. . . In like manner you should rebuke
these two kinds of men—both those who always lack repose, and those who are
always in repose. For love of bustle is not industry—it is only the restlessness
of a hunted mind.
And true repose does not consist in
condemning all motion as merely vexation; that kind of repose is slackness and
inertia. Therefore, you should note the following saying, taken from my
reading in Pomponius: "Some men shrink into dark corners, to such a degree
that they see darkly by day."
No, men should combine these tendencies, and
he who reposes should act and be who acts should take repose. Discuss the
problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and
night. Farewell.
—Seneca
the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius 3,
tr Gummere
Similarly,
we have the sort of people who feel the need to be in constant action, always
busy doing and achieving, as well as the sort of people who don’t ever do much
of anything at all. Much as we are tempted to do with trust, so we are also
tempted to do with action, pursuing far too much or far too little.
I note
that neither sort of person is capable of being a true friend, because we have
lost a sense of the balance between ourselves and others.
My own
temptation has usually tended toward the latter, though I wonder if that is
because I am reacting to my experiences of the former.
I have a
vivid memory from childhood. I was attending a new school, and I felt the urge
to find friendship and companionship. A fellow who seemed very bright and
charming didn’t seem to mind me tagging along after him, so that’s exactly what
I did. He shared many of his own thoughts with me, and seemed to encourage me
to express my own.
Something
frightening happened one day, and I can never claim to have really understood
why. Perhaps he was making himself feel better by putting me in my place. He
was telling one of his jokes, and I laughed with him. Suddenly, his expression
became very serious, and he insulted the way I laughed. He then went on to give
a long litany of all the many ways I was, as he called it, a loser.
Needless
to say, that hurt me very deeply. I crawled into myself, interested neither in
doing anything nor in trusting anyone. In different way and at different times,
similar things have happened, and I have always had the same instinct to hide
away. I felt, over and over again, that I had, as they say, put myself out
there, only then to be cut down.
It took
thought, and not just feeling, to begin to recognize what I was doing to myself
over the years. It seemed that I wanted to love and to live well, but the world
also appeared to be telling me that I couldn’t do that.
It is
deeply frightening and disturbing, for example, when someone has said that you will
be a best friend for all of time, and now will not acknowledge you or give you
the time of day. Then you recognize there was no love there at all.
Nature
was rather asking me to learn to distinguish about what it meant to love, and
what it meant to live well. She had been telling me all along that what
mattered was who I loved, and why I acted. I can only be a friend when I have
figured that out.
Image: Giotto, The Kiss of Judas (c. 1305)
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