A bit of Sunday philosophizing, while it rains a January rain outside…
Various things I’ve been reading recently have carried the message that one’s self is the only thing, the only belief, that a person can rely on. One of them is Emerson’s 1841 essay “Self reliance." It was included along with Obama’s inauguration address in a little blue book that CA gave us as an engagement present – apparently Emerson’s thinking is a big influence on Obama. In it, Emerson says things like “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” and “the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
What a relief to think the truth lies right here inside me. But how scary too. What if “I” am wrong? (Though the answer to that would be that there is no right or wrong, just true and false, so that’s ok). More importantly, then, how does that “I" interact selflessly with others? Because aren’t most of the world’s problems a result of “I’s” interacting selfishly with others? How do you (I!) prevent self reliance and self awareness from becoming blind individualism? Perhaps it’s by knowing that what the self really needs and wants is a) not very much and b) not very different from what other people need and want.
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Emerson’s essay also talks about how independent minds will contradict themselves, apparently changing positions. But, he says, “of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance…The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency…” Zadie Smith picks up this idea in her new book of essays “Changing my mind,” in which she apparently (have only read a review) praises Obama’s “flexibility of voice." She says his example demonstrates that “each man must be true to his selves, plural.” That could be disconcerting, and even imply weakness, were it not read in the context of Emerson’s reassurance that apparently disparate ideas are solidly consistent if they flow from a mind (will, whatever) that is being totally true to itself. In politics though, can anyone remain true to themselves?
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Other bits of reading recently, enabled in large part by aeroplane journeys (over the holiday) and subway journeys (to and fro work)...
Adam Gopnik’s "Through the Children’s Gate". Would I have picked that book up at the airport, a memoir about bringing up children in New York, were I not about to be doing just that? Albeit in rather different circumstances and for now in the singular rather than plural. The book is gently and entertainingly written with beautiful passages, such as the description of parents worrying how to “make the children fly” in a kindergarten production of Peter Pan. “The willingness of New York parents is bracing compared with the aloofness of French parents [Gopnik’s previous memoir is about his family’s time living in Paris], or even of earlier generations of American parents. They will do anything to make their children fly…” After much deliberation and consideration of potentially dangerous stunts, the solution is to shrink the city…to have a miniature night-time London on the stage that the children can swoop over.
What was portrayed too often in the book as “New York,” though, was just a slither of New York. A wealthy Upper East-Siders, “made-it”, literary New York. Which is all very well. The book is a personal memoir so was only meant to capture a microcosm (and who can capture any more than that in this city?). I just felt that the beating hearts and shrieks and laughs of kids being brought up all over New York in all different kinds of circumstances were muffled. As if there was a soundproof barrier between them and the comfortable lives described.
Cormack McCarthy’s "The Road", a rather less entertaining read. Ug. What is all the fuss about? The images, or more like image – man and boy travel down road through post-apocalyptic but still-threatening landscape that, oh my, will look great on a big screen – is powerful and has stayed with me. But the intentionally monotonous rhythm of the words lulled me into a numbness. I guess that numbness is McCarthy’s achievement. One stranger on the subway, a young guy with his girlfriend, saw me reading it and asked what I thought. I told him. “Oh really? My friend LOVED it and told me I HAVE to read it, that it was the most AWESOME book he'd ever read,” he said. And then a couple of days later a middle-aged woman sitting next to me said “Oh my God. You’re reading THAT. I couldn’t bear it. Do keep reading it though.” And I did.
And two self-helpsy new-yearsy books. For the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs bookclub I read Dave Pollard’s "Finding the Sweet Spot", about creating and nurturing sustainable enterprises. The key “take” from that was that the sweet spot (where you’ll be fulfilled in work) lies at the point where your “gifts,” (what you’re better at than most others), your “passion” (what inspires you) and “purpose” (what’s actually needed in the world), intersect. I’m not, for now, creating a social enterprise, but feel that if I make my book come off in the next couple of years I’ll be pretty close to that sweet spot, and to generating new ones. I’m also dipping into Eckhart Tolle’s "The Power of Now" which so many millions have read before me. How wise to let past and future dissolve and to live fully-present in the present, unencumbered by a chatting mind...now to put it into practice.
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