I wonder if this is all true? Yes, I am "no longer hungry in that old starving way." Yet would I know how to create new sources of comfort? My primary source of comfort is the natural world, and my own basic human-animal needs fulfilled in it. I want my physical safety, and the ability to care for my own bodily needs. I depend on the comforts of running water, hot and cold; food, and the freezer, refrigerator and stove to preserve and prepare it; my own bed; the land and water beyond my walls and windows. How would I possibly create comforts to replace those?
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Intellect vs. feelings
"I wonder if the process of aging doesn't bring as its chief gift the capacity to separate our intellect from our feelings. A sixteen-year-old can know one thing but be emotionally incapable of acting upon it. At sixteen, the emotional needs must come first if the heart is to survive. Perhaps this is true at every age, but at sixty-six I am no longer hungry in that old starving way. Even if all my sources of comfort were to vanish, I would know how to create new ones." (Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper, Grove Press, NY, 2010, 242.)
Further, how could I replace long time family and friends? Babies and new friends are marvelous, oh, yes!, but they cannot help me carry my memories. If I forget where I've been, how will I not return to that?
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I too was recently thinking about the relationship between the intellect and emotion. Here's what I concluded:
ReplyDelete"Many who act rashly and impulsively claim themselves 'emotional people.' It seems to me these people mistake rationality and emotion for two sides of a spectrum, when they are in fact symbiotic. Emotions are impulsive, intuitive, and help us make the most basic of decisions for survival. Reason is a learned behavior that allows us to interpret and guide the rest of our feeling. These rash people seem simply not to understand their emotions, and don't care to figure out why they might be feeling a certain way. This would be something like writing without understanding basic grammar and syntax, building without the slightest clue of how to use a tool, or composing music without knowing any notes or chords. These can be done, but they will likely be done poorly. The most advanced emotions are those that can be rationalized to the point of deconstruction (Writing's 'Technique;' Buildings 'Engineering;' and Composing's 'Theory'). These perhaps aren't the best emotions however; happy medians are always most balanced."
I've noticed that those with maturity are most likely to think about how they're feeling or what they know to be true and right before they act.
My parents are finally moving on Saturday. Through this process of waiting I've found out just how adaptable of a creature I am. For the past six months I haven't been living with them, but I've visited the house often, sat in what I call my "sacred grove" with my hammock and picnic table, taken Buddy for walks, and sat in my old room with my typewriter, being more productive than ever. Yet every time I left I knew I no longer had that, that it was only a matter of time, and I tried my best to make do with what I had away from there. Now I will learn to truly live without it.
When the house goes, I will still have all my basic units of survival, along with many of the creature comforts the modern world offers me, but I still won't have the comfort of that house, that space that's been such a sanctuary to me.
I suppose I'll give you my answer to your questions before I rant for too long:
I don't think Theroux is expressing that any of those comforts could be replaced, or that they ought to be forgotten (I only know the context of this small passage you've provided though). Instead, perhaps she asks us simply to create new comforts from what is around us, to live in the moment and space we have, to revel in the memories of what's past, but never to hang ourselves up on them.
Oh, Mike, passing by the house that was your home is the saddest thing, now. The windows so empty, the heart gone from the place, all wrong, all wrong. It was so pretty, so alive, and now it just feels lonesome.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree, you have the whole concept of the Theroux idea. Not that we can replace what has passed, but that we can and must create our life day by day with a depth of spirit from which we may anytime draw comfort, no matter what our outward circumstances, and that we have the sense of what to put first to enhance the comfort that augments our lives.