Hi all,
For the next few weeks, I’m going to comment on some of the ideas I didn’t cover in my first review (‘review’) of Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts. This week’s post expands on some thoughts I’ve considered before that also came up in this book.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
We overestimate the maturity of adults.
I’ve noticed how when an adult acts childishly, the common response is to label the adult ‘immature’. An adult who behaves immaturely often takes us by surprise, even if nothing was ever done by the person in question to indicate maturity.
I’m not sure why this is but I am fairly certain of its truth. The problem could be that maturity is considered a passively accumulated skill when in reality it might be an actively cultivated skill. Or, maturity might not be related to time at all.
Overarching concepts or figures are dangerous because they tempt us to ignore the details of a given situation.
This reminds me of the common criticism I’ve read or heard about the profit-driven. By habitually reducing a situation’s moral or ethical calculus down to ‘revenue against cost’ arithmetic, a person slowly becomes blind to all the additional details. Eventually, the ability to consider anything else except the profit margin becomes atrophied.
It is important to have philosophies and principles as a guide to daily living. However, being unable to understand details is dangerous because it makes the moment to apply an exception almost impossible to identify.
There is no need to make a fetish of the unsaid. The talented writer contains the unsaid within the said. The expressed always contains the inexpressible.
The perfect thing here would be to say nothing, right, reader? Sometimes, the loudest answer is silence, and all that.
But noise doesn’t make music and volume doesn’t mean relevance. When a television viewer hits the mute button, it usually isn’t because the silence is enriching – it’s because the sound is ruining the viewing experience.
Sometimes, the loudest answer is silence. Silence speaks volumes, they say. But the loudest answer and the best answer are rarely the same thing.
The more effort we make to express our feelings, the less time we waste later trying to identify the same feelings when they come around again.
I grew up playing various team sports. From my experience, I can confirm that though practice does not make perfect, it does almost always lead to improvement.
The idea also reminds me of Cheryl Strayed’s comment in Tiny Beautiful Things – people express their love for each other so that they can say it when they really need to. I like this example for how it reinforces the simple lesson that almost all things benefit from some degree of practice.
Privilege does not protect us from suffering.
This comes to mind every once in a while as I do my hospice volunteer work. The access to palliative care in the face of a debilitating illness should be considered a basic human right; there is no doubt about it in my mind. But I also recognize that a morphine drip is a privilege. It’s the same kind of privilege that my running water is, one not available to many from the past, a privilege that we citizens of wealthy nations today have yet to extend to those of poor nations.
And yet, even with these privileges, suffering remains ever-present around here. In some cases, the morphine is ineffective. But in most others, what the morphine takes away only opens room for further suffering of a mental or emotional nature.
