Breadth, depth, and personal connection
This is an entry from my journal.
I have had several false starts with reading fiction. The stories are interesting, I know, but I never feel invested in them. A friend recently persuaded me to read Anton Chekhov. I though it was time to give it another try with my reading practice and, indeed, I read The lady with the dog. “How was it?”, she asked. “Okay” I responded and then we went on to discuss the story as well as my thoughts about relevant issues.
That experiment did not last long. Fiction bores me, as do virtually all books. It reminded me how I do not easily connect with people at the emotional level, which sounds odd to those who have seen me in action. I am sociable, can talk with anyone, will speak in front of an audience even without a script, am able to do people-oriented jobs, tell jokes, am easygoing and do not take offence, am aware of sensitivities and boundaries, have emotional intelligence, and, generally, show strong social skills. Still, I take a very long time to grow attached to anyone.
I have a propensity to go in depth with everything I enjoy: I give it my undivided attention. This is why, for example, I reached a high level of competence with Emacs even though I have no background in programming or neighbouring fields. This “digger” behaviour has a great cost though: I cannot cover a lot of ground at the same time, the way a “scrapper” would. Concretely, I want to understand a person well, which I cannot do with everyone I encounter due to time/energy constraints.
This is why, perhaps paradoxically, I remain at the surface of the emotional connection with practically everyone that does not actively try to reach out to me. Those who keep returning I naturally notice more and begin to appreciate. It also is why I have learnt to tame my curiosity. When I am introduced to a new concept, I do not try to quickly inform myself about it. Never! Instead, I ignore it, promising myself to only pay attention to it if life unfolds in such a way that knowledge of it is pertinent to my activities. A relevant example is with AI: I do not use myself and do not follow the news about its technicalities. This is not because I have an ideological predisposition against it. No! I simply do not indulge my curiosity.
As a kid in primary school, there was a stationery shop from where I would buy what was needed for my homework. I always went there by myself. My parents trusted me as I was responsible even as a child. At some point, the shop owner told my father that “your son knows exactly what he wants”. I learnt this anecdote many years later and was not surprised with myself. The owner tried to get me interested in all sorts of products, such as that colourful pen and this slightly thicker drawing pad. He did not manage to sell me anything I was not already decided on. This is the same digger trait in action: I picked something, went in depth, and thus knew I had no need for anything else to achieve what I was committed to.
Put differently, I am very conservative about who or what I focus on. Once I make a choice, I stick with it indefinitely and am unequivocal about it. When I lived in Brussels, there was this hairdresser I visited the first time and continued to visit even after I had relocated to the other side of town.
For another example that covers my publications, I started my website in 2011. I keep writing long-form articles as if this is the first time I am doing it. My passion remains the same. It is not enthusiasm, however, as that is short-lived. Mine is inexhaustible zest that comes from the depths of the earth, like a fountain. I write so much yet feel as fresh as ever, like I have not even started.
In English we use the expression “falling in love” to describe the exciting kind of romantic connection. The equivalent Greek concept is erotas (έρωτας), which is distinct from what I would describe as “growing in love”: that is agape (αγάπη). We also say “love at first sight” to speak of erotas. My experience has never been of this sort. Whatever I love is the result of repeated exposure to it; love at the 1000th sight, if you will.
There are many kinds of mind, informed by the uniqueness of each person’s experiences, to produce an incredible diversity among people. My mind does not attach to specificities by default, though it can to great effect. Ordinarily, it shifts towards patterns. When I converse with someone, I discern in them something that is not specific to their person. Same idea for landscapes. I do not merely observe, say, a mountain range but identify in it a scheme of shape, of colour, of rhythm.
This is why I am a philosopher, after all, but also why I have a way of thinking that draws linkages between fields of endeavour that have no obvious connections: I do not fixate on one detail and there is no box that can contain me. That may be described as my artistic side. And I am an artist literally, anyway, given all the poems I write. Though art is as diverse as the people who make it: I am not the flamboyant or virtuoso type.
I could probably do painting and music as well, maybe even at a high level, though these require special practice with the hands. My dexterity is not as finely developed and I do not have enough time to do that as well as what I am already invested in. What is nimble is my thinking faculty, which I continue to improve. Words are my pigments. Meanings form the palette I rely on. I blend them with ease and arrange them into structures that form sentences, which grow into paragraphs that become essays, with a coherent message from start to end, and a shared psyche from one entry to the next. My writings are clear and orderly as a reflection of my inner world.
A professor of mine once told me while we were taking a break from class: “you have a lot of common sense, which is not common”. This describes my brain. My personality, part biology and part second nature that I cultivated, complements it. As I do not commit on a whimsy, I neither get excited nor frustrated, and am very patient as a result, which helps me think things through.
Coming back to fiction, I do not read it because I am aware that I will not fall in love with any of the characters. The kind of reading I do is thus of the impersonal kind, such as on politics, which I also tend to study with the goal of identifying patterns that extend beyond the individuals involved. Opinion pieces I publish will therefore have the quality of commenting on what is yet to be or what is beyond the specifics of the case I am concerned with.
What I do is not special and has no advantages in the grand scheme of things. The world is consistent throughout. No matter where you stand, you witness a singular reality. There is no elsewhere. No outside or inside. No before or after. It is here and there and everywhere the one in the many, the many in the one. If you do not experience as much, it is due to the dizziness you get when you look around without seeing, when you hear without listening.
Cosmic consistency means that the digger and the scrapper are fundamentally exposed to the same experience. I understand one thing so deeply that I can find in it patterns which are present in every other thing. It is thus the same as me touring around the cosmos, while staying at the hut.
The most personal connection is in essence impersonal. Whatever its quality, it cannot be specific to it as it too is an instance of personal connection as such. On the flip-side, the impersonal becomes personal once understood, for it forms part of a connection. And the most profound understanding is the strongest connection which is the most personal one.
Even if you take an irreplaceable relationship, such as with your mother, she is at once the embodiment of a specific person and mothehood in general. In her you identify the general and the particular as an expression of oneness: the mother you have and all possible mothers at once.
This is how the world is. You search for something far away only to realise it was always right in front of you. You keep seeking something and once you acquire it you understand that you never needed it.