There is too much to read. My morning inbox is flooded with must-reads amidst the junk. The Atlantic, New Yorker, Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, Economist, Political Wire, TPM, Heather Cox Richardson… even listing my informants sops time I’d been hoping to devote to thought. Cultural and spiritual musing, which I’m drawn to, is consigned to a morrow that never comes. I’m the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, bailing and bailing, both abashed and ill-informed. That such a large percentage of you guys read me every day suffuses me with wonder, awe, gratitude. Your generous attention nudges me awake in the wee (and we) hour, prodding me to improve. How I dread disappointing you! I love you – hotly – for what is love, after all, but a gift of time?
An abundance is bounteous, a superabundance baleful. Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were these (possibly mythical) creatures called “polymaths,” who seemed to have read – and remembered – “everything.” That’s impossible in our wired world no matter your rate of intake for the quantity of material on any topic is practically infinite. As a result, folks either abandon the attempt to “keep up” – a tempting deliverance – or narrow their attention to their predominant interest. We become “specialists” – a complimentary term to some ears, to mine a dismal confession. What worthwhile thinker was ever a “specialist”? Isn’t the purpose of reflection to see how things connect? Was Aristotle a specialist? Or Shakespeare? – Montaigne? – Thoreau? I aspire to be an amateur, generalist, beginner, to know less about more, to see how the branches of science, art, and faith ramify from one urgent human need. All I know for sure is I know nothing for sure. That makes every dawn a boon. However hideous the facts (and they’re getting pretty ugly just now), others out there will delight if I let my mind go looking. Boredom and despair are failures of imagination, not defensible conclusions. Where there’s life, to coin a phrase, there’s hope.
How to cope with this superabundance? How to make my peace with all I will never know? How not to feel bludgeoned by my nescience (a useful if unfamiliar word)?
Just as we confine our social relations to maybe a hundred folks out of the world’s eight billion (150, Google tells me, is the most acquaintances a person can sustain), so, to stay sane, we must limit our intellectual input, convene, as it were, a sagacious coterie we confide in, whose insights we crave, and strictly monitor admission to that tiny crew. As gatekeepers to our consciousness, we should be elitists, insisting on a return commensurate with our precious donation (for what is more precious than time?). I hate getting gypped (an uncouth verb but let that go) in either commercial or intelligent transactions. I’ve no time for liars especially, whose fictions mean to delude.
I trust instinct more than intellect to settle my syllabus. I read little to be nice or “keep up” or because someone thinks I “should.” I’m grateful for recommendations, but picky with all but Jane’s. If my mysterious and secretive innards tell me to read a poem, I read it; I may not know why, but I’m sure my mind has something in mind. The only last word I’ll ever write is the last word I write. I liken my intellectual motion to an amble in the field, noticing this and that; my writing is soup-making, no recipes, just what I’ve got, seasoned to taste.
The infinitude of my ignorance is the thrill of being, no two instants alike.