This title comes from one of my favorite movies, Contact, starring Jodie Foster as a scientist who discovers alien intelligence. Her father, played by David Morse, who encouraged her in her ham radio hobby when she was a girl, advised her, “Small moves, Ellie”, meaning that when she was turning the radio dial, she should turn it with small moves so as not to miss anything. This phrase, “small moves”, reminds me to slow down and feel things that wouldn’t be accessible at a higher speed. So I have decided in this blog to talk about a few (perhaps small) things I have been thinking about, and to slow down to think more clearly.
In a book I’m reading (or struggling through), Dickens’ David Copperfield, one character says something like, “The Devil finds work for idle hands, but it may well be, The Devil finds work for busy hands, as to be busy is not always to be good.” That is a very interesting observation. The original maxim is from a time when many were going to the cities from the countryside to find work during the Industrial Revolution, and some of these workers were not used to doing things by the clock. Although perhaps hardworking enough in their own environment, they had a different time frame for work. It must have been hard to get used to working as the machines demanded.
Many maxims from this time, which extol quick and efficient work over everything else, have come into ordinary use. Yet idle hands (which are also known as “the Devil’s playground”) do no more mischief than busy hands, and possibly less. Idleness was seen as an evil from this viewpoint, and to be busy was regarded as infinitely better. “Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose,” wrote Longfellow in his famous 1840 poem, “The Village Blacksmith”. I used to do this myself; last thing at night I would enumerate all the things I had done that day, even if it was loads of laundry; I never stayed awake long enough to judge whether this catalog of work had “earned” a night’s repose or not. If I ever considered that I had NOT earned my rest, what would I have done? Gotten up and found some other work to do?
These days I often see these ideas of keeping busy denigrated in favor of “feeling one’s worth”, which is thought to be inborn, rather than taking one’s worth from the work one does (the more the better?) or from others’ opinion of oneself. That is true as far as it goes, but couldn’t we have a happy medium between these two? Can’t we feel our intrinsic worth and ALSO find joy in work and discipline? Why not?
Another thing I have been thinking about is this. A Tibetan teacher I follow from time to time told a story of a man who was tired of walking over hot stones and other unpleasant surfaces in his bare feet, so he decided that the solution was to cover the whole world in leather, then he would always be comfortable wherever he walked. It would have been (and was) a better solution to wear shoes on his own feet, then he himself would be comfortable at less cost in time, trouble etc.
Certain trends in social media come to mind. We are all expected to “become” the leather that others walk on to avoid offense – in other words, all of us are expected to avoid offending others (which gets harder and harder), rather than individual people taking responsibility for their own feeling of offense.
The right way, I think, is somewhere in the middle. Of course we ought to seek to avoid offending others, even perfect strangers, who say things we don’t like on social media. But at some point it becomes too difficult, not to say impossible, to keep track of all the ways others can be offended and to avoid these. If we use what to us is an acceptable form, and at some time it has become offensive to someone, most times we should be given the benefit of the doubt, and not have our use of a word (which may have been used in an old way or without intending to offend) blow up in our faces.
An example from my own life: A few years ago in a group, I commented (in response to a question, “What do you think?”) on a certain celebrity, whose behavior I thought had been “caveman-like”. The result was that another person commenting called me a racist. Shocked by this judgement, I deleted my comment, only to be accused of “DD” or “dirty deleting”, whatever that is. The ultimate result was that I quit the group, which was an acrimonious way of quitting as I had been a member of this group for over thirty years. It seems to me that many people expect the world to be covered in leather for their own comfort. And I consider myself a relatively goodhearted person. I don’t offend deliberately, as many seem to do.
Social media has become, in many ways, a dumping ground for people who wish to “get back” at commenters when they are offended. It is also a minefield: when you comment in what you think is a meaningful way, you risk setting off a gratuitous explosion from someone else. But I maintain that it is not good manners to say bad things to people when you don’t know where they are “coming from”. Of course this pertains to the original commenter as well as to those who reply.
Still less is it good manners to turn every conversation to yourself and use your particular case as a way of refuting what has been said in a post. This is an illogicality known as “generalizing from the particular”. Example: One post might say, “No matter how lousy my day might have been, my cat always loves me”. Pretty innocent, right? But some comments say things like “Well, I have a dog, not a cat, and he loves me.” Or even “Cats are not friendly, get a dog, then you will be truly loved. My dog… “etc. We scarcely notice this kind of response any more; in fact if there is some more positive response, or a neutral one, such as “In what way does your cat show he loves you?” it is not taken up.
There are other things I’ve been thinking about, but the word limit for this blog has been reached. What I do think every day, at this time of year, is “Hurry up spring!” I’m tired of huddling over heaters, rugging up in winter clothes, blowing on my hands, etc. That’s what the photo at the top is about – waiting for spring and warmth to return. Hopefully, by the next blog, it will have.
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