AN APPETITE FOR LIFE

You can be quite good at managing your life and still miss being excited by it. On pleasure, curiosity and having something to look forward to beyond a clear inbox.

Ask someone how they are and there is a fair chance they will tell you how much they have to do. Busy. Mad week. Getting there. We have become remarkably fluent in the language of coping. Ask what they are looking forward to and the conversation may take a little longer.

Often, the answer is a holiday. Sometimes it is retirement. Occasionally it is the delivery of a new sofa, which at least has the advantage of a tracking number.

There is a particular kind of flatness that can settle over a perfectly respectable life. You love the people in it. You recognise your good fortune. You do the shopping, answer the messages, make the appointments and keep everything moving. But somewhere among the arrangements, you have stopped expecting the day to contain anything that might delight you.

Nothing has gone spectacularly wrong. You simply miss wanting things.

Not another possession, necessarily. An evening that takes an unexpected turn. A conversation you are still thinking about the following morning. The feeling of hearing a song and needing to turn it up.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING WELL

The conscientious person approaching this problem has plenty of advice available. Improve your sleep. Review your routine. Set a goal. There is always something to measure, eliminate or begin doing before breakfast.

There is nothing absurd about wanting to look after yourself. The absurdity creeps in when every pleasure needs a supporting argument. A walk must improve your step count. A hobby should develop a skill. Even a bath is sometimes presented as an intervention rather than twenty minutes in hot water with the door locked.

You can begin to feel that you are maintaining a person you rarely get to enjoy being.

What would happen if, alongside asking whether something was good for us, we asked whether we actually liked it? Whether we wanted to go back? Whether an hour spent doing it felt like an hour of our own?

Those questions deserve a place in the conversation about living well.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE NOW?

It sounds embarrassingly basic. Yet many of us could produce a more accurate account of our partner’s preferences, our children’s snacks or our colleagues’ coffee orders than of our own current enthusiasms.

We know what we used to enjoy. We were the one who danced, painted, cooked elaborate dinners, went to the cinema alone. Then circumstances changed. A baby arrived. Work expanded. Money became tighter. Someone needed looking after. The activity disappeared, and eventually we stopped considering it an option.

There can also be a strange loyalty to an earlier version of ourselves. We keep insisting we love something that now feels like a chore, while dismissing a new interest because it does not sound like us.

Perhaps you used to love crowded parties and would now rather spend an afternoon learning to grow tomatoes. Perhaps the reverse is true. You are allowed to surprise yourself. Nobody is coming to check that your interests still match your biography.

Curiosity can begin with something very small: following up on a passing interest instead of immediately deciding you have neither the time nor the talent. Borrow the book. Go to the class once. Let yourself be a beginner without announcing a new identity.

A BODY WITH OTHER THINGS TO DO

The body can become another area of life we supervise from a slight distance. We examine it in mirrors, dress around the parts we dislike, negotiate with it over what we have eaten. Even exercise can feel like a running commentary on its shortcomings.

Then you swim, or dance, or stretch after sitting for too long, and for a moment your attention changes. There is the temperature of the water. The pull through your shoulders. The pleasure of moving in time with somebody else.

Appearance has a way of demanding the whole conversation. Experience deserves some of it back.

You do not have to love every inch of yourself to enjoy a warm breeze on your skin, a good meal or the particular satisfaction of walking home after an evening spent laughing. There need not be a better body waiting at the entrance to all the things you would like to do.

PUT SOMETHING GOOD IN THE DIARY

We tend to treat enjoyment as the thing that will happen once our obligations have been dealt with. Unfortunately, the obligations have an excellent breeding programme.

The week fills. The friend you meant to see becomes a person you exchange apologies with. You both say “soon” with complete sincerity for six months.

There is something to be said for making an actual arrangement. A date, a place, a modest plan. Dinner need not become a production. You can invite someone over and buy the food. You can see a film without making an evening of it. An hour counts.

This is harder in some seasons of life than others. Time, money, caring responsibilities and exhaustion are real constraints; a more enthusiastic attitude does not arrange childcare. Sometimes making room for pleasure means asking for practical help, sharing the work more fairly or accepting that something less important will remain unfinished.

The question is what is possible within the life you have this week. Something you chose because you want to be there.

LEAVE ROOM FOR AN APPETITE

Of course, no life feels vivid all the time. There are dull afternoons, difficult years and Sundays largely devoted to laundry. The expectation that we should be constantly passionate can become its own exhausting demand.

But there is room between permanent exhilaration and merely getting through it.

Think of the people whose company leaves you feeling more interested in the world. Often, they are interested in something themselves. They have a story to tell, a place they want to show you, an opinion about what you should order. Their enthusiasm gives you somewhere to join them.

An appetite for life might look like that: having interests to follow and pleasures to share, while allowing new ones to develop. It need not arrive as a grand purpose. It may begin with remembering someone you would like to see and actually calling them.

There will still be things to do afterwards. There might also be something worth telling someone about.