Where I feel like we all need to take more time is in the assignation of good or bad, because that has to be subjective. Not making a choice is still a choice--is that good or bad? Are we required to reach--to want greatness? Or is it as valid to stop reaching? If we choose not to choose, is our passivity a failure? Is it that we're not okay with what's in front of us, or is it that we're conditioned to think we shouldn't be?
This is not to say we shouldn't reach or dream if it's in our nature. All I'm saying is our cultural narrative puts a lot of pressure on us to want things--so much so that we assign really shitty words (like "settling") to what might otherwise be seen as contentment. (Not to mention, it's the unsung willingness of the majority to "settle" that keeps us all alive.)
Haha, I'm seriously about five minutes away from writing a Manifesto of Mediocrity.
In any case, everything you're saying is right and thoughtful and I'd never accuse you of being anything else. I'm just suggesting sometimes the tensions we feel are more external than we realise.
I want to respond to your beautiful quote with another. It's Donne's For Whom the Bell Tolls passage which I thought about a lot when dad died. I feel like people always skip the best parts.
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Jeez louise that line rips my heart out.
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Date: 2017-07-27 06:50 pm (UTC)Where I feel like we all need to take more time is in the assignation of good or bad, because that has to be subjective. Not making a choice is still a choice--is that good or bad? Are we required to reach--to want greatness? Or is it as valid to stop reaching? If we choose not to choose, is our passivity a failure? Is it that we're not okay with what's in front of us, or is it that we're conditioned to think we shouldn't be?
This is not to say we shouldn't reach or dream if it's in our nature. All I'm saying is our cultural narrative puts a lot of pressure on us to want things--so much so that we assign really shitty words (like "settling") to what might otherwise be seen as contentment. (Not to mention, it's the unsung willingness of the majority to "settle" that keeps us all alive.)
Haha, I'm seriously about five minutes away from writing a Manifesto of Mediocrity.
In any case, everything you're saying is right and thoughtful and I'd never accuse you of being anything else. I'm just suggesting sometimes the tensions we feel are more external than we realise.
I want to respond to your beautiful quote with another. It's Donne's For Whom the Bell Tolls passage which I thought about a lot when dad died. I feel like people always skip the best parts.
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Jeez louise that line rips my heart out.