In my last semester at William and Mary I arrived at a patch where I fervently wished my mind would just stop for ten minutes, I was so tired of the busyness. Final projects, no job nor new idea for a career even though I was engaged, a final dwindling of my saved money...I did not take up either alcohol or weed, somehow - perhaps because I knew graduation was not going to happen unless I worked my way out of all the corners I had backed myself into. If I had, I wonder if I would have been able to easily stop.
And still, new ideas flooding in, asking to be written up or discussed.
Anything that takes up the whole focus without much engaging the intellect is relaxing for us. People throw themselves into their work to forget grief, take up substances that make us temporarily stupid. We choose hobbies that are different from our vocations. The best relaxation is a change of work and all that. Pornography may be stimulating, but the last thing it requires is any thought. Exercise is bad for your health, but it is relaxing.
So I gave up news for Lent and I have been flooded. It's like 1974-75
all over again. I yearn for the relaxation of the news. I don't really
have to think hard, just get creative in how I put my hackneyed,
derivative ideas. Certainly I find different angles and seek to be both
entertaining and intellectually stimulating, but that is almost
low-level automatic pilot for me. Not much hard thinking.
Because... it's hard.
And now I am thrown back onto hard thinking again and it is just
wearying. I'm soaking up twice the information and spitting it back out.
Thirty hours ago I told you I had ten incomplete posts. Since then I
have put up nine posts plus two that are just music to break things up.
(Though I usually have to comment about those as well.) I'm trying to give
you a rest. This will be the tenth eleventh and I have three more still unfinished. I can't take off enough cafeteria dishes to get to the bottom.
Trump anti-Trump. Cast of arguing characters over at Maggie's, and nothing impresses more than the sameness of it all. It's just easier, when reading the news, to allow yourself to be triggered and launch immediately into what chuckleheads those other guys are. Look at this stupid, trite argument. Haven't you been listening to what I've been saying all these years?* Do I have to pull this car over?** Rob Henderson linked to a piece about men with more gay genes having more sex with women (up to a point) and the comment section is taken up with people claiming there are no gay genes, outraged that it could even be suggested. FB commenting is a form of "news," but I see the name - and that it's a meme rather than a grandchild - and I know what they are going to say. THE DEMOCRATS ARE EVIL...LOOK AT WHAT TRUMP HAS DONE NOW...Holding rumors aloft in triumph. Elections only seem to change who gets to be outraged for four years and who gets to be smug.
It's like talking about the weather when you know more than most people about meteorology. You sound smart, but it's just the weather. My advanced studies lunch group again. .. Smartest people in the world, all 99th percentile. Not one of us is rising above cliche when talking about the news, the elections, and cultural commentary.
I'd go have a few drinks but I gave up alcohol too. Sports? Usually a reliable brain-number. But the Celtics are certainly going to finish with the third best record and we are only 80% through the season. W&M came close again but is out of March Madness. Cooper Flagg is injured. I don't care about anything else. I'll have to see what is going on in Track and Field, but this is usually a dead time.
My mind craves the relaxation of having headlines generate clever people talking, so that I can pretend I am intellectually stimulated when it's only my group's social status being threatened. "Aggh! Those other ants are taking our mash! We shall have nothing!"
*This is particularly painful when reprising things I wrote fifteen years ago and being rather pleased at having made the same points then.
**"Do I Have To Pull This Car Over?" was a finalist for the name of this blog.
3 comments:
"Exercise is bad for your health, but it is relaxing."
Would you like to explain this proposition? It might be relaxing to explicate and then discuss it.
I find that I really like explaining things I fully understand -- I think men often do. It's the root of the 'mansplaining' that women hate, but also the root of the extremely helpful YouTube videos on almost any technical subject that you might need to know how to handle. I changed my high-torsion garage door springs by myself simply because several men wanted to explain how easy it was if you just knew how.
That aspect of YouTube is probably the single best thing the Internet has accomplished, and it's just because of how relaxing it is to explain something you fully understand.
If you go to an emergency room, it is full of people who have been exercising. A pastor friend once corrected me that exercise is good for your health when everything goes right, to which I replied "Yes, exactly."
Exercise is brain relaxing because you have to focus on your footing, or that pain in your hip, or what your opponent is doing, but it's a narrow set of things for the mind. Even when it's over you focus on the body while the brain looks on benignly.
I wish I had your discipline on explaining. When I explain something I keep thinking of new things it applies to and end up explaining four things, none very well.
The news gives you the illusion of knowledge, though unless this is about a specialty of yours it is actually rarely more than the reporters themselves have, and they're a fairly ignorant crew. (Yes, Virginia, I have read stories where they got the "breakthrough" backwards.)
It can give you a sense of belonging, as you mentally take your appointed side in the quarrels of the time. Even if the evil opponents seem temporarily triumphant, you and your fellow angels know the truth.
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