middle ground

[gurdonark]

"You'll do better, Licinius, not to spend your life venturing too far out on dangerous waters, or else, or fear of storms, staying too close in to the dangerous rocky shoreline. The man does best who chooses the middle way, so that he doesn't end up under a roof that's going to ruin, or in some gorgeous mansion that everybody envies"--Horace (tr. D. Ferry)

I think sometimes that it's easier to live in sweeping theories and in impossible expectations than it is to live moderately in an immoderate world. If one sets one's goals unrealistically enough, then one can assert that (a) all worthy goals are unattainable and (b) all goals which are attainable are unworthy. The resulting frustration gets kinda comfortable, like a huge scab over a wound that festered way too long.

Living in moderation, though, struggling to find one's values and one's life both are workable--much more challenging, and yet much more worthy. The middle way--to live in this world, awful as it is, and try to steer things towards the good--is the Way. It's unromantic, this middle way--it's just what works.

But it lacks the radical highs and lows which appeal so much to the doomsayer or the triumphalist. It requires perspective. As Horace says "be resolute when things are going against you, but shorten sail when the fair wind blows too strong".

Seventy to ninety years, this all lasts, if one is particularly fortunate. That's not long enough to live in frustration and still live at all. It's far too long to live in disappointment.

Comments

[elainegrey.livejournal.com]

I think it's particularly hard because, in our culture steeped with entertainment, we are never entertained by the moderate. I wonder what it was like in a small town in the British Isles 1200's. If you lived in Scotland, you might be suffering from the terrorizing occupation of King Edward. Ireland had a famine at that point during which the English and the Scots fought on that island. The Welsh were restless too. But if you were English, and hadn't been drawn off to fight, you had ballads to entertain you and all the gossip of your neighbors. But surely, in the stage of village life, you saw and knew the virtues of those living the moderate life? Or not, I guess.

Some years ago I focused just on the present and how I felt there was a dearth of role models for your Middle Way. I've been listening to the history of England, and the 1200s sound particularly dreadful. I suspect my little thought experiment would have worked better under the period of Romanization.

Still, i think there's something particularly off-kilter in our current culture, steeped in entertainment -- and advertising -- that is all the more immoderate than ever.

I suppose this is just a corollary of the Golden Age fallacy....

[wayofthelotus.livejournal.com]

Your reflections and musings encourage beyond-the-box thinking, for which I am surpassingly grateful. After stumbling over your journal quite by accident, I've relished the pleasure of reading through a few or more of your posts, many of which inspire a smile or nod of understanding. Would you mind if I added you?

:)

Lotus

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think that the Golden Age/Gilded Age thing does play in here somewhere. It's a tricky concept, which seems to elude--that moderate and complacent are not synonyms.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your kind words. Of course you may add me, and I'm off to add you as well.

[reneesarah.livejournal.com]

An absolute gem of a post. Thank you for writing and sharing it!

Sometimes I have imagined I am at the end of my life- which I always imagine comes many years from now after much reflection, in this kind of painless closing reverie. While this idealized reflection at the end of life is an unlikely route to my demise, statistically speaking, it is comforting to imagine. And when imagining it, I see myself reflecting on my life and thinking: what do I regret?

And since I am standing here in actuality, and not there... I take what I imagine I will regret that I have not done and see if it is still possible to do it. This, no doubt, is partially the motivation for the saxophone lessons, the planned trip going through the southwest, the strange art projects, trips to the gym (so I can stay mobile and agile as long as possible).

I know I will regret having spent all these years at jobs where I fear I have accomplished much too little and have not been well rewarded spiritually or financially.* I try to think of a way out of doing that kind of work. And that I have not found viable alternatives to the daily grind strikes me as a failure of imagination and visualization for which I am quite capable of mental flogging myself- which makes me even less likely to think creatively.

But still I work at it... thinking that this seventy, ninety years is all we have got, and like Auntie Mame told Miss Gouge, we need to "Go out and LIVE!!!"

-------------------------------------------
* of course one could argue that any job has creative and spiritual gifts if only one brings openness and the right mind set to it. I seem to remember some Zen readings that made that point. While there is some wisdom to the idea of fully being and experiencing where you are at the moment... that needs to be different than sinking into a mudhole of apathy and not working to change an uncomfortable/unrewarding situation.

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

like a huge scab over a wound that festered way too long

Yes. It is, indeed, just like that.

But how to find the middle way, when all you feel you're doing is treading water?

I found it interesting that you quoted "Comfortably Numb" last night (this morning?). Is that the middle way? Surely not. To quote another Pink Floyd ditty, I want to make sure I can always tell blue skies from pain, a green field from a cold steel rail.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

"Comfortably Numb" is certainly a contradictory sentiment. I had intended it last night to address the sense of detachment one develops, and then spends lifetime overcoming.

I like your Pink Floyd quote much better mine, not to mention than welcome to the machine, or have a cigar!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks! now if I could only live my posts as I post them, I'd be a moderate fellow indeed!

I agree in particular with your parenthetical *!

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

agreed. agreed. and agreed. i would add that the moderate is there in abundance if you look... it's just naturally not as flashy or possibly as seductive... also there have been so many changes in our values that people who have an off kilter perspective bring up kids with same perspective... or the forces outside parents control nullify what the parents try to convey.

due no fault to my parents i struggle with gaining a reasonable perspective.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I've thought all day about this.

In the last few months, you've gotten a second position to erase debt, done a short story class in which you wrote really gifted stuff (my vote makes no difference, but I hope you pursue more classes--they really seem to do a lot for your writing and for your self-coping), you've explored artistic stuff and drawing.

If you ask me, you're pursuing that middle road forward. But you feel as though you're not. I'm not able to give you some cosy explanation for why you're you, because without even the advantage of knowing you in person, I can't even define my terms (as if I would know anything anyway).

But I posit for you that you're doing what it is you're supposed to be doing--the question is how to feel "righteous" with that. I see your world as writing and art and reading and beehive dreams and home and husband and friends and cats and the whole nine yards. The plot of your novel is not exactly
all negative. But how does it feel? and why?
What does that feeling mean? I don't know.

I do know that you're exceptionally cool, and I wish you gave yourself half the credit I gave you.

I always feel badly when I pick out a quote weeks ago for a post and then post it when a couple of things among my LJ friends' stuff (including yours) makes it seem to "fit". I know that your journal's ideas cross current into some of mine (particularly in contrast), but I don't really write my posts as "one to one" replies to other posts, so much as cross-pollinated explorations into my own whims and notions. I don't know why, but I always feel as though even though we are very different people, I understand what you are writing. This may be just a recognition that you write so cleverly that your readers feel they know you. I often feel that I know you.

But I don't want to give the smug impression that I think I know better than anyone about anything. This post, in particular, is a search, not an answer.

Sorry to ramble on. I just hate to seem more "with it" than I am.



I sure haven't got things figured out, or I wouldn't be sitting with 2 days straight of insomnia writing posts about being a wallflower.

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm just cantankerous. But I hope you know that I value your insight and it's nice to get a contrasting (not necessarily conflicting) viewpoint.

And I also appreciate the interest you've taken in me. It means a lot.

I need to really try to focus on what's going right and not what's (I imagine) going wrong. Usually the "wrong" is simply inaction. Or inertia. Or ennui. And, really, I could do something about all of that. It's simply a matter of doing. Easier said than done...

But thanks for your, as always, insightful posts.