JOHN SINGER SARGENT:
FUMÉE D'AMBRE GRIS [SMOKE OF AMBERGRIS] (1880)

"Grace often comes unbidden and unwanted, insisting upon differences we would not have chosen. Grace seems to trade in UnwantedInsights; acceptance serves as the medium of exchange."

I claim to be seeking truth, but I prefer confirmation. I'd much rather my preconceptions reveal the truth instead of my pretensions. I think of myself as an insight seeker, though I'm just as disconcerted as the least of us when an insight reveals some suddenly glaring shortcoming in my once so proud performances. I wanted to get it right the first time, if only because that rarely happens. I thrive on misconceptions, perhaps valiant attempts destined to undermine my best intentions. I frequently find this cycle unbearable. I retire, thinking myself especially put upon. I only suffer from sometimes especially virulent cases of The Normals, for progress might have always been achieved chiefly by discovering errors. Perfection could not have ever been an objective. Seeking the more perfect seems the more realistic perspective.

I can be confident that I will be capable of writing a better story than this one tomorrow, but I'm not inhabiting tomorrow yet and couldn't possibly. Sometimes, a story will surprise me and emerge from somewhere far into my future, where I've finally conquered my persistent creeping dangling participle problems. For now, they are a feature, a characteristic of my writing style rather than evidence of a hole in my taste or understanding. I might be offending the better educated and those with superior orientation. I'm skilled at stiff-arming, that ultimately useless effort intended to ward off tacklers for a minute. A dedicated linebacker will almost always wade through such defenses to deliver their intended blow. Such blows seem inevitable. The defenses, initially hopeful, often entertaining, but destined to fail.

We successfully fail, or we experience no success at all. Successfully failing seems to be the chief challenge since none of us really wish to fail. Yet, we cannot get better without setting aside that for which we were once so proud. This cycle can and sometimes does feel humiliating. How many more believably gamboling starts can anyone muster once this pattern becomes clear? At some point in the future, any effort might come to seem futile if its primary feature appears to be the failure it will most assuredly deliver. The naive hopefulness that once provided motive power might not so easily muster. How could it so easily muster after so many crushing and curative failures? One might reasonably grow depressed and seek professional guidance where any credible professional will properly diagnose one as suffering from a severe case of The Normals. It was normal to presume and equally normal to crash and burn.

It's always the same disease and always the same prescription. Nothing can be done to treat any case of The Normals other than to accept the case as it is. If it was always inevitable, it was never the insight that was injurious, even if and probably especially when said insight seemed to wreak devastating damage to the pre-existing condition. This is what growing feels like. It sometimes feels like a death, as if the past must be left behind. The familiar becomes a stranger again, and the previously unfamiliar becomes the friend, which, too, will eventually end. The delusion that all was not illusion never persists, or could only exist in a universe that's already finished. We're still growing, so we do not yet know better, but we might be trending in that direction. This means that what we'd convinced ourselves was our best should ultimately prove disappointing and that what was initially so deeply disappointing might be the next blessing visiting. Grace often comes unbidden and unwanted, insisting upon differences we would not have chosen. Grace seems to trade in UnwantedInsights; acceptance is the medium of exchange.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz