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August 5, 2015
wallow (v.)
I sometimes think our modern-day, over plugged-in lives don't afford us a lot of opportunities nor incentives to dive into our thoughts and observe them in greater depth. We blame the distractions that throw us into so much spotlight that we think the best course of action is shutting everything off - be it our devices or our brain, meditating till ideas just wash away in the dark. "Simply breathe in and out, forget the dramatic tides and just be."
But what of those cathartic releases that we can only experience if we wallow in our thoughts and our personal experiences? What of the tidal crashes that erode cliffs into beautiful shores from which we can enjoy the ocean so that we can see it's not such a scary monstrous thing?
There's lots of talk about mindfulness, of this benefit of taking time to let our thoughts free flow in - and out - of our line of awareness. I think this helps us create a scale for observing experience so that we don't sink from giving relatively unimportant things too much weight; but I think there's value in plunging into our dramas, too, chasing our thoughts and indulging in them, because the stories, shallow in the existentialist scheme of things, keep us afloat.
Experiences, I find, always increase in their value when we take a moment to plunge deep and wallow - "indulge in an unrestrained way in (something that creates a pleasurable sensation)." Sometimes we get through our lines too fast, the scene ends and we move on to the next without realizing this is all happening "live" - right now and only now. Wallowing allows us to to look back, knowing now what we wish we knew then, that what we experienced - whether good or bad - is never to be experienced again in quite the same way.
As a storytelling animal, I am tempted to string together a tale of my doings and re-tell it to myself and to others. It gives me a clear line to follow, even when it's crooked or faded. Most of us are like this.
We all want to indulge in our story and its arcs. (It's what gave rise to status updates, I'm sure.) It places us somewhere, when the everywhere is hard to figure out. It lets us feel we are directing when the acting gets tough. It gives us the lead rather than the inconsequential role of a prop in the background.
I do feel a constant tension, though: While I am urged to plunge into life, busy with acting and stage managing my complicated play, I'm also increasingly and undoubtedly reminded of the curtain.
There's a space where there's some comfort to be found, though - and I get there by walking for extended periods of time.
During my trips of walking and wallowing, (with a soundtrack playing as a backdrop to my internal drama,) I finally get to wallow in my experience. I invite nostalgia to take me to my bittersweet past and I let worries and hopes take me to those "somedays." I get out of the Now despite being incredibly present in a sea of people.
And I think this keeps me sane. It lets me cry over banalities when I've been too busy to cry and it lets me turn things over in my head until they lose meaning and I no longer feel like wallowing. Maybe that's what Boethius was getting at.
Every time I walk, though, I hit a wall eventually - that curtain; the dreaded fourth wall when I catch myself narrating and the illusion (and truth) is revealed; the embankment that keeps out the waters until reality spills over: That really, it's all kind of.. small in relation to that immense "story" we too often think too little about - the story in which ours are only a chapter or a line, perhaps a pause between typos, a drop of ink in an unfathomable ocean.
But the wheel keeps turning, I guess. My walks tend to eventually remind me that I'm really just on a hamster wheel like everyone else, getting nowhere really, however slowly or quickly I go. It's a bitter pill to swallow but the best I can do is use the knowledge as consolation. It's easier to navigate the ocean with a turbine. The alternative is getting swallowed up.
But what of those cathartic releases that we can only experience if we wallow in our thoughts and our personal experiences? What of the tidal crashes that erode cliffs into beautiful shores from which we can enjoy the ocean so that we can see it's not such a scary monstrous thing?
There's lots of talk about mindfulness, of this benefit of taking time to let our thoughts free flow in - and out - of our line of awareness. I think this helps us create a scale for observing experience so that we don't sink from giving relatively unimportant things too much weight; but I think there's value in plunging into our dramas, too, chasing our thoughts and indulging in them, because the stories, shallow in the existentialist scheme of things, keep us afloat.
Experiences, I find, always increase in their value when we take a moment to plunge deep and wallow - "indulge in an unrestrained way in (something that creates a pleasurable sensation)." Sometimes we get through our lines too fast, the scene ends and we move on to the next without realizing this is all happening "live" - right now and only now. Wallowing allows us to to look back, knowing now what we wish we knew then, that what we experienced - whether good or bad - is never to be experienced again in quite the same way.
wallow (v.) Old English wealwian "to roll," from PIE root *wel- "to turn, revolve," with derivatives referring to curved, enclosing objects (e.g. volvox - "genus of fresh-water algae" with Sanskrit cognates, valate, "turns round," ulvam "womb, vulva"). Figurative sense of "to plunge and remain in some state or condition" is attested from early 13c.We should roll in our thoughts every once in a while - roll around like children in the mud before an uninhibited skinny dip or pants-down getaway. We should strive to find the time to sentimentalize, over-complicate, patheticize (new word) our experiences and our telling of them so that we can infuse them with the meaning - and the value - we long to find in life, in general.
As a storytelling animal, I am tempted to string together a tale of my doings and re-tell it to myself and to others. It gives me a clear line to follow, even when it's crooked or faded. Most of us are like this.
We all want to indulge in our story and its arcs. (It's what gave rise to status updates, I'm sure.) It places us somewhere, when the everywhere is hard to figure out. It lets us feel we are directing when the acting gets tough. It gives us the lead rather than the inconsequential role of a prop in the background.
I do feel a constant tension, though: While I am urged to plunge into life, busy with acting and stage managing my complicated play, I'm also increasingly and undoubtedly reminded of the curtain.
There's a space where there's some comfort to be found, though - and I get there by walking for extended periods of time.
During my trips of walking and wallowing, (with a soundtrack playing as a backdrop to my internal drama,) I finally get to wallow in my experience. I invite nostalgia to take me to my bittersweet past and I let worries and hopes take me to those "somedays." I get out of the Now despite being incredibly present in a sea of people.
And I think this keeps me sane. It lets me cry over banalities when I've been too busy to cry and it lets me turn things over in my head until they lose meaning and I no longer feel like wallowing. Maybe that's what Boethius was getting at.
I get to process the thoughts in my head, afford them some credence and value for a time, before I whisk myself away onto the next scene or let their fabricated meaning fall away in a meditative moment. After all, it's about moving on by walking away a victor over our thoughts. (Though, I admit it feels better to give them a fighting chance every once in a while, than to win by always idly standing by in peaceful resistance until they just go away.)
- roll (v.) c. 1300 "turn over and over, move by rotating"; late 14c. as "to move (something) by turning it over and over;" from Old French roeller "wheel round," from Latin rotula, diminutive of rota "wheel".
- walk (n.) c. 1200, "a tossing, rolling;" mid-13c., Meaning "manner of action, way of living" is from 1580s; hence walk of life (1733). "easy victory," 1838, such as one that happens in the absence of competitors, when the solitary starter, being obliged to complete the event, can traverse the course at a walk. Transferred sense of "anything accomplished with great ease" is attested from 1902.
Every time I walk, though, I hit a wall eventually - that curtain; the dreaded fourth wall when I catch myself narrating and the illusion (and truth) is revealed; the embankment that keeps out the waters until reality spills over: That really, it's all kind of.. small in relation to that immense "story" we too often think too little about - the story in which ours are only a chapter or a line, perhaps a pause between typos, a drop of ink in an unfathomable ocean.
But the wheel keeps turning, I guess. My walks tend to eventually remind me that I'm really just on a hamster wheel like everyone else, getting nowhere really, however slowly or quickly I go. It's a bitter pill to swallow but the best I can do is use the knowledge as consolation. It's easier to navigate the ocean with a turbine. The alternative is getting swallowed up.
swallow (v.) Old English swelgan "swallow, imbibe, absorb." Old High German swelahan "to swallow," German schwelgen "to revel"), probably from PIE root *swel- (1) "to eat, drink". Sense of "consume, destroy" is attested from mid-14c. Meaning "to accept without question" is from 1590s.
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