On Passivity

The Steadfast & The Restless

As a kid I wouldn’t have put much value in stability. Growing up what was celebrated was dazzling innovation, and it was understood that may involve breaking a few eggs. I would have been more excited by The Beatles discovering LSD and writing Sgt Pepper than I would Frank Sinatra singing standards in Las Vegas decade after decade. The former would seem creative and risky, the latter would seem calculating and stultified. Picasso burning through his wives and mistresses to keep his artistic muse aflame, that would have seemed legitimate collateral damage for the waters I swam in. Into each life a little rain must fall. And you only had to look to the suburbs to see countless thousands of people not taking the road less travelled, not living deliberately, not ‘sailing to Byzantium’ as W.B. Yeats puts it. A pox on the picket fence. Give me Thelma & Louise, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy & The Sun Dance Kid over slow, insurable, sensible plans. Go out in a blaze of glory if need be, but don’t be predictable. Follow the excitement, follow your gut, follow your daimon, but don’t be boring.

As I stood on a freezing, snowy January afternoon erecting the tent I was about to spend the next four years in I didn’t feel boring. Ten years later as I stood at the school gates waiting for my daughter, I didn’t feel boring either. I would have felt domestically heroic. Trust that feeling I’d say. Re-arranging my days for the dropping off and collecting of Dulcie was just one part of the righteous heft of being a parent. But now, if I could have that time again, I wish I’d taken the much-maligned notion of stability more seriously. I could have gone further. I didn’t fully grasp the notion of the house on rock and house on sand until I lived through the consequences.