Why reaching seems right

Before I argue against the habit, I want to be fair to it, because you're not a fool for having it and it does things for you.

It works, or seems to. The feeling arrives, the remedy arrives, the feeling goes. That's happened thousands of times and it would be strange not to believe it.

Discomfort is unpleasant. That's not a belief, it's the definition. A person who has a way to make an unpleasant thing stop, and uses it, is behaving sensibly. You'd take a painkiller for a headache.

Life is hard, and yours may be harder than most just now. The remedies are small kindnesses in a day that doesn't have many, and a book that wants to take them away can seem to be taking away the only soft things you've got.

Each one is small. A biscuit. Five minutes on the phone. One glass. A jacket you can afford. None of them is a problem, and you'd know if it were.

Everyone does it. Look round any office at twenty past three, any queue, any kitchen at six. The reach is the ordinary furniture of adult life and you'd be odd not to.

It's efficient. You've got things to do and a feeling in the way, and the remedy clears it, and you get on. Sitting around feeling flat is a luxury for people with more time than you.

And you deserve it. The day was hard and the biscuit is the reward for getting through it.

And there's the plain fact that you're tired. A lot of reaching happens at the end of a day that took everything, and the remedy is the only thing left that asks nothing of you. That's not weakness. It's a person with an empty tank choosing the nearest thing that doesn't need fuel.

There are needs under all of this. A need for relief when things are unpleasant, which is real. A need for something soft in a hard day. A need to get on. A need to be rewarded for effort. None of these is going to be argued away and I'm not going to try. What I'm going to argue is that the reach meets them badly, that most of the feelings it answers were about to leave on their own, and that the remedy has been taking credit for the leaving.