CAMBRIDGE LETTER
The experience of excitement
BILL KIRKMAN
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While bad news has universal effects, the experience of excitement is much more individual…
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Photo: AP
At the re-launch of the monarchy website: Some interest but no one was really excited.
After weeks of ever more gloomy news about the economy, the bad judgements of banks and what sometimes seems like the despair of politicians trying to tackle the problems, I have been looking during the past few days for something rather more cheerfu
l on which to focus my attention. It is easy to think of things that are conspiring to make people miserable. What, by contrast, might add a bit of excitement to our lives?
I rapidly came to the conclusion that whereas the bad news that is making us miserable has universal effects — it affects everyone in some way or another — excitement is much more individual. There are, obviously, some general causes of excitement.
The election of President Barrack Obama and his inauguration springs immediately to mind; watching the ceremony made one aware that this was an event that gave a thrill of excitement to millions.
Far more common, however, are causes of excitement that affect people because of specific circumstances. When circumstances change, the excitement vanishes.
Different strokes
A good example of this occurred this week, with the news that the Queen re-launched an updated Monarchy website, accompanied by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. The website takes people into the Royal family and provides a detailed insight into the role, and life, of the Queen and her family.
The original website was launched in 1997, and it is visited by some 250,000 users every week. The news of the re-launch attracted some interest, but virtually no excitement. If something of the kind had been possible half a century ago, there would undoubtedly have been great excitement. Now, of course, what the Web makes possible is commonplace, a part of everyday life.
Reaction to exciting things does, of course, vary from person to person, as The Guardian’s report of the website re-launch demonstrated. It referred to a meeting in 1878 between Queen Victoria and Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Queen Victoria apparently recorded in her diary: “Professor Bell explained the whole process which is most extraordinary....It is rather faint and one must hold the tube close to one’s ear…” — which might be described as accepting excitement with faint praise.
Personal moments
All of us, no doubt, can recall things that excited us. My earliest remembered excitement came with the coronation of King George Vl — to stay with a royal theme. It was not the coronation itself that I found exciting, but the fact that, as a five-year-old child, I had my first experience of a village carnival, and a ride on the back of a stage bull — two men in a costume. I think I realised that it was not a real bull, but I remember the excitement of apprehension that I just might be wrong.
In 1953, as a university student, I enjoyed real excitement from going with two friends to the market and buying some bread, butter and cooked meat. It was exciting because food rationing had just ended, and it was the first time in our adult lives that we had been able to make such a purchase.
Two years later I flew for the first time in an aeroplane, an experience that was particularly exciting because it was totally unexpected. I was due to travel from London to Glasgow for a job interview, and a railway strike was called. The employer decided to fly candidates to Glasgow rather than postpone the interviews.
Move on a further three years, and in 1958 I had the great excitement of being on the first commercial jet flight across the Atlantic, on the proving flight of the Comet 4. It was clearly a significant event, and again the excitement for me was increased by the fact that, once again, my participation was totally unexpected. I was on the staff of The Times, and when the flight was announced (at short notice, for commercial reasons) the aeronautical correspondent was on holiday, and I had a passport.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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