Seems to me my entries in this blog have become increasingly shallow ... notably lacking in ... substance, i.e. thought. So what's up with that?
To say what one thinks one needs to know what one thinks ... and then have the nerve to say it ... and be willing to defend it. But I've never been much for that ... always feeling to be at a disadvantage when it comes to matching wits and wisdom. Boys, you see, turn everything into a competition. And, even hating competition as I mostly do, I've still got enough of the residual boy in me to bear witness to that thought.
So why don't I just write about what I'm actually thinking? How is it that I've trained and reined myself to stick with the innocuous?
It could be that I have nothing to say ... about Education, Poetry, Fiction, Music, Religion, Carmelite Life, Politics, Art, War, Peace, Love, Death, Warm Socks ... but that's not likely, is it?
This hesitation partly has to do with my overlapping position (posture?) as teacher and brother ... a public figure. Everything I write must be carefully considered ... lest I give offense. There seems to be no greater fault than to give offense ... to appear to be insensitive to the feelings, experience, and opinions of others ... in the expression of one's own thoughts. I certainly don't want to be offended by others, though I know that I will be ... sooner or later. It's inevitable.
What does one fear? One fears rejection, of course. But one also fears having to face the possibility that one is wrong ... or that one just doesn't have the time and energy to make the strongest case possible. Maybe one is stupid (there is that possibility, you know). Or one is a little lost puppy ... still looking for love and approval ... maybe in all the wrong places ... still. One fears confrontation ... or, if not "fears", finds it horribly inconvenient. Maybe one should just be happy to shut up ... be grateful for silence.
Emerson wrote a hundred and sixty-seven years ago:
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. (Self-Reliance)
Whose affections must now enter into his account. Is that the crux of the matter? No one will turn away if you talk about the weather. They'll just think ... How boring is this weather .. is this guy.
O ... it's way windy and cold today ... computer says -3º at 10:06 am ... -1º at 2:18 pm ...
I seem to have majored in Invidious Comparisons of Self to Others ... never smart enough, sharp enough. Where do smart thoughts come from? Is this why I spend so much time around high school students?
There's something Archaic - if not downright Stone Age - about my concern here. Isn't this 2008? Hasn't the internet done in all these hesitations we used to have? Isn't this a brave new world of Free Speech? No thought left unblogged?
I'm not sure what this rant is actually all about. Hot air. Steam release. Maybe there's something I could do with my sabbatical that would help me see how insightful and articulate I am ...
In the meantime, what does -3º look like?
Nothing. It looks like nothing at all.
