Swings and roundabouts

October 20, 2023 / Katrina Waugh

If you’ve veered off the French path and onto the chemin* of Russian literature at some point, you’re likely familiar with this quote from Leo Tolstoy:

”Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Tolstoy wrote this in 1875, and yet is was not until nearly 125 years later that his observation was scientifically proven. Psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman published a study in 2001 showing that humans have a cognitive bias towards the negative. That is, as a race, we feel negative events more intensely and they tend to have a more significant impact on our psychological states than positive events.

When I first found out about this, it made so much sense. I’ve always thought of myself as a positive person in the main, yet my day-to-day thoughts often veer towards the negative. I was curieuse* - why do we do this?

According to the research, it’s a question of l’évolution*. Historically, the potential price to pay for under-reacting to a perceived risk or negative event is much greater than overacting to one that turns out to be benign. Though thankfully in daily life we’ve mostly rid ourselves of the need for a physical ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ response, this negativity bias is still in our history as well as our DNA, it seems. Here are a couple of examples of where it’s in evidence even today:

1. The sensation of pain is more keenly felt than the absence of pain and we therefore have many more words to describe acute pain than we do extreme pleasure.
2. We’re more inclined to look for causes of negative events than positive ones. For example, analyses of wars are plentiful, but very few studies are done on periods of peace.
3. As those clever Russians (again) say: “A spoonful of tar can spoil a barrel of honey, but a spoonful of honey does nothing for a barrel of tar”.

So it seems it’s completely natural to view most of our life’s events, whether quotidiens* or très importants* through a slightly negative lens.
Despite all of this though, I can tell you with 100% certainty that a recent hit of tennis with my friend was just flat out awful. I mean, really bad.

Do you remember that in a previous post I mentioned the goal of a 100-point tennis rally? That day, my friend and I would have been lucky to have made it to three. The harder we tried, the worse it got, to the point where we ended up in fits of laughter because we were both just SO BAD. We’re also both pretty competitive, though, so although we were laughing, in our heart of hearts we just couldn’t give up the fight. Unfortunately, with each renewed effort, things just continued to go south.

To make matters worse, a couple of guys who’d booked the court after us turned up early for their slot. We’d seen them play before and they were absolute guns and (lucky us) that day, they had nothing better to do than to watch as we floundered, missed and shanked our way to the end of our allotted time. As we walked off the court, they asked pleasantly (and without a trace of sarcasm) “Good game, girls?”. You can imagine our reply. We launched into how bad we were, how hopeless, how it was almost a joke how bad we were, and on and on we went until one of them interrupted us with:

“Any day you’re out here is a good day, though.”

We smiled and agreed, but inwardly I was rolling my eyes and I know Tanya probably was, too. The comment seemed flippant and trite and I grumbled my way home vowing to never be that bad again.

It was only a few days later, when teaching a class, that it struck me just how true the statement really is. I’m not even talking from an “every day on earth spent above ground is a bonus” way, though I think can agree on that one as well. What I mean more precisely (and what I think our tennis sage was trying to remind us) is that every day you put a racket in your hand is of benefit to you. In the case of French, each time you pick up a pencil, pull out a verb table, crack the spine of a workbook, think of a word in the shower or turn up to class it is a win. No matter how you feel you perform on any given day, you simply come away with more experience and that in invaluable.

My sincere hope is that you don’t have the exaggerated negative bias I seem to have for my tennis. As a tutor, I have never once thought “Oh gee, so-and-so’s having a bad day today”. Yes, some days you may make more errors than usual, or draw a blank on a word I know you know, but I take it as read that by the end of the lesson, you’ve progressed, because you have! You’ve got more runs on the board, if you’ll allow me to mix my sporting metaphors.

Although most of us don’t revel in making mistakes, they are fantastic teachers. There are words in French I will never, ever forget and they stick because I associate them with embarrassing situations where I mucked them up. I remember when I was living in France there was a canicule* one summer and my little apartment was turning into a rôtissoire* with each passing heure*. I took myself off to my local Monoprix to buy a fan and asked the sales assistant “Où sont les aspirateurs*?” in my best French. It was only when she led me over to the vacuum cleaners that I realised my mistake. Naturellement, j’ai rougi* but I have never forgotten the word ventilateur* and likely never will.

This is one of the benefits of learning in a group setting, as well. You’re able to observe others stumble and stammer where you may not, or look on in awe as someone manages to utter a perfect sentence. And then five minutes later, the tables will likely turn, and turn again, and turn once more and the whole while, you’re learning, both from others’ mistakes and your own.

Whether your faux pas* is a simple slip up or a series of them, the trick is to not let it define your appreciation of what you’re achieving. With every renewed attempt, you’re moving your French along in the right direction. Et tu sais quoi*? The next time Tanya and I played we absolutely creamed it. Ce que l'on gagne d'un côté, on le perd de l’autre*, as the French say. So don’t give up.

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