In which Loveliness and Shyness are Contemplated

What is it, Dear Reader, that makes someone really, properly, Lovely? Not just lovely, you understand, but capital-L lovely? I mean, I personally think that almost all of my friends are quite lovely. You are all dreadfully nice and clever and attractive and so on, but all of us, we mere mortals, you and I, have our flaws. And people love us despite and occasionally because of those flaws, but there’s no pretending that they aren’t there at all. Even the Really Lovely people must have flaws, of course, but somehow, whenever you try to think hard about them, they slip out of focus like one of those magic eye things which were so popular in the 90s. Obviously these things are always subjective, and Stephen Fry certainly had a lot to say on the subject of loveliness and its origins (if I was actually connected to the internet at the moment, or even as tech-savvy as an average 35 year old, I would here hyperlink to a Youtube clip of that skit in “A Bit Of Fry And Laurie” Season 1, where he has a monologue about his loveliness and gorgeousness, but I’m not and I don’t, so you’ll have to use your imaginations). But the thing is, there’re a very few select people, the capital-L Lovely ones, about whom everyone seems to agree so reliably that it really begins to seem like they possess some kind of objective quality of Loveliness.

In my mind, these people are always to be thought of as Louise-Harrises, since the first one I met, and the one I’ve known for the longest, was named Louise Harris. If you’ve met her (and practically everyone seems to have done so, somehow) then you’ll know what I mean. That thing where she comes up in a conversation or anecdote and everyone goes “Yes! Oh she’s so lovely, isn’t she? So lovely!”. You never seem to hear a story to the discredit of a LouiseHarris, they seem to be forever giving people thoughtful little gifts, and sewing birthday sashes, and dressing impeccably, and liking the nicest sorts of music and things, in every story, all the while being charmingly down-to-earth and modest and so on. And they really seem to like everyone almost as much as everyone automatically likes them.

I don’t know how common LouiseHarrises are in general, and it’s possible that I’ve merely been very lucky, but I can bring 3 to mind even just off the top of my head. Obviously there’s the eponymous Louise, but also Charming Caitlin, who always has a similar effect on people (“How can anyone so perfectly nice and so impressively intelligent and motivated and such also have eyelashes like that? How is that even fair?” is a common theme here.) I rather suspect that the girl named Alison in my yeargroup at uni is another such individual.

[So, although the timeless magic of text means that this sentence follows with tolerable immediacy after that last one for you, Dear Reader, for me it’s been about 24 hours. During that 24 hours, I happened to hear unprovoked the confirmation of this suspicion.] A young man of my acquaintance has volunteered the opinion that this aforementioned Alison is probably the Loveliest girl in all of the yeargroup. (So not only am I right, it appears that I can influence events using only my mind, which information is handy to know.) So it looks like she probably is another LouiseHarries. Also, reassuringly, like this phenomenon actually does exist outside my head, which is reassuring. Plus, this opens up a whole new area of speculation.

I don’t know if you’re in the habit of receiving those circular emails that seem to get sent throughout the world by ladies aged between 20 and 80 who have nothing better to do, those motivational sorts of ones with poor formatting and every line of text a different colour and very often interspersed with animated gifs of hearts or kittens or suchlike. As you can tell, it has not always been possible for me to avoid them, and one of the more popular sorts of messages took the form of parable-style extended metaphors explaining to unfortunate single ladies why it was that they were so blighted. ‘Ladies,’ such emails often opine, ‘are like apples [NB: except less crunchy, surely?]; the good ones are hard to get to because they’re high up in trees, while rotten one fall to the ground and are easily picked up; one day a nice boy will bother climbing the tree to pick you.’ Leaving aside the obvious bitterness and arborial inaccuracy of such a theory, and even ignoring for the moment the pretty serious barely veiled insult to everyone who’s ever dated ever and the sexist nightmare that is embodied by this whole idea, let’s look at the outcome.

Essentially, it’s trying to say “if you’re single and not by choice, if no-one ever asks you out, it may be because they’re too intimidated by how great you are, not that they’re repelled by your awfulness” (or something). And obviously that’s sort of true (although a very unfortunate dichotomy to go about the place setting up, to say the least), and certainly bound to be true some of the time. It really seems like the Lovely people are the ideal contol group with which to investigate this question. Since they’re objectively viewed as nifty by 100% of the surveyed population, either there’s something unscientific in the method (and I’ll grant you that there are what I believe are called Demand Characteristics in phrasing a question “I think Caitlin’s really wonderful, and so does everyone else: do you agree, or is there something terribly wrong with you?”) or this shows something. See, if they’re definitely great, but also single, then that means that it’s genuinely not them that’s the problem, y’see. So everyone who’s ever read a “Here’s what’s wrong with you and why you’re alone (buy this GHD)” article in Cosmopolitan and secretly wondered can rest easy. And also possibly stop wasting their money on terrible magazines and expensive hair straighteners.

I’m not actually sure of the relationship statuses of 2 out of 3 of the LouiseHarrises I’ve come across, but I wonder, if they’re single, do they angst about it? Do you suppose that they’re aware that they’re listed as being the most desirable chick by a majority of guys (well, at least some, and any at all is frankly a win in this fraught life of ours)? That rather than being uninterested, guys are just dazzled by their apparent perfection, and would no more proposition them than they would Angelina Jolie (or whoever). I bet that even if you told them, they’d think you were just trying to be nice, or possibly that you were some kind of unspeakably creepy stalker. Poor Lovely, oblivious, things.

It’s a funny thing, shyness, especially that specific type of “you’re so great, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you by asking you out or trying to befriend you in any way” shyness which crushes the masculine admirers of these ideal girls. Sometimes I worry that the non-romantic subgenre of that makes me seem like a jerk, occasionally. There are people to whom, as soon as you meet them, you take an instant shine. Not just the LouiseHarrises, the regularly lovely people, you understand. You meet them and think “gosh, you’re pretty awesome, I’d love to be friends with you”. The thing is, I don’t want to be annoyingly encroaching and pushy, so I tend to then be careful not to make too many overtures of friendship. (Note to people with whom I have obviously and deliberately made friends: don’t feel bad, I was probably just in a pushier mood when we met.) The problem with which is that I have been known to overdo it rather and look like I’m being deliberately distant. I often feel like I’m achieving the wrong level of friendliness, really, like I’m either barring people by failing to make eye contact and smile or chat when we walk past one another, or else by making eye contact too early or smiling at people who are all “do I know you?”.

Worse, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I never seem to properly differentiate between friendliness levels. Apparently the difference is not clear to anyone outside my head between my being quite friendly but a little shy and my being perfectly self-confident but trying to as nicely as possible keep someone at arm’s distance. Essentially, as far as everyone else is concerned, it’s a continuum between “flirting outrageously”, “being pleasantly friendly” and “trying to shoot someone down without being rude”. And not like a long continuum, either. We’re talking eye-of-faith distinctions here. I hope, by the time I am old and grey, to have solved this to some extent, but in the meanwhile, no dice.

In related but better news, our year group seems to have rapidly developed from a Year-7/American-Teen-Movie level of cliquey interaction (“We are the people with iPhones, you cannot sit with us, yours is an Android p hone”) to a more pleasantly Year 11-ish level of interaction (“You and I are not friends per se but I recognise you so I will nod and smile if I see you out and about”). We’re not yet at the Year 12 level where everyone knows everyone else’s name and could comfortably chat for 20 minutes with any given classmate, but with luck we’ll make it eventually (also, it’s possible that time has added an unrealistic flavour ti my recollections of Year 12 interaction). It seems a great pity that as of the end of this year we’ll be permanently segregated into our Clinical Schools and never more see the people who’ve been assigned to different hospitals. I don’t know how that hothouse environment of only 40 classmates for both years 3 and 4 will go, and I’m sort of worried about it. Still, sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, as the misleadingly negative-sounding saying goes, and with luck it will all work out.

In the meanwhile, it’s perfectly charming to be on nod-and-smile terms with almost everyone, I actually really like it. Not least because it solves that “ought I nod-and-smile or should I just look preoccupied and hope for the best” quandary which I was talking about earlier.

Good grief, one and three-quarter thousand words. I really am dreadfully sorry!

In Which everyone feels secretly a little bit smug

It's wonderful thing to be at uni for the first day of the year. Wonderful in that very special, hectic, the-queue-for-the-computers-is-siddenly-hours-long sort of way. Today is the very first day of uni ever at all for hundreds of tiny first years, many of whom (most of whom?) genuinely believe themselves to be actual people despite having demostrably been born in the nineties.

This makes them very excited, in that nervous sort of way where you have to pretend desperately to be totally cool and comfortable and down with everything despite not actually knowing what building you're standing in. So that makes them all very pleased with themselves, in between torrents of hyperventilation in hidden corners.

Similarly, the second years suddenly feel themselves to be filled with worldly wisdom; they know exactly where Manning is, and even if they're not actually quite sure which building the Marjorie Oldfield Lecture Theatre is in, they certainly feel that they trump every obvious fresher they see.

Where it gets interesting is the 3rd years, way laid back, and the biggest people on campus, apparently unaware that many people have degrees that go for longer than a basic 3-year span. Their superiority is only marred by the fact that those of us who've been around even longer remember them as Ickle Firsties.

The tragedy, though, is that even now (and this is my 8th year), one still feels a bit that way. Or I do. I know I oughtn't, but I keep catching myself feeling smug about how at home I am, and thinking of all the undergrads as "little". I didn't actually notice this until my On-The-Ball Friend James showed me the earnest and young-reading blog of a first year medical student. I'm pretty sure that last year I was swanning around going "I'm in 7th year, bitches, I'm so all over this uni", but reading the writings of anyone who is that excited to have gone to a clinical day puts my erstwhile assurance into sharp perspective; I may have known where the Bosch building was, but I really did have very little idea about a bunch of stuff. On the upside, at least this year I've noticed. I know that I know barely more than the whippersnappers who are excited to learn that the Vestibular Canals are vital in balance, I remember practically nothing of the things they're learning at the moment, so I guess I ought to get down and get humble.

But obviously not as humble as anyone who was born in the 90s, because really, isn't it just as important not to get carried away?

In which our Heroine apparently spends months and months lying in a hammock

Welcome to the New Year, Dear Readers. I know it’s late February, but that’s no reason for you not to feel welcome in the year, so do make yourselves at home. I hope your various summers have been charming, as mine largely was. It wasn’t what you might call eventful, per se, but it did involve lazing about the place for simply ages, not to mention all the hard work I put in to lounging and suchlike.

Any number of the jetsetting darlings at uni have been around the globe (pretty sure the only continent no-one’s casually mentioned having dropped in on was Antarctica, and even that may well be because I haven’t really been listening very hard) but I don’t think I actually went further than Penrith the whole time. No, I tell a lie, I spent a weekend in exotic Wodonga with my family, the various travails of which you will be familiar with if you follow me on Twitter (which I cannot, in conscience, recommend doing). Otherwise suffice it to say that a pleasantly excruciating time was had by all, which is more or less what is supposed to happen at the birthdays of relatives who live far enough away that you’ve never met a single one of their friends before. So that, as far as I recall, was as distant as it got for Your Correspondent, but not by any means the charmingest. (Don’t get me wrong, it was actually pretty nice most of the time, it’s just that it was so very pleasant doing all the aforementioned lazing that it just doesn’t quite compare).

So, whenever anyone has said to me “what did you do over the holidays? (I had a lovely time in little old Canada/Italy/Cambodia/Colombia/New Zealand)” I’ve said “Oh, nothing much, I got a bike and a hammock for Christmas, and that’s pretty much all I did with my holidays; bike and hammock.” But to be perfectly honest (and naturally I always am with you, Dear Reader) this is mainly because about 3 weeks before the end of the holidays I suddenly realised I’d frittered it away so thoroughly, what with working in Penrith and lots of little quests, and generally having a pleasantly vague and uncluttered time of it, that I honestly didn’t remember what I’d done with the time at all. I mean, I live quite literally 5 minutes from the beach (and that’s only if you walk quite slowly), and until the last week, I didn’t go to the beach 2 days in a row.

The upshot of which is that these last couple of weeks featured a little flurry of attempted milestones. I’ve been to the beach at least a little bit every day since rather more than a fortnight ago, firstly to make a point to myself, and secondly so that when people said “what did you do?” I could honestly say “I went to the beach a bunch” rather than prevaricate and say “I don’t really remember” which is an answer which the Youth of Today will tend to assume implies that you just enjoyed yourself pharmaceutically. Also, man, I really like going to the beach when I can get out of my own way enough to actually go.

Also, I insisted on learning to ride my bike as far as uni (which, to me, seems really Awfully Far), and have rather smugly succeeded in riding in 3 days in a row this week, which is not something I’d thought my knees would be up to snuff for, really. Nasty creaky middle-aged knees as they are; never take up Netball, turns out it’s terribly bad for the joints. (Exercise: it’s a trap).

Also, this (not the Netball-Betrayed Knees, the lack of Holiday Memories) lead me to plan a series of(well, it was meant to be a series, it ended up rather more like Two) mini-break things, and these were rather charming. Traditionally, of course, one goes on mini-breaks with one’s romantic Significant Other, or so Bridget Jones leads me to believe, but in the absence of such an Other being available/extant, I simply wussed out and went with friends. The second, in fact, was with my parents, which is always pleasant, not only because with them, everything seems to be free, but also because rather tragically I really rather enjoy their company. This particular jaunt was to Terrigal, where apart from keeping up my beaching, I also went to one of those Day Spa things for the first time. I’ve never much fancied the idea of buying a massage or similar on the ground that it seems like a slippery slope from ‘paying a stranger to touch you (for a massage)’ to 'rent boys' and heaven only knows what all. Well, not that I worried that I’d get caught up in some kind of seamy underworld of prostitution if I ever went to a Day Spa, obviously, but it just always seemed slightly creepy and exploitative. Still, I tried it out, because it turns out that these things never seem quite so exploitative if someone else is paying for you to have one (although obviously rent boys would still be so, even if given as some kind of awful gift). Had some kind of Treatment (somehow that word like that, in association with Spas and such, always says ‘James Bond nearly being killed at the beginning of Thunderball’ to me) which involved being covered transiently in Apricot-flavoured lotion and some kind of too-classy-to-be-just-totally-ordinary-sand,-surely grit, which while quite pleasant made me feel mostly like a Mini-Wheat. (In fact, I was going to call this post “In which Our Heroine gets in touch with her Inner Mini-Wheat”, but it felt like somehow it required entirely too much setup.

I wonder if, if I were to document what TV shows and movies and books and such I absorb, I could look back over the season and feel more like I had achieved something? “Well, yes, I did fail to do anything objectively constructive or impressive-sounding, but I watched the entirety of Dollhouse in about 4 days, so that’s something!” Maybe I will try this with Autumn, although I feel that maybe all that would achieve during term-time might be to make me feel guilty for doing so little work. Still, given how narrow my passing of that exam was, that would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Before I sign off, Dear Reader, one last thing; when I say that I frittered away my holiday by not having anything impressive to recall, I should emphasise that I’m talking about that psychological phenomenon whereby the time seems to collapse in on itself in the memory, like a telescope, not suggesting that I only derive enjoyment of my activities because I feel the need to live up to the extravagancies of my peers. I can’t remember which dear well-wishing friend it was who, when I explained this to them, was all overcome with “you can’t compare yourself to them!” and such, but I would hate for you to misunderstand similarly. Not least because I’ve never got the hang of that sort of advice properly, but because I wouldn’t like there to be any misunderstandings between us, Dear Reader. Because what you and I have is special. Whoever you are.

In Which Joy is wished even unto the Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea

Unless you've more or less completely avoided me both online and off for the last month or so, you'll be aware that I had some exams last week but am now footloose and fancy free. You guys, it's pretty neat.

Since my exams, I've seriously had a lovely time every single day, and there's no sign of that letting up any time in the immediate future. I'm not sure whether it's the leisure or the charming company and activity schedule keeping it all so lovely, but all these aspects of the past almost-week have been of unusually high standard.

Firstly, naturally, I went to the usual post-exam party thrown by the Social Butterflies in charge of the Med 1 Cohort. (This time the theme was the tutorials we'd had throughout the year, which made a change from the colour themes of the ones I'd previously attended). As usual, it was all very well-executed and so on (man, whenever I write about them I wonder whether the crazies from the Red Party Debacle still really do ever read this, although at least this one dispensed with all the pretensions of charity, thus reducing the dizzying heights of the moral high ground from which the organisers previously viewed we the peons), and although these things are always a little awkward, it was actually pretty great.

Seriously, I think I am actually incapable of having an entirely awkward-free time at one of these sorts of events. No just because I've never learned to mingle, but almost out of habit. If I went to a party like this where I wasn't at all awkward, that would be so novel that I would be disconcerted and feel awkward after all. Since this would doubtless cause some kind of universe-destroying paradox of sociopsychological wossname, it's probably for the best that I'm unlikely ever to breach that asymptote of social functioning. I mean, really, the ramifications harldy bear thinking of.

Anyway, I saw some of these people again on the Saturday, which was marginally more what these sorts of things are usually like, particularly for the first part of the day. In the evening, some of us went to Popular Paul's place (ooh, alliterative) and had one of those 'sitting about discussing whatever and eating barbecue foods and suchlike on balconies' sorts of evenings which makes you feel almost like you're doing an advertisement for some kind of Student Lifestyle product. Which is to say: it was all almost implausibly pleasant.

Maybe it's tragic that I can go to so many parties and suchlike (obviously I'm not just talking about "two" here when I say "many"; there were other events wih which I have chosen not to regale you, lest I try your patience too seriously) and have such a nice time, and still come out of it mainly treasuring the memories of the compliments paid to me. But seriously, it really is awfully nice. Someone said that they really thought that "articulating things was something I was really good at" (or words to that effect) ("obviously not a reader!", I hear you cry) and I was all bashful toe twirling ans "shucks" just like I am every time someone says something nice like that. Particularly reassuring at the time, since I'd actually thought I'd been making rather a hash of it that day. He actually asked if I "wrote at all", which was kind of cool. I'm not entirely convinced that I'm actually intelligible more than about 60% of the time, so it's nice to think that people are going "that chick is saying things in a good sort of way" or something.

The great thing about this "you like me, you really like me!" approach to interactions with people (apart from it's slightly tragic air or pathological approval-craving, which is not so much "great" as "mildly unfortunate") is that even if a compliment is not entirely sincere, you can still appreciate it. Thus, even if that had been meant as a nice apeasement despite the fact that everything I'd said had been completely incomprehensible bollocks, the fact that someone would bother saying it at all it pretty nice. As in; if they're going to bother to say it, then at the very least they like you enough to want you to be happy and complimented. See what I'm getting at?

Anyway, I could carry on here, but (a) it's after 1am, and (b) this post is in very real danger of devolving into some kind of pitifully boastful list of nice things people have said to me recently, so I think it may be about time to wrap up.

Our closing story tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of a girl who recently fulfilled a long-cherished ambition of getting hold of that Three Dog Night song "Joy to the World" (you know; "Jeremiah was a bullfrog, he was a good friend of mine, I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine"). We leave you with the image of the girl in question dancing about her flat singing to herself with questionable skill but unmistakable enthusiasm. Note particularly the die-hard pep of really actually hoping that the "fishes in the deep blue sea" are having a good day. That's what you might call Holiday Buzz. Isn't it nice?

In Which being a Good Person is probably not the sine qua non of leadership.

So, we had a lecture on Leadership last week, which was quite alright. Of course, as long as I can remember we've been being given classes on "Leadership" (like, I remeber one in year 3, I think, and I bet that wasn't the first), and I don't think we've ever been given a lecture on how to be a good follower. Surely we can't all be Captain Kirk, isn't it statistically reasonable to say that the vast majority of us will spend the vast majority of our time being further toward the "follower" end of the spectrum?

This is mainly meant facetiously, but I do think there's a kernel of truth there. Taking and accepting leadership is a separate and important skill, and quite honestly I think most of us would benefit from some tuition in this area. Our whole Culture is uncomfortable with Authority, and we lack the skills to just do what we're goddamn told.

We can't all dream big and also get what we want. Like the Dinosaur Comics say, not everyone gets to be an astronaut. There are a bunch more people who are garbage collectors than Rock Stars, and if we hadn't all been told to dream big and suchlike, I'm betting a lot of people would be happier. I'm just saying is all.

(Heh, I'm listening to a pretty great song by Scouting For Girls called "James Bond" and the singer keeps saying "I wish I was James Bond". Is it tragic that my mind keeps saying "wish I was James Joyce" when it sings along? Because I would totally prefer to be James Bond to being James Joyce. I think? On reflection, James Bond gets tortured, and James Joyce merely tortures syntax. Maybe I'm having a Freudian slip here?)

Anyway, this lecture we had suggested (well, the lecturer suggested, but so did the slides, so in a sense you could say it was the "lecture" as a composite entity. Maybe this is a stretch?) that we "take a moment to think of who in history sprang to mind when we thought of great leaders". His suggestions were all national heroes of one kind or another. Just about all of mine were bad guys. Maybe this is because Good Guys work within the system, and so the opportunities to really distinguish themselves are limited. Maybe it's because I have that most cliched of internet concepts: "a twisted mind". (Seriously, everyone on the internet thinks they're "twisted", "crazy", "unusual" and uniquely so. Everyone.)

Seriously though, who springs to mind? Julius Caesar did some pretty great leadership things, especially his mind games with the Tenth Legion in Gaul(for those of you interested, wikipedia probably explains it more accurately and succinctly than I would). You can tell he was a great leader because he convinced an entire loyal army that he personally was Awesome and to attack their own fatherland. This is a pretty big deal, you guys. I doesn't take impressive leadership to convince people to do things they've been trained to do, things they want to do, but it's special to be able to get people to happily do something alien to them.

The lecturer was particularly taken with Winston "Hey dudes, let's attack the Turks at Gallipolli, I'll be in charge of that!" Churchill. He had this whole thing about how he beat Hitler and was a great orator. Yeah, maybe, but the rest of the country helped with that (beating Hitler, not the speech-writing). Also America. Also Churchill sucked as a peacetime leader, just like the Duke of Wellington.

Maybe this is a pertinent point. Great leadership comes in different flavours "war", "administrative", "inspirational in emergencies", ("strawberry")?

I don't think that I have to think that someone is/was a good person, or likeable, or even non-abhorent for them to have leadership skills. The lecturer raised the question of whether Hitler was a good leader and dismissed it by saying that he killed people and had a stupid mustache. Ha! Managing to take over Europe even briefly, even partially, with a mustache like that, you can't deny, is a little bit impressive. Unspeakably awful, obviously, not to be encouraged, doubtless, but still, it's impressive to be able to convince so many people to do something so repugnant all while looking like a total douche.

So although I clarify again that NAZIS WERE/ARE BAD (I am just so haunted by the fear that I'll end up in a Today Tonight special one day when I grow up, and they'll find this and quote only that "on her blog, she describes Hitler as '...impressive'" that I'm having to labour this) I reckon that Hitler's feats of leadership were at least as impressive as Churchill's. More so, even?

Similarly, Alexander the Great took over Persia and built the world's largest empie blah blah blah. With not a little terrorism thrown in, to be honest (cf. the city of Tyre). An empire which fell to bits as soon as he died, on account of how there was no system of administration set up or anything. This, I agree, is not what you'd call a desirable trait in an empire. But what that means is that until he died, he was holding together an enormous Empire across the entire Middle East (something many have tried and few if any have managed) (are you listening, America?) with sheer force of personality! That, my friends, is impressive leadership. That guy was a big sulker, and an Achilles fanboy, and the sort of dude who didn't see any problem with enslaving or killing everyone in a sizeable city, but still, that guy must've had charisma in sapdes.

It's surprising, actually, how hard it is to think of "great leaders". The lecturer suggested Gandhi, and I don't know enough about Gandhi (to my shame)to be able to make any comment on that. I think perhaps that the really meaningfully successful leaders are the ones who are unobtrusive. Conversely, the really impressive ones are the ones who are flamboyant, and that requires breaking the rules. Which is not a really great way to do things in the long term.

I suppose this is because any opportunity to distinguish yourself always implies a disruption in the quotidian rhythms in which people successfully and for the most part happily live their lives. It's the leader-follwer thing again. It takes 40 men with their feet on the ground to support one man with his head in the clouds.

Funny, I'm really having trouble thinking of any individual leaders who were both impressive and properly successful. Cyrus the Great seems to have been pretty crash-hot (the surname is a giveaway, really). He built the Persian empire out of practically nothing and it lasted for generations and ruled the world with considerable success until Rome. Sure, Greece fought them off, but they still meddled with Greece to great effect.

They're all ancient, the good ones. Firstly, I suppose, because you can judge them in the long term ("no. centuries legacy lasted for" is hard to do with someone who made it big 50 years ago). Secondly because we lack such compromising details as "Gallipolli was his fault". Thirdly, and really most importantly, though, because of democracy. Since the people who are in charge now are nominally the People, anyone who does well themselves must be in breach of the social contract. Even in those parts of the world where democracy is not the vogue, it still taints our perceptions.

For the record, I think that guy who was King (George) when Churchill was Prime Minister was pretty impressive. Telling everyone that in a way you're glad when your palace gets blitzed because you wouldn't want not to share the sufferings of your people at least in some measure is the sort of PR masterstroke you have to admire.

Oh, hey, Jesus (not an exclamation of surprise, a suggestion of a name). Yeah! There's a dude who lead people impressively and had a fairly sizeable legacy. Also in ancient times, which proves me right, a bit. Also proves my "only badass dudes make it big" point. You can tell he was operating outside the system because of how the Government nailed him to things and made sure he died. This is not a sign of a person who's working within established modes of advancement. Whatever you may think of his legacy or personal qualities (and I actively un-invite you to comment on this paragraph because I know many of my readers have strongly opposed views here, and my blog is not the Flanders fields for a great religious debate). Certainly there was a guy, and certainly he had a legacy and leadership. Other angles are not relevant here.

Anyway, what do you think? Who springs to mind as a good leader, when you're asked? Because apparently I've got nothing.

In Which nothing actually Happens, per se, because it's not that sort of Blog

So, if you know me or are friends with me on Facebook (and quite frankly I am surprised if you're reading this without fitting into either of these categories, but you never know, maybe someone else has been lured in by tales of my lyrical brilliance or something) then you have probably heard about the wordcount on this leviathan of a blog. Essentially, I added up all the posts (and that's just the posts on this particular blog; there are only a few scant posts from the Livejournal era) and checked the word count, which is between 77,000 and 80,000, not counting comments.

And because I'm the sort of person who wonders about these things (which is to say; someone who ought to be doing something useful)I checked, and it turns out that that's about the length of a longish mystery novel. Those usually go between 60 and 80 thousand words. This year alone I've apparently written well over 30 thousand.

So it occurs to me: wouldn't it be nice if I'd used all those words and such writing something with some kind of narrative or structure or continuity or something? (I'm sure the same thought has struck you, too, dear reader, in the wee hours when you're wasting time on the internet reading blogs rather than going to bed: "why can't she write something with any structure or meaning? Aaargh!" etc.) Isn't it a dreadful pity? If it was a goodish novel (and we may as well be charitable and assume it would've been, since it doesn't exist and the assumption costs us nothing) then it could be being sent to publishers by now! I could have been published long ago, in point of fact!

There are those who believe that everyone "has a novel in them", which I'm sure is very lovely, except for the fact that with regard to most people we'd be lucky if it was only as bad as Twilight. And that's exactly how bad it would be (if, as I said, I were lucky) if I were to try to write a novel.

It's one of those things I've always secretly rather fancied the idea of doing. (Inasmuch as I'm capable of doing anything secretly: I tend to excitedly explain all my secrets to anyone who'll listen, although I'm very good with other peoples' secrets, surprisingly) This comes with the territory of being one of those would-be-creative Arts student types. I can't play music to save my life (I can't even sing, I've recently realised, which is a great pity), and I can't much paint or any of those other sorts of things My People like to do. But a novel! Anyone can write a book, one sort of feels.

"It's just words!" you think, "I talk all the time! How hard can it be?" Plus also, a very very rare few people are fantastically successful and become very rich and popular, in an absolutely morally-impregnable sort of way. If you invent something so useful that everyone in the world wants one, it's kind of wrong to refuse to give it to them (witness the patents on the horrifyingly expensive cancer-therapies). If you merely sell a service, you don't become obscenely wealthy without ripping people off or somethign. Everywhere you tend to have the same sorts of problems, especially once you're at that end of the scale.

Essentially, something like writing a book which makes millions of people happy is the best way not to have to worry if you're somehow a terrible person for getting rich off all those people. Music maybe used to be that way, but copyright is a thorny issue there now. Also, music producers etc. would take a cut, and you have to tour and miss your family, and paparrazzi try to entrap you and the whole deal, if you're looking at all like making it really big.

So obviously this is something I should look into.
Problem is, even leaving aside the thing where it's basically impossible to get published and all that sort of thing, that I haven't an ounce of narrative in me.

I know this because I was trying to come up with some kind of script, (no, not even that, some kind of story idea) for a short film with Clever James and Exuberant Lauri recently, and for all my smug self-assurance, I didn't have a single idea. Not one. Turns out, I can write a thousand words in an hour of what I choose to think is sometimes quite alright blather about not much, but when it comes to making up an actual kernel for all this fluff, I've got nothing.

Worse, I get halfway through being all "yes! This idea is brilliant!" or whatever and only then realise that I've blantantly plagiarised something by accident. Or even a couple of things. Sometimes I get all excited about how easy it would be to do a "Bridget Jones' Diary" type thing about a girl who just happens to be quite a lot like me (or rather, how I imagine myself to be, so more someone who bears a distant resemblance to me in a good light) before I realise that even that needs a plot. Nothing all that exciting happens to me, and when it does, I'm too busy doing it to write. Also, more pressingly, I have no idea how my life ends. There are very few tied-off loose ends in my life.

Also, proper authors can make "he thought about the problem for a moment" into an 8-word sentence (rather than a 1,000 word blog post) but can make "he met the girl and they had a slightly awkward interlude and agreed to meet the following afternoon" into a 4 page dialogue, natural-sounding and so on. I find it difficult not to come straight to the point in recount events (don't all shout at once, I know, we always thought that I had some kind of allergy to coming to the point). It turns out I can digress as long as you like, but padding the actual things with "she paused to delicately scrape the teaspoon on the edge of the cup to rid it of the last lingering drop. The melodic sound of that barely-conscious habit of hers had entranced him, once, now he wondered how he had tolerated it all those years" or whatever I get all "how am I supposed to know what sort of teacup? It's not real!" I don't even think to think that, in fact, which is rather worse. When I used to write stories, back in school, all the characters sounded like me, somehow.

I've just remembered that one of the characters in that story I wrote in high school (the one where I accidentally plagiarised that actual plot elements) was a pirate captain who was described as "rugged - not ruggedly handsome, just rugged". So that's something, at least, isn't it?

Hmmm... maybe I ought to just embrace this sort of thing. There are two options:

A: try to become David Sedaris, somehow, and become very popular selling books which are essentially blog-style stream-of-consciousness memoirs, or

B: be as one with the nature of blogging and learn to listen as well as talk.

Obviously my plan here is really B with a side order of idly speculating how lovely A would be.

In Which I vacillate again with regards to the comment thing

Ok, in a spirit of perpetual oscillation, I'm re-enabling anonymous comments. Because it turns out I deal better with crazies sending me anonymous grumpiness and with spam than with a lack of feedback. But essentially, it would be nice if everyone would sign their comments?

So I was thinking about this the other day; although the future cannot be foretold, it does exist, right? So, although no-one can know for sure how long they will live, there is a certain length of time for which you definitely will live. It doesn't have to be "written" anywhere or anything, but eventually, you will die. At that point you will have been alive for a specific length of time, no more and no less. With me so far?

Ok, right in that specific amount of time (X years, let's say. For the sake of mathematical ease and tragic irony, we'll have you die on your birthday) you will have been happy for a certain amount of time, and sad for a certain amount of time. Obviously there are more than two emotions, but we'll divide them for simplicity into "positive" (P) and "negative" (N), yeah? Now P and N may be equal, or one may be greater than the other, and it would hardly do to enquire, but what if you could choose when to have which one, would you do? Like, if you're having a really bad day, you can use some of the happy from your future, but that means that when you get to that point in your future, you aren't happy for however long it was that you took, because you've already used it up.

If you could choose, would you spread the happiness and sadness equally across your life? Or would you try to get all the sadness over and done with early, knowing that your future would then be unmitigated bliss? If you did that, would the knowledge of the unspoiled happiness in your future (of which you would not know the duration) be enough to get you through the years of accumulated sadness(would you be allowed to have that extra 'P' sneakily, that certain hope, or would the sustaining hope have to be subtracted from your total positivity allotment?)? Or would the concentrated depression drive you mad and spoil your later years?

Alternately, would you use up the happy first up and just kill yourself as soon as you got sad, knowing that that was it for happy times? Could you do that? If P+N=X and your amounts of time were set, would you be able to reduce X, skipping N, without having an effect on P? Maybe this is playing with the rules I've just made up a bit soon, since they're barely established.

Still, it's an interesting idea. Would you just go with the mystery (which is to say, the system we already have) or try to play the game to your own benefit? I think, on balance, I would try to take a bunch of the badness now, ameliorated with happiness in patches, so as to have a rosy future to look forward to.

Maybe the way you answer this sort of question isn't that hypothetical. How else would you describe struggling through a vocational degree and feeling pretty unpeppy most of the time in the hope that one day you'll be a happy doctor? This is a bit less sure, though. After all, who knows if being a doctor will be all that good? Maybe I'll be so busy being a tetchy Med Student that I'll fail to notice the one true love I should've met at an idle job with an advertising firm or something, thus missing all that happiness I thought I was working towards. I guess all investments are a gamble that way.

This is probably what religion is for, huh? "If you try hard enough now, despite all the crap now, later on it'll be all good all the time"?

Hmmm....

Note: on re-reading this, I sound way more unhappy than I am. I am not so much unhappy as not actively happy, which is what I'm used to being a lot of the time.
Right now I'm sewing a thing (which is the best cure for moodiness) with tea and a new CD (new to me, it's the Lucksmiths' debut, so it's also pretty old) and so on, so it's pretty nice.

In Which Zooey Deschanel is Pretty Cute

So yesterday, I watched (500) Days of Summer, which was pretty neat. It was, at times, a trifle contrived (not in places like the dance interlude and what have you, which might be considered sort of obviously contrived, so much as in smaller things like character naming), but on the whole it was great.

Naturally I did that thing everyone will do where you watch it and go "I'd love to be that sort of girl and have that effect on people" but secretly know that you much more closely resemble the slightly pathetic but ingenuously adorable hero. (Note, this is not me saying "I'm adorable", this is me saying "I reckon I'm more of a haver of crushes than a crushee"). Also, at one point the heroine rides a bike which is the exact bike I've spent the last week lusting after, so I'm glad I saw the move afterwards, rather than beforehand, so as not to feel derivative.

Anyway, obvious neurosis aside, what really struck me was the sort of thing which drew me to the characters; distressingly, these were pretty wanky. Thus, not all of the indie-hip-beautifulness or lyrical appeal of Zooey Deschanel held as much appeal as the throw-away lines which allude to a wider literary wossname. So our hero carries on about how he believes in love and the great Romantic ideals, and she refers to him casually as "Young Werther". Now call me a geek if you like, but I really do love that. I mean, I've never even read Goethe, but I'm all "ha! You said something funny and obscure and I got it! We are both so clever, we should totally be friends!".

(Clearly) it's sort of tragic, really. I do the same thing generally, I fear. Certainly I find Russell Brand more amusing when he uses phrases like "labial fricatives" or even just words like "denoument" than when he's making blow-job jokes. Does this make me a snob? Maybe (but since I don't find blowjob jokes all that amusing at the best of times, it doesn't really worry me).(Note: it helps that he's ridiculously attractive, as well.)

Conversely, at the end of the show I watched yesterday he did that "You've been a lovely crowd, good night," thing, but then followed it with "Hare Krishna". The problem with which is that my knee jerk reaction to a guy like that using a valedictory comment like that is to go "huh, tosser". If I actually thought he (or anybody, of course) actually adhered to that whole belief-set, it'd be a different story. Maybe the problem is just that I've known many more twits who say that sort of thing because that's their schtick than people who actually believe it or generally even know what it means beyond "being deep" (this also goes for that sort of head bow over supplicatorily joined hands thing some lads do in lieu of a wave of greeting).

I wonder what effect it has on us, this sort of cheapening of these gestures and words. It's an established point that swear words lose potency with repetition (thus one surprised "shit!" from a sweet old lady who never says anything harsher than "darn" in ordinary circumstances is usually more impressive than yet another "fuck" from a twerp lad in a pub who says it as punctuation). But does that work with words that have been holy too? I suppose it must, since serious high concepts become very bad blasphemies become merely mediocre swear words become the adorable archaisms of children's books, as a sort of inevitable continuum. (Thus, knights in kids books can say "Zounds!", people's mums say "bloody" to describe the traffic, and so on). (For those of you not down wit da lingo, "zounds" was originally "Christ's wounds!", a pretty big deal, back in the day, blasphemy-wise, and "bloody" was "By Our Lady", likewise, natch.)

Anyhow, it’s a funny thing, how appealing it is when people refer in passing to things that you happen to know about. Maybe it’s a validation thing? Like “you know that thing? I know that thing! We should be friends! If you like things that I like, I must be ok.” I sort of hope there’s more to it than that, but fear that there mayn’t be. I know that when The Lucksmiths tell you that they were “drunk in the haze of happy hour”, for instance, that’s a bunch more interesting and clever than it would be if the Smiths had never been “happy in the haze of a drunken hour”.

I fear this may all be snobbery again. I’ve been reading Kipps by H. G. Wells, this week. It’s a social commentary-type comedy thing about a young lower class man who unexpectedly inherits a small fortune and rises to the upper middle class. Basically the book is full of that vaguely awkward Pretty Woman which-fork-is-the-one-for-the-salad sort of awkwardness. It’s odd, though, the character has one of those accents which is written out with the lower classinflections. Like Hagrid. You know the one, where the character says “orf” rather than “off” every time. It’s strangely jarring, because I don’t think I’ve ever come across a novel before where the hero, rather than some comic-relief bit-parter has one of those accents. Not one which the author painstakingly writes out, anyway. It always seems to be an instrument of comedy, like being less well-educated is the same thing as being amusingly stupid.

I was about to be all “we must be such snobs for finding it intrusive, for noticing every time, what does it say about our subconscious beliefs about class” and such, but I’ve just had a reassuring thought. Since, right, language as written in a novel is not written as it sounds (otherwise American books would ‘ahl luhk as iyf thay werrr naht i Ninglish att ahl’), then the intrusiveness of a written accent in perforce a deliberate authorial move. Essentially, every time he chooses to write a line of dialogue, the author is deliberately choosing to reinforce the otherness of the hero. Since the character does not set out to say “orf” but means to word “off”, then anything written from his point of view, anything written truly sympathetically, would be written with the words he means, rather than the words he pronounces.

On the whole, that’s fair enough, I suppose, since the point of this book is that he’s a fish out of water, all alone and, to mix metaphors appositely, hopelessly out of his depth. It’s funny that 100 years ago, books about culture clash between the lower and upper classes were all about how the lower class people were amusingly out of place and all that, whereas although that certainly remains a major element in the equivalent texts today, there’s a great deal more of the making fun of the toffee nosed plum-in-mouth snobs. This would presumably reflect the shift in access to the texts: the viewers of the comic movies are more likely to identify with the less-classy characters, whereas the readers back then either were upper class, or liked to fancy themselves so. Back then, everyone wanted to be a little bit “better” than they were, which is still the case. But they didn’t raise their eyes to high as to judge their “superiors”, whereas now we have so much access to information, and now that we all have votes that count for the same amount, and all that, we’re much more inclined to wish them down to our level, rather than wishing ourselves up.

I guess that accounts for Celebrity Big Brother and Prince Harry, as phenomena?

In Which what Always Happens happens. You know, like, again.

I have an essay due on Monday. If we are Facebook friends, this can hardly have escaped your notice. And it should be really easy. I mean, it's a measly 1000 words, about a reasonably abstract concept for which we have enough evidence to sustain debate but not enough to make Obviously Right Decisions. They actually gave us the references. Also, inasmuch as it's competitive (and it isn’t, thankfully), I'm competing against a bunch of Science students who are used to having length requirements in pages. Or, millimetres. Not essay writers by preference, in fact.

What's stupid about this is that I still haven't done it. I haven’t even started writing it as such. The problem is the readings. I used to be pretty ok with these (warning: this may be lies caused by the golden haze of intervening years which overlies my recollection of Essays Past) but these days trying to read these papers is not so much boring as overwhelmingly soporific. It's bizarre. I can write (I would go so far as to say that I am, in fact, writing even as we... uh... write) but I'm moving, then. I can watch videos, TV, youtube, because then other things are moving. I can read books and suchlike because the characters are moving (maybe this point is a stretch?). But in the research, nothing moves. People either get vaccinated or don't, and then get sick/die or don't. All while remaining, narratively speaking, perfectly still.

What this means is that I keep having to pause in order to regroup and wake up. It's pretty irksome, dudes and dudettes.

So anyway, what's happening here is that, in an attempt to keep awake and focused, I've opened (that word always looks like it has the wrong number of Ns in it to me; no matter how I spell it, it looks awry)this blog in another window, so that I can flick between essaying and blogging. The only potential problem (apart from the "that's not your essay, you idiot, why are you online at all" issue, which naturally strikes one most forcibly) is that you might all get told things you couldn't possibly be interested in with regard to flu vaccination. Also that if I put bits of essay on the internet I could conceivably be hauled up for plagiarising myself or something. But what are the odds, really, eh?

Aaargh. It's so boring. I'm struggling not to sit, lurking, on Facebook, spamming everyone I know by updating every second second (have a self-imposed limit of 3 status updates per day, tops, in case I just drive away everyone I know) (unless, y'know, I really want to update more). The problem is that these days everything you do is published. Whenever someone thanks all their friends individually for the birthday wishes, it floods the feed. And that's a pity, because you essentially use up the patience your slight acquaintances have whenever you address a mutual friend. This interplay tends to keep my friend numbers static. I get added occassionally, but the number never changes much because the people I know less well defriend me in a trickle. Which is fair. People I met once, years ago, don't necessarily need to be kept informed about my kitchen or whatever.

Twitter has a similar problem, but only about 15 people are following me there, so it's less of an issue. And some of those are probably bots, really. But I still feel like the Courtney Love of my circle of Online acquaintance. (Not in a drug-addled late nineties sort of way, in a man-she-sure-uses-twitter-a-lot sort of way. I would've nominated Stephen Fry as the other example of that, but I really feel that to be a trifle above my touch).

Technically, I haven't updated my facebook status at all yet today. I say "technically" because (a) in my mind, I've written maybe 80 (this counts in the this-is-a-disease-you-know-that-don't-you? stakes) and (b) I keep having to do other things, like write on people's walls (I do have to, I was asked for that link, for instance), which still interrupts everyone. This is a pity. I saw 2 movies today, for one thing, and I could happily have been pithy (or at least "said something") about either, although less readily about both, since they're not all that easily integrated.
My goodness, do you realise that this post is already almost as long as my essay needs to be? It could totally be done by now! It's about 10 times as longs as what I've actually written.

I wonder how long an essay would have to be before it got really annoying that my Backspace key seems to be squeaky? Also, whoever heard of such a ridiculous thing? A squeaky delete? But my computer is still so new and shiny!

It's almost on a par with the fact that my DVD player still only plays voices on about 20% of DVDs. Not all DVDs, I have learned, will allow you to view them in "Bypass" or "2 channel". This seems confusing, but soon I shall get organised to get it fixed and afix to it a note of such searing passive-aggressiveness that no-one will ever again cause it to stop working while trying to be helpful, because no-one will dare to touch it at all.

Back to the essay, though. I keep having a fairly stupid problem. Since I have spent those parts of the evening when I wasn't actively writing my essay (so, most of it) writing this, lurking on the internet and watching stand-up comedy, I keep going off on these interesting-but-not-strictly-relevant tangents in my essay. This is because in viewing or reading anything, one temporarily absorbs its lexicon. Thus, for instance, in my mind at the moment, all of this is in this slightly chav english accent, on account of how I've been watching a Russell Brand show. Also, because like attracts like and all that, I tend to like comedians who spend a lot of time off on tangents and lost among subclauses. (Ross Noble, Russell Brand and Eddie Izzard spring to mind, so I guess "unusual looking" is also a thing?) The difficulty with which is that that really only exacerbates the tangential distractableness in my writing. In a blog, this is mildly exasperating at worst, in an essay it's rather more unfortunate.

So I shall probably have to delete that whole well-reasoned but not strictly relevant paragraph about whether or not it is ethical to consider health care workers primarily as vectors for disease as opposed to considering them in their capacity as individuals who have to actually undergo the mildly aversive intervention (getting a flu vaccination). (It's indicative of the interestingness of this essay in general that this seemed like a really interesting point before. Now I return to this window and reread it after half an hour, I feel that my view of its interestingness is perhaps better-balanced).

Aaargh...

In Which Knowledge is Acknowledged

Well, it's been that sort of day (the sort of day where I declared my intention to do something completely different), so I've updated the links bar to the right of the actual bloggy bit. There are still a bunch of moribund links there, but who am I to say that Pun will never decide that you can be a married lady and also still update your blog? (For instance.) So I've just sort of left those ones at the bottom of the list in a gesture of... patience, maybe? Supportiveness? Let's face it, it's really more of a gesture of the inability to throw anything out. A lot of the mess in my house is a gesture of that sort of spirit. Year 12 was 7 years ago, but who knows? Those notes still might be useful one day. I couldn't possibly throw them out. This makes my house a bit of a fire hazard, potentially, but on the upside, although the risk of fire increases with the amount of paper I can't bring myself to just flipping throw out, the amount of secret non-regret regarding any such conflagration varies proportionately with it. Which is to say, although it makes a fire more likely, I'd be less sad about one?

I've begun a bunch of posts recently, but they've all been just a bit not-very-good, so I haven't finished or posted them. The problem is, right, that this isn't all thought out well in advance. These posts are the actual thought processes that I'm having about whatever I'm writing about. So if I have an idea for something that would maybe make a good post, I have to strike a careful balance. If I don't think about it at all, I can't remember what it was. If I think about it much at all, though, by the time I get here I've thought it right through, and the whole things seems strangely stilted and false. Like a wooden actor reciting lines by rote, rather than an impassioned orator holding forth. (Not that these are ever that much like that, but you see what I mean).

Anyway, one of the things was that the other day I saw a jacaranda tree in bloom! It was also in leaf, and it was a pretty saplingy looking tree, so it looked sort of uncertain about the whole thing, but there were definitely flowers. This means it is officially the beginning of the season of being inappropriately, over-earlily and not-as-secretly-as-would-be-ideal-ily Excited about Christmas! Yay! Those of you who've known me for years saw where this paragraph was going from about the 14 word, but for the rest of you, this is an official warning. Soon I will be even more excitable than usual.

I was going to write this whole post about how I was absentmindedly nice to people (that is one weirdly spelled word, isn't it? "People"?) last weekend and a couple of times, as a result, people gave me things for free, but like I said, I overthought it. Whenever I tried to write that thing I either sounded like a smug preachy twit "Hey, you guuuuuuuys, I'm really sooo nice, you should all try it!" or like I was only doing it because sometimes if you're nice, people just give you stuff "Hey, I like your, uh, teeth or whatever. Anyway, do I really have to pay for this cocktail?", so that was unfortunate.

Still, it was pretty great you guys, I totally did get stuff and people were really nice.

Also, I was talking to my Dad the other day and he said that he was at a conference (or job interview? Or something? Anyway, he was reviewing a bunch of young up and coming types)recently and they had to do an impromptu speech (it would be awesome if that was a job interview type thing, because that skill has come in useful all of maybe twice in my life, and I'd like to find out if I'm actually any good at it, or just filled with misplaced smugness: all too possible) on the topic of which they thought was more important: emotion or knowledge. Which is fine except that apparently every single person posited that emotion and feelings were definitely more important. I caught myself doing it too. He told half the story and I was all "oh, feelings, obviously" but when I learned that I was just another sheep in this respect, I got sort of suspicious.

Because, OK, right, fine, but ALL of them? So no-one really thinks that knowledge is more important? Even sometimes? Is this because of Disney movies? Have we all been raised to believe that "follow your heart" is a better message than "stop being such an idiot"? I bet that's it.

I've never seen a movie which, given the choice between head and heart, doesn't pick the latter. Which is cool, yes. I mean, being in love is peachy, and reaching out to people with empathy is important, and whatever. But seriously? Have none of us, at our age, really taken a moment to go "wait, I'm taking the advice of a cartoon princess who has faced a total of one adversity in her recorded life, and that advice is that when in doubt, I should listen to a pump"?

What does that even mean, to follow your heart rather than your head? Given, as I've intimated, that we've pretty much established that the poetic emotional "heart" per se is not what you might call a meaningfully separate entity to the brain, isn't this just laziness? Since both your knowledge/understanding and your feelings/emotion are in the same spot, in the same organ (give of take 15cm), how can one be inherently superior to the other (obviously there's more than actual proximity at work here; ot totally value my frontal cortex more than my uvula, for instance)?

I think it's really just that your "heart" usually tells you to do what you actually want to do. "I know I should write my essay, but my heart tells me to go to the beach". "I know that I'll lose my job if I don't answer the call, but my heart tells me that my family is more important" (this latter is a big theme in movies. Also, one's heart very often wants one to hurl one's mobile (or "cell") off a cliff or out a window or into a pond or something: your heart wants you to upgrade to an iPhone, maybe?) But here's the thing, that's obviously that you "know" that your family is more important. Or whatever. It's really just lazy thinking. The real message is "do the thing you would really prefer to do".

Because knowledge is useless in a vacuum, sure, but feelings in a vacuum are meaningless. I may have no use for my knowledge of what Caesar said to the Tenth Legion (although I bet that comes in useful before I die), but it's probably better than that feeling you get where you're sad for no reason. Even being happy for no reason, while nice, is not actually as nice as feeling happy and knowing that it's because of something actually good happening. Because it's also not sustainable. Feelings need knowledge more than knowledge needs feelings. (Note: if I'd taken the other tack and was writing this the other way around, or if I'd gone with my original idea of having 2 posts which debated with one another, I would, at this point, mention that it's easier to learn things which have emotional valency. I know this because of Science. So in fact, it's what you might call a commensurate, if not symbiotic, thing.)

Maybe it's a Class Anxiety, Cultural Cringe sort of thing. Here we are, a bunch of well-educated (don't be modest, you know that you're well-educated, otherwise you'd be unlikely to be bothering to read this, since blogs like this are definitely most useful as procrastination), heart-felt, Disney-raised young people, and we're all afraid to say that "Knowledge is power". This is because knowledge is so often stratified along socioeconomic lines. We fear that to say that knowledge is of any really meaningful use will be to imply that poor people, people who didn't finish high school, illiterate people, are somehow not as good as us. And this is a point which, in our heart of hearts, we have mixed feelings about.

Einstein famously said that "imagination is more important than knowledge" and you know what? If you've already been extensively educated in physics and are trying to derive a theory of relativity, so that you already have a basis of knowledge which you can afford to dismiss with an airy wave of the hand after using it, then sure. If you're trying to make a line of very popular posters and fridge magnets to console students, doubtless. If you're trying to sound modest to the layman and also thumb your nose at the smug pricks you work with, then by all means.(Bet you a dollar that this was what Eistein was up to). But the fact remains that imagination without any knowledge will only do you any good if you already happen to be a philosopher in the class of Socrates. Which, no offence, you aren't. I have a number of philosophical friends who take themselves and the internet marginally more seriously than might be considered strictly good for them, but even they can only build their castles in their sky because of having spent so long being talked to by people with their feet on the ground.

Also, people with autism are not measurably more dissatisfied than people with dementia, or amnesia, who've lost their knowledge. Granted, those people have lost something they had before, and bipolar folk tend to miss their emotions rather when they're trying to get their medications right, but I don't know that the people who've lost feelings are really as frustrated as people who've lost their knowledge.

People with intellectual disabilities such as Downs Syndrome never get as much knowledge, mind you. They seem pretty happy a lot of the time. Except that I suspect that might be one of those things that we really just desperately want to believe, that those poeple are happy, really. Firstly so as to allay our pity and that feeling which is akin to survivor's guilt, and secondly because we want to believe that we just get sad and stressed because we're so damn clever. Also, those children are hardly a case-controlled example. They are so cossetted and protected that of course they often look pretty happy. (Note: this is a good thing. I would not dream of thinking for a moment that that's not exactly how it should be).

Maybe our feelings are more important to others? Mothers of autistic babies and mothers of Downs babies both have a pretty terrible time, but the ones whose babies love them back are probably ultimately more satisfied with their lot. Unless we're dealing with a doctor or maybe a pilot in bad weather or something, we tend to value the sensitive niceness of others more than their knowledge. And even then, we really prefer them to be lovely as well as able to tell us that we don't have lupus. (Hey hey, check my pertinent yet obscure pop culture reference there. Expertly done.)

Maybe this is why our movies want us to follow our hearts? Because it's on a par with such messages as "it's nice to share" and "do unto others etc". It's not really for our own good at all that we should follow our hearts. It's for everyone else's?

Alternate conclusion: it's 1am and I've gotten a bit carried away? Who can say, really?

Still, I feel better knowing that someone, somewhere, has made a better-structured defence of rationality over affect than a "Cheer Up Emo Kid" t-shirt, which, let's face it, is the same thing. Being a capital-R-Romantic is so the century before last. In theory.