#dutifulness

Hilma af Klint, The Atom Series, 15 (1917)

My time in COVID-19 induced quarantine has had me reflecting on the things that I crave or look forward to in life that remain perpetually out of reach. Like a nice dinner outside in my general area without the party being crashed by invasive insects. Multiple times, the dinner I had with my family the other weekend was interrupted by spotted lantern flies landing on our table or dive bombing us. You could barely walk anywhere without seeing one of them flattened on the pavement. It was disgusting to experience. Spotted lantern flies, like all insects, are fascinating creatures. That does not subtract from the damage they have been doing to local ecosystems since they arrived in America a few years ago. They did not completely ruin my dinner, a genuinely good meal on its own, but they were a nuisance.

Recently, it seems like life has been filled with nuisances, and they accompany everything otherwise worth living for. All of them point towards the path of one of life’s cruelest, most disabling nuisances—DOUBT. Seeing those harmful insects polluting the air makes the restoration of the world you once knew seem more and more unlikely. Seeing people’s conversations de-evolve into mindless sloganeering and virtue signaling makes you question anyone’s ability to think critically. Having your view of the world ignored and shot down makes you question if your words even have meaning. You get overwhelmed by a gaslighting world, you lose grip on your motives and sense of self, you become complacent. You are crippled when the spotted lantern fly that just landed in your hair should have been the one to take the boot.

I know from personal experience what it is like to be overcome with dutiful, certain passion. Ninety percent of the time, that passion feels one sided. Life becomes an uphill battle to defeat the monster assembled from the tangled wires of consciousness and unconsciousness, decisiveness and anxiety, love and hatred—and nothing is right until the mission is completed. The rewards are usually temporary and unsatisfying, and true fulfillment has a waiting list. Now that’s what I call a nuisance.

Ran Qiu said, “It is not that I do not delight in your Way, Master, it is simply that my strength is insufficient.”

The Master said, “Someone whose strength is genuinely insufficient collapses somewhere along the Way.  As for you, you deliberately draw the line.”

Kongzi's Analects, 6.12

Day Two of the project began with my waking up after 10, playing video games for four hours straight, and then throwing a party, all while battling a nasty head cold. As such, I'm taking a mulligan on that day. It's a failure that I'm leaving up to my reader as to whether it was collapsing or drawing the line. I know what I think; having a cold doesn't strike me as a good enough reason, but maybe you're more generous.

Day Three I focused on dutifulness, which corresponds, in short, with carrying out the responsibilities of offices that you have selected. For me, that's mainly a teacher and a husband.

My wife's family has a small house in Lavallette that's been in their family for a few generations, and, unless you've been literally living under a rock, you've seen pictures of what's happened to the barrier islands in New Jersey. Their house was miraculously unscathed - even more miraculous if you've driven through the island as we did yesterday - but there was a lot of water in the basement at one point, so everything down there had to be thrown away.

As part of my duties as a husband, I went with them and helped them clean. Then, as soon as we got home, I made myself some tea and worked on school work for three hours. The plan had been to work for four, but my head cold was getting worse and I had a throbbing headache from one ear that just wouldn't pop. That, though, I would put in the collapsing along the way column.

There were no actions that I did that I think violated dutifulness, and there were no moments when I had to choose dutifulness over anything else. All in all, this was a relatively easy day for the project - if you allow for stopping work at 8 pm to relax despite still having responsibilities.

Here's the run down of the other virtues:

Benevolence - Really quite fine. Nothing especially difficult here yesterday.

Courage - Does being brave enough to pick up mud-and-possibly-sewage-covered paint cans count for me? No? I didn't think so, either.

Filial Piety - Would my parents have done what I did today? Yes. They would have helped people clean up and then, especially my father, would have come home and done his own work.

Purity - Does being impure enought to picking up mud-and-possibly-sewage-covered paint cans count against me? No? I didn't think so, either. As with courage, not sure that anything yesterday applies in either direction.

Sincerity - This one continues to be a serious thorn in my side - assuming that sarcasm counts against it. I'm a really sarcastic person...

Trustworthiness - I didn't tell any lies, so that's a check plus there, I think.