Challenge and compassion.

Boy, I haven't written in a while.  This has been a weird Lent.

 It seems I usually have weird Lents.  Last year I had a brand new baby, and after a while I pretty much gave up on any kind of penitential sorrowful feeling.  Totally un-fakeable, even, with a brand new baby to sniff.

This year I decided to cut back on blog reading and blog writing, with an eye towards avoiding irritation and recapturing some serenity.  All I really did was sequester a bunch of blogs, mostly political and social commentary, in a "Temporary Embargo" folder in Google Reader, and then promise myself I wouldn't open the folder.  I continued reading many blogs, though.   You might think that my intent would be to read only spiritual blogs or something like that, but in fact I kept a good number of political or econ or law blogs in my daily diet.  The ones I put away for Lent are the unsettling ones:  the ones that tended to draw me into combox debates, or the ones that from time to time would leave me feeling vaguely irritated all day as I imagined possible rebuttals.  I kept the ones that I often learn from, that are funny or interesting or creative, without occasionally annoying me.

The result is that I have much less to read, and apparently, much less to say.  I think I'm enjoying the Internet more, but less frequently.  It hardly feels like a sacrifice, though I can see the difference in myself and in my internet experience.   Which makes me wonder whether I should ever go back to reading the unsettling blogs at all.

And yet there's something very, very unsettling about the notion of avoiding them on purpose.  Because many of these blogs I read on purpose because they are intellectually and philosophically challenging and stimulating to me.  I guess you could say that I believe there is value in getting unsettled.  In reading opinions that differ from mine.  In hearing the voices of people who start from different assumptions.  

Is an "open mind" my value?  I am no relativist; I'm the first person to agree with G. K. Chesterton's assertion:  "The object of an open mind, as of an open mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."  But no matter how confirmed I am in my own beliefs about what's right, there's still a lot to learn from people who think otherwise.  

The best arguments against your own position are the ideal ones on which to test and hone your own arguments, for one thing.  

For another, I detest a straw man:  I want to contend with a real, flesh-and-blood opposition, not an easy dummy I've invented in my head.  The first hint that you've created such a thing is when you really begin to believe that your opponents are stupid, evil, and/or irrational.  Of course, many people are one of these things (including some who agree with you), but certainly many smart, truly-well-intentioned, and reasonable people out there believe differently from you -- they start from different first principles, or they follow a different line of reasoning, or they have different priorities, and that's why they wind up in a different place.   But it's always tempting to resort to "they're evil/stupid/irrational" rather than taking the time to distinguish the different starting points, or to locate the point in the chain of reasoning where you and he diverge, or to justify your own ranking of priorities against his.  And you'll never be able to do it if you never listen to the other person explain himself.

And maybe most important:  Those other people are human beings, and their arguments may be wrong or dangerous, but their feelings and experiences aren't.  We need compassion for them.  It feels uncomfortable to find ourselves with compassion, the desire to help and advise, and yet with the knowledge that our kind of help and advice won't be accepted; or worse, knowing that we don't have any good answers at all.  But it's still good to feel the compassion even if it comes with discomfort.  

So I believe all those things, that challenge stretches the mind and awakens compassion, and yet I can't deny that I live a more comfortable and calmer life when I deliberately avoid challenging myself, intellectually speaking.  What's the right answer when Lent is over?

Am I living the kind of life where I am called to guard my serenity even if it means robbing my mind of some of its favorite things to think about?  Maybe as the mother of several small children, who has difficulty tapping reserves of love anyway, I ought just to delete those blogs from my reader.  Maybe I need to live in the echo chamber for now after all, whether I like it or not, because I have challenge enough within it.  Maybe I need to drop "discussing things with people who disagree me" like a hobby I just don't have time for.

 That feels wrong.  I could *be* wrong about that.

Is the answer to find some kind of balance?  If I spend too much of my heart and energy on arguments, it's not good for me or my home life.  But I want to insist that it's good to leave my comfort zone, regularly even.    So maybe the answer is to go back to my old ways, but not to excess, and avoid unnecessary discord on days when serenity is at a premium.  Know when to quit.

Or maybe the bush just needs pruning.  Maybe all the challenging voices need to be put to the test:  is this helpful to me living my real life, exterior and interior?  Or can I contribute something real to the conversation?   Maybe I need to set aside some of it and keep others (as I did at the start of Lent, only with an eye towards permanence).  

Or maybe the answer has more to do with attitude, with a lightness of heart that can remain even while the mind thinks hard on tough questions.  

I'm not sure, but I'll tell you that this question has me unsettled all on its own.

Comments

[Christy P.]

I, for one, have missed your musings. As I spend most of my day alone in my office, it feels good to have evidence of life outside.

[LeeAnn Balbirona]

Ditto Christy's first comment. I was reading about controlling curiousity this week in My Daily Bread. I think the pruning idea is a step down the right path. I have many interests, not all of them lead to anything really good or useful to me though.

[bearing]

The odd thing is that I didn't really set out to avoid blogging, but I have not been terribly interested in it. I am sure I will be back in form eventually. I must just be a little extra-immersed in real life. That and school planning for next year (almost done! yay!)

[BettyDuffy]

What are these blogs that make you edgy?

I tend to keep reading books that make me mad. Don't know why--because I can't even entertain the hope of engaging the author in debate. But I enjoy the internal debate--feels like the most intellectually fruitful state to be in. Probably not the most spiritually fruitful--I don't know.