The wisdom of a second breakfast

A few days ago, I was talking to a colleague about the pleasure of buttered toast and a hot cup of tea on a winter’s day. The conversation wandered, as good conversations do, into the way we spend our lives. Afterwards, it was the toast I kept thinking about.

Picture it properly. A thick slice, still hot enough for the butter to sink in. A pot of tea within reach. Perhaps a couple of eggs, with the yolks just right, and a second piece of toast ready for the important work of clearing the plate. Beyond the window, the garden is wet and the afternoon has made very little effort to brighten up. There is no particular reason to hurry.

Given the right appetite and a little peace, this is a remarkably good arrangement.

Tolkien understood the appeal. He could write about a well-stocked pantry with such affection that, for a moment, an entire world of dragons and ancient kingdoms might reasonably have to wait until after breakfast.

The hobbits’ enthusiasm for their meals is funny, of course. Bilbo is enjoying a second breakfast in The Hobbit when Gandalf arrives to hurry him off on his adventure. But there is considerable wisdom beneath the appetite. Here are people who know what to do with a pleasant morning. They grow things, make things, eat together, exchange news, and take an interest in the particular patch of earth they call home. A good meal among friends requires very little explanation.

For all their narrow habits and occasional silliness, the hobbits seem to me to possess one of the highest forms of simple wisdom: they can recognise a good day while they are having it.

A garden, a familiar path through the fields, a kitchen with something on the stove. These things occupy a proper place in their affections. They would be rather puzzled by the suggestion that a walk must improve their performance, or that breakfast ought to be an opportunity for professional development. One imagines the eggs going cold while somebody explains the benefits.

Tolkien gives us great questions about power, mercy, sacrifice and death. Yet the small, domestic pleasures help us understand what is at stake in the great events. In The Lord of the Rings, the Shire gives the struggle a home to return to: trees that have been allowed to grow, neighbours who can gather in peace, someone putting the kettle on.

Near the end of The Hobbit, the dying Thorin says to Bilbo:

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Thorin to Bilbo, The Hobbit, chapter 18.

That judgement comes at considerable cost. Thorin has had to discover what his treasure cannot give him. Bilbo, with his affection for home and his capacity for friendship, has understood something that a king is only learning at the end.

The hobbits still have to leave their comforts and do difficult things. They become braver, suffer losses and learn how much lies beyond their own borders. Loving the Shire gives them a reason to accept those responsibilities. It also gives them some sense of what power and wealth are for, and of what should never be sacrificed to either.

I find this a useful thought to carry into an ordinary working week.

There is always another thing to reach. A better role, a larger income, a project finally finished. We tell ourselves that we shall settle a little once it is done. Then it is done, and the mind makes its next appointment with satisfaction.

Sometimes the dissatisfaction is telling us something true. A job may be badly paid, badly managed, or taking too much from the rest of our lives. Those conditions deserve attention. But we can also reach a place we once hoped for and discover that we have brought the old restlessness with us. The achievement becomes familiar before we have properly enjoyed it.

That habit can follow us home. We begin to notice chiefly what remains unfinished. Even the things we chose freely, the projects we care about and the ideas that excite us, can fill every available hour. It becomes strangely difficult to leave an afternoon alone.

I like having projects. There is real pleasure in learning how something works and making a decent job of it. I also want to retain the ability to sit down with a cup of tea without feeling that some more industrious version of myself is looking over my shoulder.

Much of what we are working towards is already present in a modest form. There is food in the kitchen. Someone is pleased to see us. A child wants to tell us something that happened today. We can be so preoccupied with improving our circumstances that we barely inhabit them.

Think of bathing a child at the end of the afternoon. There is water on the floor, a towel just beyond reach, and a small person who has developed an urgent interest in why fingers go wrinkly. After a tiring day, it is easy to want the whole operation finished. Part of our attention is still in a meeting, composing a reply to something said hours ago.

There is nothing especially serene about bath time. It asks for patience when patience may be running low. Yet this is also where knowing a child happens: in the question, the laughter, the account of some small injustice. We share a life through these repeated, inconvenient occasions. It is worth being available for a few more of them.

Constant occupation can make us less gentle with everyone. A colleague takes too long to explain something. A friend rings at the wrong moment. A child repeats a story. When every minute has already been promised elsewhere, other people start to feel like delays. They notice our impatience, however respectable its cause may seem to us.

The hobbits’ hospitality offers a rather pleasant corrective. Having enough includes being able to offer some of it: another chair, another helping, time for the person who has come to the door. Enjoyment can make us more generous when we allow it to be shared.

There is a similar generosity in paying attention to the natural world. On a wet autumn afternoon, we might watch the rain for a while. See how the drops gather on a branch before falling. Notice the darker earth beneath the hedge, or the bird making a thoroughly businesslike inspection of the lawn. The world has plenty going on without requiring our supervision.

Photography has something to teach here. A room we know well can change when the light reaches it differently. A familiar gesture becomes visible because we have taken the trouble to look. Often, the photograph begins with giving an ordinary thing more attention than we usually spare it.

For me, gratitude and faith belong in this too. There is much in a day that I receive: the earth that grew the food, the work that brought it to the table, the love of people whose lives are bound up with mine. Remembering how much I depend on helps quieten the need to make every hour a demonstration of my own importance.

I have written before about the ability to leave work and the value of ordinary family days. I keep returning to these questions because it is quite possible to understand them and still spend an evening elsewhere in one’s head. Knowing what matters needs the help of small, practical choices.

Put the phone down while the tea brews. Let someone finish their story. Take a walk with no errand attached. Sit at the table long enough to enjoy what is on it. There will be days when even this is difficult, but it seems a reasonable place to begin.

I should like to keep enough of the hobbit in me to recognise such a day. Some useful work done, a child bathed, rain at the window, and an evening that still has room in it.

Then a warm plate, a couple of eggs, and toast with rather more butter than is strictly necessary. The kettle has boiled. We might as well sit down.