[excerpted, abridged] ...His charades class was not called “How to play charades” or “How to have fun playing charades,” but rather: “How to begood at playing charades.” And his introductory talk to the event only cursorily involved which hand signals to use when; mostly he talked about what he called “charades skills” – like, how being good at charades is about being a good communicator, and a good listener, and requires imagination, and sympathy, and understanding – all of which are, more truly than charades skills, life skills. And so his students or audience or whatever you’d call them – if they’re no good at playing charades – can only assume one thing. Since the terms for “goodness” were laid out very clearly at the beginning of class, if you’re not good at playing charades, you are forced to conclude that it’s not because you don’t know the hand gestures, it’s not because you’re not a good actor, but rather it’s because you can’t listen, or you’re not sympathetic, or you don’t have sufficient (as he put it at the beginning of class) “intellectual-analytical skills, motor-expressive skills, creative skills, and emotional-inter-personal skills.” The secret lesson of his charades class is: if you’re not good at being a charades player, maybe it’s actually because you’re not an entirely good at being a person. This is called being tortured with fun. [It] is not quite about fun, or about learning how to be good at having fun, but, more distinctly, about learning how to be good at being a person, and, the unfortunate corollary of this, seeing how far from good at being a person you are. Why go out? At home, you can wear your pyjamas. No one is going to snub you or disappoint you. [Out in the world], you could be snubbed, or disappointed. The scotch is not cheap. It is less depressing to think the same thoughts you thought yesterday, than to have the same conversation you had last week. If what we want more than anything is to attain self-confidence, health, energy, and peace of mind, we should stay in. We could be like little Buddhas...and we could imagine ourselves to be brilliant, and kind, and good lecturers, and good listeners, and utterly loving – and there’d be no way to prove it otherwise. I’m always super-conscious of how whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am. And I continue to go out even though who I am always comes up short. I always prove myself to be less generous, less charming, less considerate, not as bold or energetic or intelligent or courageous as I imagined in my solitude. And I’m always being insulted, or snubbed, or disappointed. And I’m never in my pyjamas. And yet, in some way, maybe this is better. Each of us in this room could suffer the pangs of withdrawal and gain serenity of the non-smoker. We could be demi-gods in our little castles, all alone, but perhaps, at heart, none of us here wants that. Maybe the only cure for self-confidence and courage is humility. Maybe we go out IN ORDER TO fall short… because we want to learn how to be good at being people… and moreover, because we want to be people.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:10:17 +0000
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