When I was a teenager, I had a pet mouse. I enjoyed holding it in my hand and walking around the house with it. Pretty soon I was leaving the house with the mouse. Eventually I started carrying it with me around the neighborhood, even on the public bus. Believe me, you can learn a lot about people when you pull a mouse out of your pocket on a bus.
A few years later my girlfriend and I were going through a bad breakup (it had nothing to do with the mouse). It was a Saturday night and I showed up for work at the Old Dublin pub. Murray the veteran bartender saw that I was out of sorts and my frazzled frame of mind could make me distracted and ineffective during what was going to be a busy night. He needed me to be focused and sharp. He took me aside, out the door to the back alley behind the pub. There Murray the bartender handed me an empty pint glass. He motioned his head toward the brick wall at the end of the alley.
“What is this for?” I asked.
“Get all your emotion out. Smash this glass against the wall.”
I shrugged, ok, and smashed the glass against the wall. Murray the bartender handed me another. “Come on,” he croaked. “Put your emotion into it.”
This time I understood. I looked at the glass, thought about the frustration I was feeling, and hurled that glass against the wall. I heard a grunt come out of me.
Murray the bartender nodded with approval. He handed me another glass and motioned towards the wall.
This time I let out a loud bark as I smashed the glass. Murray the bartender smiled. I smiled. He looked at me as if to ask, “OK, you good?”
I thought for a moment.
Then I grabbed another glass, turned to the wall, lunged forward and yowled a throaty yowl as I rocketed that glass into that wall. I had never heard that specific sound come out of me before. It was a guttural sound. An animal sound. The sound of exorcising a demon. When I walked back in to work, I felt calm. Focused. Mentally light.
What do the mouse story and the glass story have in common?
They are both about catalysts.
According to the people at Merriam-Webster, a catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.” The smashed glass catalyzed release of the relationship baggage. The mouse catalyzed a broad spectrum of reactions from strangers; some slight meh reactions, some more animated, and even the occasional full-on leaping-up-and-down freakout fit.
Now, years later, I can’t remember what it was about that breakup that had me so bent out of shape. Whatever it was, smashing glasses catalyzed me to forget it.