"If you do want to be attentive, engaged, and simply human, the only choice, really, is whether you’re going to be speaking or listening." I love that you end this meaningful piece with a challenge and a reminder of our own agency. Because while we may be one way or another by nature, we can change - as you've said and others as well. As years pass, I find myself maybe just as sensitive but wholly less reactive. . .more willing to ask myself "did that person intend a cut with that comment or did I understand wrong, etc etc" and it's made this sensitive soul much more enjoyable. Your essays are always so packed and thoughtful - they feel peripatetic, as if we've just walked and talked the park together.
"Even though sensitivity might in fact be a dial, with some people more squishy and other people more sturdy, I doubt that you have the ability to control where you land on the spectrum."
I may have misunderstood what you mean by this, but if I have not, then this is very wrong. I live with a (now very retired) Swedish army officer who for the longest time was directly involved in the training of conscripts doing their compulsory military service. There were indeed some 'squishy' people his job was to toughen up -- and that can be done -- but the larger job was to take people who weren't very sensitive at all and train them to a certain level of sensitivity -- enough that they could make discerning judgments as part of an assumed guerilla war (against the Russians). So, wherever you start on the dial, you can move? and perhaps a great deal?
Perhaps a cliche, but our weaknesses are our strengths, and vice versa. The sensitive souls perceive things invisible to the indifferent, and the indifferent are not constrained by the fears and injuries of the sensitive. People are often largely shaped by adulthood, but sometimes the passage of significant time can modify one’s disposition. I’ve met sensitive souls who have sharpened over time, and brusque personalities who have softened. Thanks Charles, your work always takes me on a journey of thought, introspection, and enjoyment.
"If you do want to be attentive, engaged, and simply human, the only choice, really, is whether you’re going to be speaking or listening." I love that you end this meaningful piece with a challenge and a reminder of our own agency. Because while we may be one way or another by nature, we can change - as you've said and others as well. As years pass, I find myself maybe just as sensitive but wholly less reactive. . .more willing to ask myself "did that person intend a cut with that comment or did I understand wrong, etc etc" and it's made this sensitive soul much more enjoyable. Your essays are always so packed and thoughtful - they feel peripatetic, as if we've just walked and talked the park together.
"Even though sensitivity might in fact be a dial, with some people more squishy and other people more sturdy, I doubt that you have the ability to control where you land on the spectrum."
I may have misunderstood what you mean by this, but if I have not, then this is very wrong. I live with a (now very retired) Swedish army officer who for the longest time was directly involved in the training of conscripts doing their compulsory military service. There were indeed some 'squishy' people his job was to toughen up -- and that can be done -- but the larger job was to take people who weren't very sensitive at all and train them to a certain level of sensitivity -- enough that they could make discerning judgments as part of an assumed guerilla war (against the Russians). So, wherever you start on the dial, you can move? and perhaps a great deal?
But perhaps I am misunderstanding you altogether.
Perhaps a cliche, but our weaknesses are our strengths, and vice versa. The sensitive souls perceive things invisible to the indifferent, and the indifferent are not constrained by the fears and injuries of the sensitive. People are often largely shaped by adulthood, but sometimes the passage of significant time can modify one’s disposition. I’ve met sensitive souls who have sharpened over time, and brusque personalities who have softened. Thanks Charles, your work always takes me on a journey of thought, introspection, and enjoyment.