What should we be talking about? Loneliness? Shame? Dwindling resources on a heating planet?
Yesterday I talked with a brilliant young man about the challenge of pessimism versus optimism. How, after all, do you maintain your optimism when it feels irresponsible not to start with the very real, very in-your-face problems of the day? Can you really say, “focus on your neighborhood” and “do what good you can” and “chin-up” when you see the flames rise from Ukraine? As you watch America implode?
Somehow that conversation reminded of a line from The American President:
How do you have patience for people who claim they love America but clearly can’t stand Americans?
Which might be translated, for this moment, into: How are we gonna learn to stand one another given how we advertise and trumpet and profit from what is horrible about who we are?
Today I talked with a friend who was down because a good friend of his own is out of touch, someone who made it clear he wants to be alone so as to soldier through a family drama. What should my friend thus do? Obey these wishes or trundle in to try and help?
Why do we insist on distance with so many contemporary tools for getting close? Do those tools screw up forever the telemetry of intimacy and friendship?
Would my freind’s friend be more amenable to help if they had a relationship based on writing letters rather than on texting and email?
D.H Lawrence says this:
Wherein are we educated? Come now, in what are we educated? In politics, in geography, in history, in machinery, in soft drinks and in hard, in social economy and social extravagance: ugh! a frightful universality of knowings.
But it’s all France without Paris, Hamlet without the Prince, and bricks without straw. For we know nothing, or next to nothing, about ourselves.
And then later in this same essay, Lawrence asks: “And how? How? How shall we even begin to educate ourselves in the feelings?”
Is that the question? How do we educate ourselves in the feelings?
If not, what is?
Really, what should we be talking about?
I’m asking: About what should I write?
Ted
Tell us again about the spokes, canal boats and bikes. Tell us about Molly as if you’d never told us before. Tell us what you’d tell Molly if she asked you what you’re writing about, today. Or someday.
Tell us what you are learning from the people you talk to. Tell us their stories. Tell us yours.