Walking with a Limp
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” —Jose Ortega y Gasset
If you live with a cripple, soon enough you will walk with a limp. It's true not just with social influences but informational ones too—if you are addicted to the chatter of the news, you will soon find yourself worried, resentful, and perpetually outraged. If you consume nothing but escapist entertainment, you will find the real world around you harder and harder to deal with. If all you do is watch the markets and obsess over every fluctuation, your worldview will become defined by money and gains and losses.
Tell me who you spend time with, Goethe said, and I will tell you who you are. Tell me what you pay attention to, Gasset was saying, and I can tell you the same thing.
Without any social media, I find myself less angry and being less angry I find myself writing less. I imagine this says as much about the Why? of my writing than I'm comfortable with but it is what it is.
I believe the key is to find other influences, other sources of opinion, other people. Given that aside from my family and the folks I work with I have given over to being a misanthropic creature in my apartment, those influences are beyond my reach.
And on it goes.
