Percy J. Billinghurst: The lion and the gnat. (1900)

"The human condition demands much worrying and little changing."

I consider myself to be a world-class worrier. I anticipate well and catastrophically. I natter better than almost everybody. I dread exceptionally well. This continual background noise in my cognitive channel might serve as my screen saver, exercising my internal dialogue without producing any overwhelming excess of anything, for gNattering produces nothing and might even disperse otherwise troubling accumulations. Nobody remembers whatever they might have been gNattering on about, for the exercise might have always been to prevent retaining. Had I been contemplating instead, I might have needed to store something for later reference, further filling my head. gNattering effectively prevented that inventory, leaving me more ready to acquire something substantial later, or not.

I understand that I only utilize some tiny portion of my brain's potential. I suspect similar ratios rule every human capability: memory, intuition, genius, villainy. Each of us theoretically could be so much more than we turn out to be, leaving the vast bulk of our capabilities idling in reserve, or so our theoreticians suppose. I suspect the universe held sufficient justifications for limiting human potential. Reflect on how much trouble we've mustered with so much of our potential in reserve. Imagine, though you can't, how much worse we might have made it for ourselves had we all contributed as geniuses from the start of civilization. We might use a portion of our limited ability to appreciate, to feel grateful we weren't better able to continually outsmart ourselves.

But this unused capacity needs to be exercised. I gNatter, other knit. Some compulsively read bodice-rippers, dedicated to maintaining no more than a modest level of contribution to the further advancement of anything. We acquire hobbies. We collect stuff. We fuss over dust bunnies. We cook gourmet meals—vanity and dust—and insist upon only the very best, leaving the vast bulk of possibilities off the table. We acquire careers to prevent us from creating anything too dangerous. We reliably marry and conceive children to keep us from wreaking havoc on ourselves and our fellows. Prisons are filled with those who attempted to fully live up to their potential and became the biggest losers instead. Moderation in all things, please, or society will have to step in and moderate your potential for you.

It's no tragedy that we waste the vast bulk of our potential. We inhabit a world with enormous potential partly because of our massively limited personal potential, a skill we learn from our earliest experiences. We are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic because those three "skills" have proven the most inhibiting. Reading effectively prevents doing—the same story with writing. Math enables the construction of castles without moving a single stone, without permanently changing anything. It encourages colonizing the future, where precisely nothing could ever occur. Our present's safe as long as we're engaged in our gNattering and similar business. We're mattress testing, assuming the position without actually falling asleep, dreaming, perhaps, without once fully awakening.

I consider gNattering my primary waking meditation. I engage in it as diligently as any monk ever contemplated his navel or practiced his rosary and just as productively. I deliberately expend my otherwise unlimited excess energy exclusively in unproductive ways. On my better days, I even inhibit production with it lest I somehow threaten to accomplish anything. Idling might be humankind's kindest contribution to the betterment of civilization. We do not need more leaning towers in Pisa, but more plans for castles constructed entirely out of air lest we have to move somewhere different. The human condition demands much worrying and little changing. My gNattering helps me contribute my part.

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Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz