Those who cannot distinguish between joy and pain will be surprised, suffering, to enjoy and, enjoying, to suffer.
Now, I wouldn’t want to be the one—who hates surprises but has had quite a few—to claim that it is simple to draw a line, even a thin, shifting, and interchangeable one depending on the case and mood, between suffering and enjoyment, but perhaps it is necessary that someone—even I, when needed—highlight its usefulness.
Indeed, it happens, though I don’t know to how many of us, to recognize the meanness of others before our own, somewhat like a parent recognizes the tantrums and real needs of other people’s children, declaring themselves ready immediately, should it happen to their own, to refuse to give in to the former and to throw themselves into the fire for the latter, yet remaining incapable of precisely recognizing the boundary that separates them.
As a parent, I know all too well that when it comes to raising one’s own children, one ends up granting or denying only based on the possibility of indulging them or not, refusing out of fatigue and, out of fatigue, consenting.
Similarly, anyone who, speaking of others’ pains, insists on details with a morbidness far disproportionate to proximity—because it might be pains suffered by distant and unknown people—or to competence, which is never enough for laypeople to pass judgment, would end up making it all too clear that they enjoy it, driven by a series of childish feelings halfway between self-pity and sadism, between empathy and the most vivid imagination, so much so that we might come to believe that this person, when recounting suffering, takes pleasure in the fact that it is not their own and that, if it were, we probably wouldn’t know about it.
Indeed, by analogy, when this person spoke to us of pleasures, their own or others’, they would have the same mirrored attitude, showing their childish envy for others’ joys and a disproportionate satisfaction—between boasting and seeking approval—for their own, something they would never admit, even if we pointed it out, but which we, since these are their faults and not ours, see perfectly well.
Our wit is precious, but if it is not accompanied by humility, self-criticism, and respect for others, it might lead us not to perceive that we function in the same way. Certainly, with less childishness—since our motivations and excuses would always seem more valid than those of others—and to believe that we would be immune from that search for consensus, from sadism and self-pity.
We might therefore barely resist the irresistible urge to assert our superiority, since it seems so obvious to us.
The wisdom of those who remain silent should always leap to our eyes, while the poor figure we make by talking too much—even about what we think worthy of sharing—assimilates us to the meanness we notice in others.
This would only weakly highlight others’ shortcomings but would clearly characterize our own, because the excessive sensitivity, totally human, that moves us to even conflicting feelings upon the occurrence of tragedies or happy events, would be judged by many as less serious, being not fully conscious, I would say unintentional, compared to the lack of education and respect and the excessive arrogance we would show when addressing the guilty party.
Here, the skill in recognizing meanness, and the wisdom in admitting that it is not exclusively others’ prerogative but also ours, instead makes us worthy and deserving, even and especially if we exercise our talent away from others’ eyes.
Evil is no longer our weakness, our lack of taste, sensitivity, or attention and, on the other hand, it is not our absence of sensitivity, our coldness, skepticism, prudence.
Evil is not our faults or our excesses, but, mind you, the position we choose for the line that separates them, the different shade of the same color, the intensity of the same flavor.
Virtues, like the ingredients of a recipe or the colors on a palette, are not such because they are present, but because they are well measured.
Likewise, it is not wise to deny the right to exist to a counterpoint, to an opposition. Perfection is not composed by the absence of faults, but by the obvious union between them, the frequent compendium, the obligatory confrontation.
For example, everyone knows it is not wise to be brave due to the absence of fear. Fear is awareness of risk, it is responsibility for consequences. Fear is intelligent, as is the courage to face adversity. Whoever is overcome by courage, running unknown dangers due to lack of awareness of risks, is no better than one who is overcome by fear, underestimating their own strength.
Defect and excess, of courage and fear, are both defects, while balance between them will clearly be a virtue for whoever has both.
This applies to each of those qualities we are used to considering virtues. It naturally also applies to each of the faults.
Each of us, indeed, listing our virtues and faults, could recall the same items, noting excessive doses or deficiencies among faults and balanced doses among virtues.
Once again, as for those who manage a heritage, it does not depend on quantity. It does not depend, in some ways, even on quality, because whoever has refinement and good taste, commonly recognized as virtues, but must daily face milking cows or the enemy in battle, will have few occasions to stand out for their qualities.
Balance, the line that distinguishes between outside and inside, above and below, against and for, is more important. That is why imagining a line, for each of the different shades of our ideal spectrum, depending on the sense, taste, and preference called into question, identifies us as individuals and sketches the fantasy of our particular personality.
The line serves us, naturally, while it will always seem poorly calibrated to others, just as our splatter needs, our desire to delve into every gruesome detail following the subcutaneous settlement of a parasite, or the sting of an insect, or the bite of an animal, will seem akin to pathologies.
They will point out the serious perversions of the collector of images of feet, bras, mismatched socks.
Others will understand little and poorly the fear of thieves, darkness, spiders, bedbugs. They will laugh at the presumption of security, performance anxiety, gold medal stress; they will doubt gullibility, black cats, horoscopes, propitiatory rites, tics, subservience to celebrities, servility towards the powerful, complacency of command.
We will all, at least once in life—even Hollywood stars and models—be considered less beautiful than we would like, less deep, less capable, less reliable than we hope to be, to a degree sufficient for us to call it quality, while in the personal but others’ ranking, the same measure will be insufficient or exceeding the necessary, so as to appear anyway a slight.
All this is inevitable. No ranking established by others is lasting… nor are even our own priorities, after all.
Let us try to understand this social dynamic well.
Let us try never to forget it, to practice its deepening at every stage of life, whether we are, in some way, interested in pleasing others, or— I admit this is harder—when we feel able to do without their opinion and yet feel sufficiently authoritative not to dispense with ours.
In those cases, since there is no teacher without a student, if the student does not listen to us or chooses to do otherwise, let us not give up being detached, gladly accepting that our contribution is not appreciated, because this will be, at some point in our life, when we least expect it, the distinguishing element between the tolerant and respectable individual we want to be and the unqualified pain in the neck, sitting on the sunbed next to ours, on the beach, who insists on giving lessons in etiquette about the ownership and enjoyment of the shadow cast by their umbrella and, while doing so, smokes, ready to sustain any quarrel because, after all, we’re outdoors and it’s allowed.