Blame, Wishes, and Brookes

I don't usually give life advice, because (a) I think it's patronising, and (b) I don't think I'm in a position to give it.  But I'd like now to...not exactly give life advice, but say a couple of things I have been musing on and really think are true - only the way I'll say them will sound like life advice.  So, sorry.

It seems to me that it's good to remember that there are situations in which no one is to blame. A lot of the time, again it seems to me, people want to assign fault to someone, or say someone in a given situation has behaved poorly or wrongly.  But there are some situations - indeed, perhaps most - in which that is simply not true.

I would conceive of these situations as a cluster of snooker or billiard balls.  Billiard balls move, and they move other billiard balls to go in certain directions, but you couldn't say they were "to blame" for that.  In fact, I don't think you could even say they were responsible.  A billiard ball rolls, and strikes another billiard ball, which also rolls, so a thing makes another thing happen, but the first thing is not responsible for the direction of movement of the second thing (a former friend of mine who's an admirer of snooker would point out here that if the person who moves the first ball is a good snooker player, in fact ball A most certainly is responsible for the direction of the movement of ball B, and he would be right.  So let me amend this to say that one ought to imagine someone simply rolling or hitting ball A with no plan or aim:  no shot has been set up).  In the same way, one person may perform an action or come to a decision, but they are not responsible for the way the way another responds to that, for the action or decision that person B makes when they are faced with person A's action or decision.  They may precipitate a response, but they are not responsible for it, or to blame for it.

I believe that if you really care for someone, a part of you cares for them disinterestedly - as a friend - and just wants them to be happy.  At the same time, I believe, if you are a thoughtful, sensible person, you want to be happy yourself.  Sometimes, these two wants clash with each other.  In those cases, it seems to me that the best you can do is negotiate some sort of compromise, one in which the person will be allowed to be maximally happy, but you will not make yourself devastatingly unhappy in the process of allowing them that.  Here, we might say that although what will make the other person happy has caused your negotiated compromise, it is not to blame for it. In writing about the nature of the occurrences in Don Juan, Jerome McGann remarks that, "Things might have been otherwise, and with just as much reason, but they weren't."  I love the zen acceptance of that sentence on its own, but it also seems to me applicable here:  things have happened in a situation such as the one I describe above, but they have happened very nearly randomly - nothing and no one can really be blamed.

Secondly, in the last couple of years it's really helped me to conceive of life as a long long corridor - or maybe just better to say as a long long progression.  Things that seem very important today, or this year, will seem like nothing in five years, or ten, or twenty - or even in six months.  BF is able now to chat (admittedly only briefly) with the man who dumped her cruelly five years ago; my aunt and uncle talk on the phone with the man my aunt left for my uncle thirty years ago. When I am full of sorrow, or am miserable, or am griefstricken, I always think that feeling will last forever.  But I try these days to remember that five years ago, or six months ago, I knew people and worried about things that aren't at all important to me now, and so five years or six months from now this sorrow may seem small.  Sometimes this works.

Years ago - really and truly years ago - I went to see Howard Jones in concert (the very fact that it was Howard Jones will give you some idea of how many years ago we're talking).  In some in-between-song patter he told a story about a day in the life of a person, most of which I don't remember, but I do remember the part where he said, "And he saw someone across the street, and he ran up to them and said, 'I love you!' and the person said, 'I love you, too!'"  Then he paused and said, "But it never happens like that, does it?"  Of course it doesn't.  But all of life doesn't happen like that, and it seems to me that it's best, if at all possible, to cut everyone a break, knowing that - even yourself.  Understand whenever you can.

Now I am done being pompous.

Of course, that all makes me sound amazingly selfless, and I certainly am not.  When Mr. Fallen let me go, I did want him to be happy, so I didn't blame him.  But I was puh-lenty angry, and thus I did wish sorrow upon him for a while.  And that's why I don't like to give life advice:  I am as implicate-able as anyone else.

What I wished most of all was that he would miss me, that he would recognise my absence as a loss, and in some way or at some level himself wish it were different, or think that it would have been just as good/better if it had been been different (if things had been otherwise, and with just as much reason).  Alas, the difficulty with that wish is that the person on the other end of it does not  (and cannot) send you little bulletins, and thus as a wish it must always be frustrated.  And the other difficulty, for me, is that if the regret does not result in a change of behaviour - in this case, in a realisation and return - it's pointless.  In a sense, in fact, sorrow that does not result in action or change is worse than no sorrow at all.  Thus it seemed to me that I could get nothing from that wish, so in the end I tried to cease wishing it.  It seemed and seems pointless.

In other news, yesterday in the morning I went with a group of friends to The Orchard in Granchester, a place made famous by Rupert Brooke.  As it happens, Rupert Brooke is the first poet whose work I ever admired - as opposed to admiring only certain poems.  As a grown-up with a Ph.D. in EngLit, I can tell you that Rupert Brooke is not that great a poet.  But he is a better poet than he's generally thought to be (since he's generally remembered for his rather gloppy war sonnet, "A Foreign Field."  Urgh).  So, in honour of cream tea in The Orchard, I thought I'd reproduce a Rupert Brooke sonnet here.  It's better than you might expect.

Unfortunate

HEART, you are restless as a paper scrap  That's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind;  Saying, "She is most wise, patient and kind.  Between the small hands folded in her lap  Surely a shamed head may bow down at length,  And find forgiveness where the shadows stir  About her lips, and wisdom in her strength,  Peace in her peace. Come to her, come to her!"...  She will not care. She'll smile to see me come,  So that I think all Heaven in flower to fold me.  She'll give me all I ask, kiss me and hold me,  And open wide upon that holy air  The gates of peace, and take my tiredness home,  Kinder than God. But, heart, she will not care.

And, because we've had no tango for a while, here is what I'm pretty sure is my favourite tango song.