Aesthetic
Realism seminar:
The Fight between Boredom and Awareness in a Woman's
Mind
By Lynette Abel
It was 1933 and America was in the midst of the
Great Depression --over 13 million people were unemployed, families
had lost their homes. There were hundreds of thousands of men roaming
the country for work, people standing on long bread lines. President elect
Franklin Roosevelt had asked Frances Perkins to be his Secretary of Labor,
the first woman to hold a cabinet post. She said yes, but only if he agreed
to all the legislation she wanted, which was to become the basis for Roosevelt’s
New Deal program, including federal aid to states for unemployment relief,
public works to provide jobs, anbolition of child labor, establishing maximum
hours of work, minimum wages, and social security. Frances Perkins
had a great awareness of what was needed to bring immediate relief to hopeless
Americans, and what would protect their future.
Tonight I'll comment on aspects of her life, and what I learned about "The
Fight between Boredom and Awareness in a Woman's Mind."
1.
Where Does This Fight Begin?
In his preface to Self and World, Eli
Siegel explains:
To be bored by the world is
wearisome, but…it is a victory for the individual. We are in a fight
between being bored and being aroused. Being bored is a victory for
ubiquitous contempt. Interest is on the side of respect as one’s
bloodstream.
This fight corresponds to what Aesthetic
Realism shows is the large fight in everyone: between our desire to like
the world, see meaning in it, and another desire which dulls and weakens
our minds, to have contempt, to look down on other people.
As a child, I was excited about taking dance lessons, and because I couldn’t
decide which interested me more, I got to take both tap and ballet.
I loved listening to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and each time I heard
it, I became aware of new things--how violins and oboes could produce sounds
enabling you to visualize a duck, a wolf, a boy, and his grandfather.
But I remember too, often feeling painfully bored with every-thing, asking
my mother over and over, “What can I do?” and quickly dismissing suggestion,
after suggestion.
Growing up with 3 brothers and 2 sisters, I was competitive with them as
to most everything: who got to ride in the front seat of the car, who got
to see their television show, who got the remains of the fudge pan, etc.
feeling the big thing was what was coming to me. I was making choices
between wanting to have a keen awareness of things and what they deserved,
and wanting to dull things over and see myself as the only thing of consequence.
In the 6th grade before a holiday, each student exchanged names with another
and was to buy a $2 gift. I bought a box of 8 rolls of lifesavers for Joan—something
I thought she would love. Joan could not afford to buy me anything, and
gave me her beloved baton. I soon became aware she felt awful about parting
with it, and I insisted she take it back. I hadn’t really known before
then, that some people were so poor they couldn’t even afford $2.
This experience made me deeper, more thoughtful.
But I also could be contemptuously unaware of the feelings of others. "There
is a mix-up, because we want to see things and we want to protect ourselves
from seeing,” Mr. Siegel said in his lecture on awareness, “People do use
awareness not to be aware: that is, they watch out not to see too much.”
When I'd drive through an impoverished area of Alexandria, Virginia, and
see dilapidated shacks, instead of feeling compassion for the people living
in them, and outrage at this injustice, I callous-ly thought, "Why don't
they get a job." My desire "not to see too much," to be superior to others,
had big repercussions. I became increasingly immured in myself, and
fearful around other people.
Once, while at the Mt. Vernon Swim
Club, I wanted everyone to be aware of me. Wearing a colorful, Hawaiian
moo moo over my bathing suit, I thought it would be charming to spring
off the diving board with it on. But after jumping in, the moo moo
enveloped my head and I couldn’t breathe. Frantically struggling with it,
I finally ripped it off gasping for air—I almost drowned. Embarrassed and
shook up, I hadn't been aware of this consequence.
In High School, though I liked French, when I found I needed to study it--my
interest waned. And just weeks after I began taking Chemistry, I
felt “What could I possibly need it for?” More and more things I thought
I’d like, I was deciding I didn’t need. In an Aesthetic Realism class
years later, Eli Siegel explained:
Every person has a terrific desire
to be bored. Being bored is the same thing as trying to prove nothing
has done one any good. To be bored is to be a conqueror….Contempt
has been the key to many a dreary door.
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