Company, but not quite

One of my favorite expressions comes from the Italian language and is of common use in music: "Allegro ma non troppo". It means literally "lively, but not too much", and the part I like the most (you have guessed it) is the second half, because it precisely embodies the Aristotelian principle of the optimal being somewhere in the middle between two extremes. (In case you are wondering, yes, I had my allotment of musical education as a child, where I not only learned the basic elements taught at school but even had private classes, both for music theory and violin. I never got too far with the instrument, but the theory helped me build a good foundation so that in college I had no problem playing lute in a string group and, even more recently, getting a decent first contact with the saxophone.)

The other use which, thanks to the frustration induced by this pandemic, is becoming sadly common recently, is to express an ironic disappointment, possibly with a touch of sarcasm, when reality simply fails to meet my expectations. This is particularly effective when combined with the adequate Italian word, such as to describe an slightly underwhelming dish as "buono, ma non troppo", as if it were possible to eat something "too good".

Photo: Mike Maguire

Face with a situation where the performance or a product is underwhelming there are typically three alternatives: change, stay or stop. The most natural one (particularly in societies which live mostly under the principles of free market) is to look for an alternative provider; if you disappointment is a general feeling, there should eventually be someone smart enough to provide the product or service in acceptable quality. However, it is not infrequent that products or services are bundled together, so that a certain provider would only agree to sell you product A if you also by product B from them. This is common practice in particular when new products are being introduced: forcing you to buy the second one gives them a chance to see how they fare in the market and if it will be able to hold its ground on its own. However, there are times when the quality among the bundled products is very unequal, so one would have no use for the obviously insufficient product B, but if the price of B is low and the quality of the other product is good enough one can count the price of both items together as if it were the price of the good product only and essentially trash the other. It might sound strange that a provider will insist on delivering products that they positively know you are going to throw away, because they could get the money and save the costs of producing and delivering the faulty product, but the truth is that getting sales figures for the product (even if they are "forced") might actually help it take off. The Chicago School of Economics argues that markets eventually regulate themselves to reach efficiency, but if the flow of information is not fast enough it can happen that, by the time a new equilibrium would be reached, the forces in the market have shifted again so that efficiency is not reached.

The third way to handle a disappointing product is to give up completely on that line of consumption. When there are just not good alternatives you might simply look for other ways to achieve your goals. Of course, this exercise is way more effortful than just replacing one product for an equivalent one, but sometimes it is the only option. On the other hand, once you sit down to consider the lay of the land, and if you keep an open mind, it is always possible to find completely unexpected ways to address your circumstances that were just not visible from the situation you were before.

In my case right now, I have to admit that the company I am getting is "buona, ma non troppo" (i.e. I am definitely feeling a bit lonely). The combination of home office and the general restrictions to normal life imposed by the pandemic have restricted my social interactions almost exclusively to the three other members of my family. And while our relationship is reasonably amicable, there are obvious limitations to the amount of connection they can provide. On the one hand, I would not like to burden my children with my worries, because parents are precisely there to protect them from unnecessary worries so that they can focus on their own. The obvious candidate is Karen, of course, and that is in fact why we also call spouses "life-partners", because we not only share the household and therefore financial interests, but we also have a setting to share our experiences and seek out advice.

Unfortunately, Karen has been quite upset recently with the overall management that the government (most governments in fact) has been doing of the pandemic. And although she has very limited agency, the journalist in her cannot avoid keeping careful track of the social and political movements that happen around the world almost every hour. In comparison with the gravity of these events, it just sounds petty to crack a joke or to worry because a data processing routine is not working as it should, so I find myself short of one friendly ear that would help me soothe my worries and give a chance to share my triumphs. However, as I mentioned above, the problem is that companionship in this case is bundled with many other things, so it is not as easy as looking for someone else. I try to find some level of "distributed support" among my colleagues, but they are quite busy as well between work and their own families, so it is not always easy.

There is always the last resort of writing my worries here, but this has the obvious disadvantage of not having answers or comforting words for me as my friends would. Hopefully the situation will not lust much longer now, it will resolve itself in a peaceful and satisfactory way and we will soon be able to return to a somewhat normal life, even if we will never be able to un-see the things that we have seen during the pandemic, which have caused a significant dent in my institutional trust. Have a nice evening.