Impossible, difficult, easy. This is the archetypal road in life, bumpy but exciting.
Can the baby drive a stick shift? An automatic, maybe—an outside chance. A stick shift, no. The pedal work is out of reach. Actually, some automobile models are designed for very little drivers. But difficulties remain.
What’s easy is “physically easy.” The baby driving the stick shift along Route 66 is relaxed and happy, from head to toes. Do you know how relaxed are the toes of a relaxed baby? Wonder of wonders. But the easeful state only exists because the baby “doesn’t think difficult.” No doubts, no fears, no suppositions, no preconceived ideas, no excuses, no questions, no pretzels-in-the-pysche (or as Sigmund Freud used to say, “keine Brezeln in der Psyche”).
Easy brain, easy driving. It’s in the Highway Code.
A situation requires that you do something. Let’s say you’re taking language classes and your teacher asks you to translate a certain phrase from your mother tongue to the foreign one, the alien, the different, the unknown. Your very first reaction might be to think, to feel, and to say out loud: “This is difficult.” Or it might be your second reaction, after you make a feeble half-assed attempt (“halber Arsch,” sagt Sigmund) at a translation. If you try once, twice, ten times, a thousand times and you can’t manage the task, perhaps you may be right in saying that it’s difficult. But if you try zero times or maybe a single buttock (“halber Arsch”), then you don’t really mean, “This task requires quite a lot of expertise, which I lack.” You mean, “I’m being asked to leave my comfort zone. I have emotions, a history, an ingrained fear; very irrational to you, but very real to me, thank you very much! Your request pushes a button, triggers a trigger, triggers a Tiger. This is difficult!”
I’ve witnessed this dozens of times in my teaching career. The amazing thing is that, immediately after saying “This is difficult,” the student goes on to perform the task pretty well, flawlessly even. To my way of thinking, it proves that the statement wasn’t about “the thing itself,” the task, the objective situation. And, also to my way of thinking, it proves that “to acknowledge is to evacuate.”
To share your discomfort with a friendly witness lessens or dissipates the discomfort.
In Sigmund-lingo: Anerkennen heißt evakuieren, und ich spreche kein Deutsch, das ist alles aus dem Internet.
There’s the thing, and there’s our perspective on the thing. Our perspective feels so concrete, so embodied in us that we confuse it with the thing. We become sure, sure, sure that we’re thinking and talking about the thing, when in fact we’re thinking and talking about our own selves. We sometimes have a flash of clarity by proxy. “This tax form is impossible to fill,” someone says. “Idiotic bureaucracy!” And we look at the damn form, and it’s pretty straightforward, and the instructions are clear, and all you have to do is to write in a number and check a box. And we understand that our friend has amalgamated his or her deep-seated and long-held emotions with the form, the task, the appliance, the musical instrument, the medical procedure, the social obligation, the—well, you know what I’m talking about.
The thing doesn’t have to be you, and you don’t have to be the thing.
Sigmund, sing your song!
“Das Ding muss nicht du sein,
und du musst nicht das Ding sein.”
I’ll do a numbered list for you: “The Seven Habits of Highly Confusing Geminis.”
Your mind plays a role.
Some things are “literally impossible.” Don’t confuse them with things that are “not-literally impossible.”
Man or woman not yet born for whom EVERYTHING IS EASY.
“Things change.” “You change.” “Your relationship with things change.”
Not every numbered list is useful.
Just because it’s easy for you it doesn’t mean that “it” is easy.
Pedrito, you’ve made it to the end of another blog post! Auf Wiedersehn!
©2021, Pedro de Alcantara