Loyalty to the Whole

In "Measure for Measure," Shakespeare, as he did with Polonius, put profound words in the mouth of a fool. Lucio begs the soon-to-be-nun Isabella to try to save her brother from beheading. He must convince her, it seems sometimes, simply to open her mouth in behalf of a sinner. Seen from another perspective, he asks her to leave her home, her safety, and her vows, essentially to betray herself and help her brother escape punishment for something she truly believes is wrong.

Shakespeare makes this situation, as many others, too complex for simple answers. Lucio, merely another complexity, utters the words: "Our doubts are traitors and makes [sic] us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." The thought is simplicity amid complexity. Our doubts are traitors; they work against the whole, against the greater good of the person. We waffle briefly, and lose time. Doubts undermine our honorable purposes. We never leave the ground when we could be flying.

Time moves forward again. A new semester begins Monday, and I find myself fearing to attempt. My doubts have given me away to the enemy.

Did you like that little swan-dive into melodrama? Let's see if I make a splash when I hit water.

Misfortune happens. Mistakes are made, even (especially?) by brilliant, beautiful me. Doubt I'll be eating for breakfast, if it ever dares grow within a mile of my flaming ambition.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joy in the Ugly Process

Image
 Today I sat on a panel of colleagues at a "Meet the Professor" activity hosted by the English student committee. It was awesome! Such bright and interested English majors. Meanwhile, I was sitting there, a middle-aged woman, on a panel of people who had "arrived." They had reached their destination. Each of them took a moment and explained how they had succeeded, how they had found acceptance. Even those who had detoured through other paths before they got what they wanted described those detours as some kind of success: some successfully raised families, some had other jobs, etc. Some were convinced that it was because of a particular habit or capability. For several minutes, I just sat there feeling horrible, right in the middle of this impressive panel. I should have stayed silent. Blerg. I can't stay silent. I'm not that wise. So I added my two cents: I explained that I would tell them something the others would not: that sometimes you don't arrive,...
Read more

High and Low Horses

 I have not blogged in a LONG TIME and I'm so rusty.  Politics these days, amirite? My little brother pissed me off a few weeks ago in the throes of a political kerfuffle (not reasoned enough to be an argument by either definition). He accused me of posing - I don't remember exactly what he called it, but it was something like "virtue signaling." And very, very rapidly, I was trapped. I could not even attempt to do the right thing without knowing that I was doing exactly what he had just sneered at. I suppose I could go back and carefully analyze the rhetoric of the conversation and delicately unravel exactly what was happening. I am capable of that kind of analysis, but this is a blog, not a school paper, and I'm more interested in the abstractions at play. I'm always more interested in the abstractions. Let's imagine that you have a stick figure in a two-dimensional world. I'd draw it and upload it for you, but somebody stole my reMarkable. Stick fig...
Read more

The Guilt-Edged Life

Folk philosophers and self-help "experts" (seriously: what kind of person claims to be an expert in living somebody else's life!? I mean, BESIDES me) have hypothesized about the negative emotions that we struggle with when we become painfully aware of our own flawed natures. In my own experience, I can identify three, and this year, I'm going to deal with each of them differently than I have before. 1) Shame. Shame is that mortification and humiliation I feel when I see my flaws through somebody else's eyes: a symptom of valuing their opinion above its worth. I want to learn how to put negative feedback - verbal and nonverbal - into context, subordinate to what I know is true about me, the world, and God. And I want to distinguish between my actions and my identity. I can be mistaken, but I am NOT a mistake. I am Batman, but that doesn't mean I accept all the pop-philosophy of the Christopher Nolan films. 2) Guilt. Guilt is the puritanical conviction that I ha...
Read more