What We Can Learn on the Toilet

If a cultivated alien were to investigate humanity via our traditionally esteemed achievements in art, literature and philosophy, they might never suspect that we all spend non-negligible parts of our lives releasing quantities of excrement. No visit to the Prado is educative on the topic; the gods and heroes of Homer never defecate, nor does any Jane Austen heroine. The fact has been taken to be far too disgusting for the polite realm of high thought. Yet the toilet offers one of the most revealing lessons in the mind-body connection.

The Limits of Will

Each morning, as we perch on a hinged rim above a small pool of water, we encounter one of the great puzzles of the human condition: the gap between the will – the mind’s call to action – and the body, the complex biological system we inhabit. Normally, we enjoy a reassuring harmony: the hand moves when the mind wants it to; the tongue and lungs swing into action to speak. But on the toilet, we have to cajole and coax our innards. In a crucial perversity of our nature, the fact that we are trying may be the very obstacle to performance.

We are engaged in a curious and instructive process. We push a little, then think about something else; we register tiny signs of progress, then check our phone or try to recall a dream. We play along with the body, catching a moment to make a slight effort, then letting things fall back. At the climactic point, the mind unites with the body in a final expulsion. It is an operatic process – a romantic epic in which there are moments of hostility and misunderstanding, followed by a final duet in which the divided voices of the self sing together.

The Mind-Body Connection

This pattern haunts our entire adult lives. We learn that we cannot be erotically aroused, fall asleep, or even sneeze just because it would be convenient to do so. These strange limitations pursue us into our mental lives as well. We cannot force ourselves to be cheerful, and we certainly cannot be creative or imaginative just because we want to be.

In its widest sense, the ritual of the toilet teaches us the limitations of force. When we want to change another person, or ourselves, we cannot achieve progress simply by shouting orders. We have to find a way of cooperating strategically with the internal state of the system. We wait for a moment of relaxation; we encourage the slightest hint of movement, but not too much. The hardest thing is patience – realising that trying to speed the process up is the surest way of shutting it down.

On the toilet, we are enacting a grand ritual of the human condition. We learn how to stop being a tyrant and start being a partner to the magnificent, stubborn (and often lowly) reality of being ourselves, and of the mind-body connection.