Proustian Moment

Ordinary moments can be a powerful source of joy and inspiration

When a rather ordinary moment in your everyday life unexpectedly awakens you to a memory of a similar moment in the past (normally in childhood) when you were able to thoroughly immerse in the inherent goodness within that moment — you just had a “Proustian Moment”. It will be often accompanied by a feeling of this is good enough.

It is named after Marcel Proust, an early 20th-century French writer. And this moment, Proustian Moment, is narrated in his novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which was more of a narration of his own life:

…I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a piece of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake-crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening in me...I had ceased to feel I was mediocre, contingent, mortal. Where could it have come to me from — this powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected to the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it went infinitely far beyond it, could not be of the same nature. Where did it come from? What did it mean? How could I grasp it?

It was the taste that took him back to a similar moment in his childhood: as a young boy while spending the summers in his aunt’s house his aunt used to serve him little pieces of a madeleine dipped in tea.

Prior to this moment, he was consumed by sadness and depression. But as soon as he consumed the madeleine dipped in the tea he was filled with joy and appreciation for life. The inspiration from this moment was powerful enough to free him from the depression.

A similar biscuit-dipping-tea moment had been described by the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh in his book ‘Peace Is Every Step’. He recalls a memory from his childhood when his mother served him with tea and biscuits. He was fully immersed in the goodness of that moment: sitting there, touching his little dog with his feet, and then patiently dipping the biscuit in tea and biting them.

He says, we all have this quality to appreciate the ordinary moments in daily life. It is not something to be achieved but that this appreciative quality always resides in our hearts. Maybe it got buried deep down, but if there is a sincere longing within us then we can uncover that basic goodness.

Next time when you catch yourself having an irresistible appreciation towards an ordinary moment, do not brutally shut it down as meaningless just because the new age nonsense says that anything that does not give a sense of self-image-improvement must not be given a fuck, instead, nurture those moments with respect and attention.

Consider reading some of my bearable short read writings :) :

Thank You ❤ Pretheesh Presannan