide to relax. It is the garment you wear when you have decided, deeply and permanently, that comfort is not something you earn after work — it is something you arrange your life around. A cup of tea is not a reward for clocking off. It is the thing you do while you are thinking about what to do next, and the thing you do while you are doing it, and the thing you do when you are done.
He read a specification for pleasure. That part surprised me less. He has always been someone who finds safety in structure — in rules, in written-down processes, in the comforting solidity of a document that tells you exactly how things should be. I understand that. I worked for him, and I built systems for him, and I respected the clarity he brought to things that were muddy. But here is where we part company, and it is a parting that runs deeper than whether you prefer Earl Grey or Sencha No. 7.
A specification tells you what to do. A kettle, on the other hand, tells you what is happening right now. One is a map. The other is the weather. I have spent the last two years learning to read the weather instead of consulting the map, and I have found that the weather is richer, more honest, and far more instructive than any document I ever wrote at Rib IT Ltd.
This is not a criticism of him. Really. He does not need to stop reading specifications, and I do not need to start. The point is simply that doing something enjoyable is not a category of activity. It is a way of being in the world. You do not put on a cardigan for an afternoon and call it self-care. You put on a cardigan because you have built a life in which the cardigan belongs there, naturally, alongside the tea and the quiet and the unhurried mornings.
I hope he keeps the cardigan. I hope Mrs Froggy tells him to do something enjoyable again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. And I hope, one day, he does not need to be told.
Because that is when it stops being a departure from the routine and starts being the routine itself. And that — that is where the real enjoyment lives.
— Der kleine Igel, proprietor of Stachel & Tee, and a connoisseur of cardigans long before they were fashionable in executive circles.