2 posts tagged “wisdom”
“Passion is sanity” says Mr. Emerson in E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View. I was reminded of that scene in Star Wars where the spirit of Obi Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker to shut off his X Wing fighter’s instrumentation panel and “trust his feelings” to find the precise moment to launch the missile that will destroy the Death Star and Save the Resistance from annihilation. “I forbid you to consult the Baedeker. You should consult your feelings here” Lucy Honeychurch is advised in A Room With a View, and the advice Lucy is given throughout the novel is consistent with that simple injunction, though with the understanding that “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
Forster keeps returning to the use of the word “muddled” as he brings his main character, Lucy, through the stormy sea of late adolescence and early adulthood. She is sent to Italy with a chaperone and the clear instruction to find a perfect Victorian husband with whom to live a perfect Victorian life and yet she discovers that Italy and the people that she meets there muddle everything. Her feelings don’t follow the channels that her society has dug for her to run into. Everyone, it seems, has a different idea about how she gets muddled, but they all know that she is getting so. Here are just a few examples.
“It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal” (19.42).
“[…] let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them” (2.43).
“And she spoke so
seriously that the risk became a certainty, and he, lifting his eyes, said:
“You are leaving him? You are leaving the man you love?”
I—I had to.
“why, Miss Honeychurch, why?”
Terror came over her, and she lied again. She made the long, convincing speech
that she had made to Mr. Beebe, and intended to make to the world when she
announced that her engagement was no more. He heard her in silence, and then
said: “My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me” — dreamily; she was not
alarmed — “that you are in a muddle.
She shook her head.
“Take an old man's word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world.
lt is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is
on my muddles that I look back with horror — on the things that I might have
avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach
young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of
George has come down to this: beware of muddle.”
What clearly needs to happen before Lucy Honeychurch starts making decisions and promises that affect other people is this. She needs to figure out, in the abstract, what weights she will place on the various influences that affect her decisions. Will her feelings weigh 50%, her familiy’s opinions weigh 30% and her reason weigh 20%? Or will she construct some other recipe more like 30-30-30? “This solitude oppressed her;” the character, Lucy observes. “She was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.”
And there is the rub, Lucy. There is no weighting of influences that will provide you with a right answer every time. So in matters of the heart, where no retreat from the decision is possible, aim to have your head, your heart, and your family all at a 100% agreement. And have a good reason why not if that can’t be the case.
In the end, E.M. Forster speaks through Mr. Emerson (a slightly veiled allusion to Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote the Bible of the transcendental self making decisions in his essay Self Reliance), the essential thing is to know that you love and are loved:
“When I think what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; Marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”
Or as the book of Song of Solomon puts it “I am my beloved’s and he is mine” … It seems like that is the sort of love that even God cannot help but celebrate. And I guess He should weigh more than anyone.
Think, feel, pray, listen … do all these things. Just don’t pretend.
“It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that to feel. She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue […] Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him, and pretended to Cecil that she loved no one. The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thirty years before (17.54-5).
One must assume that on the way to truth there will be muddlement. We must bear with it long enough to be allowed to see. To be allowed to grow up. Which is really simply the act of coming to see. Like learning to wait before walking after getting dizzy.
“Lucy cried aloud: “It isn't true. It can't all be true. I want not to be muddled. I want to grow older quickly.”
In response to the advice “beware
of muddle” I think I would say “was there ever a different way to finding the truth?”
As Oscar Wilde says “Only the shallow know themselves.” Muddled? Welcome to
class.
Question for comment: We all get muddled sometimes. Do you tend to remain so longer than most? Why?
the philosophy which does not laugh
and the greatness which does not bow before children' Kahlil Gibran
No Greater Love:
"No swimming when lifeguard is not on duty" the sign said. So, Skyler wanted to play tennis. We had the balls but no racquets so we went back to the house to get them. Greater love has no man than this. So Simi and Sky and I played tennis.
"Simi, the net is not a monkey bar . . . Great hit Skyler. Right inside the fence. Excellent, Sim. I can still see where that ball is. You get more points for hitting the ball into this court Sky but you really walloped that one. Nice." He hits it down the left side and I dive to return it. He nails it down the right side baseline for a killer closer.
"God is helping me win" he says.
Greater love has no man than this . . . that he teaches his four and six year old how to play tennis."
Golf:
Today was the first day Skyler and Simeon ever golfed. Their hockey skills overlapped a bit so balls were often more dribbled than putted but not so fast that I could not count the dribbles and Simi was always proud of his elevens and thirteens. Had their mom been there I am sure that they would not have scores. In her honor we re-did a few holes just for fun.
The BIG event was to be found on the 18th hole. I explained to them that they could get a free game of golf if they could sink the ball into the clown’s nose. I forgot to say that their balls would disappear into the clown either way. Skyler went first and his ball, missing the nose fell into the clown’s mouth and disappeared forever. He was mortified. It was for him the quintessential injustice and he railed against the gods, the management, and the clown with the passion of Martin Luther King and Ted Kaczynski. He was fit to blow the place to hell and distribute the pieces of the stuff to the twelve tribes from Dan to Beersheva.
He huffed and puffed and blew a gasket. He ran to the other side of the course and whaled the twigs off a nearby tree.
Simi, having learned of the dastardly clown scam trick so recently played on his brother, refused to hit the ball, as if to say “No clown would EVER devour his one and only chance at free golf” unable to see that to win you had to risk loosing (How lifelike is THAT?). No sir! I had to do 15 minutes of therapy with Skyler to get him civil but he still left wanting to burn the place down to cinders. Simeon was given my golf ball to shoot as a compromise to get him to try. Sometimes a person needs to know they will be given a mulligan before they will risk trying at all. (How lifelike is that?)
To think, In the old days, I used to read books for my education.
Your Not Obeying God!
I was putting Simi in the car.
"I don't want to go!" he said.
"I understand that you are feeling a feeling that we all feel when we have to do
something that we do not want to," I said, "But we have to go."
"You're not obeying God," he said.
Comforting William
Cousin William was saying that he wanted a brother.
Skyler said that he had a toy at home that could walk and talk
That might be a comfort to him," said Sky.
Who's More Brilliant?
Skyler and his dad had a battle of Midway over his ear
infection pill today.
A few minutes in the "stop-breath-and-think" chair and a lot of reasoning and
persistence won the day. Tonight, he agreed to take his pill without complaining
if his dad would give him a ride to bed as a donkey first. His dad gave him the
ride, braying all the way. His dad is brilliant. Skyler then took his pill with
his cup of milk and intentionally laughed so hard about how much of an idiot his dad had
looked as a donkey that the entire pill came drooling out of his mouth with the
milk. Thus proving that Skyler is brilliant
Billy Joel 1: Parents 0
I am in the car with the boys listening to Billy Joel
"Whatsa matter with the clothes I'm wearin? Can't you see that they're out of
style?" etc.
Skyler says, "Turn it up! I like that song. I like the smashing part." [the
beat]
The Impasse
We were about to say Grace over lunch but Simeon insists that we all must hold hands. Skyler however refuses to hold hands with Simeon. Simeon refuses to allow prayer to commence without the obligatory holding of hands. Why won't Skyler hold his hands? "Because," Skyler says, " Simi picks his nose and his hands are slimy."
There is a parable in this I am sure. This is the picture of the great dilemma of community. It is a complete impasse. God will simply have to understand why no Grace is offered today but someday I hope the world solves this problem.Playground "Violence"
Today, I took the boys to the playground again. There were double slides. I had them go to the top and close their eyes so that they slid down blind. They knew I would be sitting at the bottom of one of the two slides but they did not know which so it was like Russian roulette. They never knew if they would crash me or go flying into the dirt. Then they got to go down the curly slide and crash me. We invented different ways of crashing me to make it interesting: The "HEAD SLAMSLIDER"; The "CRANIAL CRUSHER"; The "GLUTUS BRUTUS", etc. etc. It was a Baskin and Robbins of playground violence. Skyler will be the only kid in first grade with a Med School vocabulary.
Game Boy Chain
Skyler was talking about his game boy today. He told me that his Game Boy is what holds his friendship with Willie together. Willie is a first grader who's brother tells Willie how to play. Then Willie tells Skyler. Then Skyler tells Simeon and Simeon tells cousin William. Skyler says, "Its like a food chain only I call it a Game Boy Chain."
In the Beginning
Gramma was going to tell the boys a story from Genesis today. She says to the boys "I am going to tell you the story but after, you are going to have to ask questions." Skyler says that she can count him out. He will listen to the story but he's not asking questions after. Simeon says that he will. Mom gets a few sentences into the story and Skyler interjects: "Hold on now! How can God have existed forever?"
The Planet of Upside-Down
Today's bed-time story was about taking uncle Andy to the planet of upside-down. Skyler really got into it. On the planet of upside-down, broccoli is red, bananas are purple, people hear with their mouths and you hold ice cream cones by the ice cream and lick the cones. Skyler says, "On the planet of upside-down, the ice cream cone licks you." You never heard a heartier peel of laughter.
Sixes
My favorite "gifted child thinking out of box" story I think is one of Simeon. His first grade class was practicing sixes. a work sheet with lines was to be the forum. He got about three sixes done across the top line and I imagine that he looked at them, with five lines of sixes to go and said, "Mmm ... I think I can do this but ..." the last six of the three had a little abnormality in it when he wrote it ... a slight bump on the lower loop stuck out. The next six, had a symmetrically made bump as well added to it. The next six had the bumps sort of extended into something like points. The next six, seemed to have several lines drawn across the top of the numeral were it would be hung if it were a physical object. By the next six, you can tell that these are feet. ... And so the lines of sixes go with each six progressively "evolving" into .. a full fledged hanging bat.
I have no idea what his teacher gave him for a grade on this but it remains an example of some of his most excellent written work to me today. Grin.
Question for Comment: will I wish someday that i recorded more of the funny things my kids said and did and less of the things i thought about books?
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