[weltenwellen]

Hanif Abdurraqib, The Crown Ain't Worth Much

[mournfulroses]

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, from a diary entry featured in The Selected Diaries of Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius

[weltenwellen]

Franny Choi, from “Perihelion: A History of Touch”, Soft Science

[weltenwellen]

Li-Young Lee, from “From Blossoms”, Rose

[seraphinesaintclair]

Richard Le Gallienne, “To A Mountain Spring”

[xphaiea]

clay figures from Bab edh-Dhra, near the Dead Sea

[metamorphesque]

We Have Not Long To Love, Tennessee Williams

[hedgehog-moss]

mademoiselle hedgehog, what are your thoughts on ambition? it seems like such a harsh cutthroat drive, but at the same time, shouldn't we all have something that pushes us to be our best selves? is it possible to find a soft and gentle ambition within ourselves, like a slowly rising tide?

Thank you for this very interesting ask! I’d never really reflected on this, but my gut feeling is that ambition has done more ill than good in the world. If I were sitting my high school philosophy exam and drew this topic, my opening quote would be Minerva from the opera Daphné "How you torment yourselves, ambitious mortals—desperate and frantic—enemies of leisure, enemies of yourselves." But I like your water imagery—maybe you naturally have tides carrying you towards higher goals while I am stagnant water—the word stagnant comes from stagnum, a pond, I don’t mind it. Maybe some people are seas and enjoy tidal rising while others are ponds and enjoy pondering.

If I had to visualise a soft and gentle ambition I wouldn't picture a slow tide rising towards something greater but rather wavelets, setting small projects for myself that don’t disrupt too much (or for too long) the at-rest state that I am content with. (If I were not content with my at-rest state, then yes, a stronger, 'tidal' ambition would help change this situation, but even then I would tend to perceive this ambition as a necessary evil...) One such project could be learning a new language, which possibly fits your definition of a gentler kind of ambition ‘within ourselves’—but I don't know if I would see this as striving to be my best self. Am I a better version of myself if I spend my free time learning a language rather than doing a stagnant activity that doesn't rise towards a goal (like watching my animals live their lives, which makes me happy)?

If someone has an ambitious goal, say, writing a book, that they feel will bring something of value to themselves and/or the world at large, and the idle activities that take time away from this goal are of comparatively less value to them (or inherently less joyful or healthy—insert critique of smartphones here) then I would say ambition is a positive force that helps them better their life and their self. But I deeply value idleness and fruitless pursuits, I think they often bring us great joy and do no harm, and trying to infuse them with more ambition in the name of self-improvement can ruin them (like trying to master a hobby in order to monetise it).

At heart I am wary of ambition—of the way it is lauded as 'striving to be your best self' even when it brings us less joy, and is more detrimental to our health and the health of the world than being content with our current self and enjoying pondlike activities—idleness, contemplation, amateur unproductive hobbies. "Doing nothing is here intended as a positive proposal"—I just went in my idleness tag to fish out this Ruth Levitas quote—"Politicians may declare that ‘we need to do more and we need to do it faster’. The opposite is true. We need to do less, and we need to do it more slowly. Doing a lot more nothing, including sleeping, would reduce resource consumption, lower stress levels and enable social relations more conducive to dignity and grace…"

[hedgehog-moss]

That Baricco quote I reblogged yesterday about your life being a plaza rather than a road reminded me of this ask—I remember that when I first posted it, I received another anon who strongly disagreed with the idea that we shouldn't strive to better ourselves, or to be our best self, and associated it with complacency or laziness.

I've been thinking about it (yes, in the years since I got this message) and I think there was just a dissonance in the way we used words maybe, because that second anon equated learning new things with "bettering ourselves" and I don't, not really. What younger-me was trying to articulate in this post was that my unease with the idea of bettering yourself isn't a rejection of growth, just a rejection of a hierarchical view of growth. I was opposing the value system that says your self-worth increases the more you learn, or create, or master, or produce. It creates this kind of implicit ladder people imagine themselves climbing to ascend towards their "best self" and it links selfhood to motion, and entrenches the idea that goodness must be earned by doing. As a naturally idle person I've always resisted this idea.

To me saying that learning new skills =/= bettering yourself is just about unhooking curiosity or passion from self-surpassing. Because the latter notion just makes you an enemy of your present and past self, that you have to outperform, in a way? and this results in viewing idleness and rest and contented self-acceptance with suspicion—as laziness and complacency and lack of admirable striving. I understand that it's also a matter of temperament and not everyone will share my distrust of action as a path to meaning and worth, but as far as I'm concerned—to go back to my clumsy watery metaphor, a pond doesn't get better by getting wider or different, it gets richer by accumulating silt and sediment. Its value comes from what time deposits into it and how this settles within it, not how much it expands or changes. It's about self-enrichment through stillness and receptivity and reflection, not self-improvement via the surmounting of an insufficient present self and striving towards a better self. I think the first framing can give you a more gentle attitude to your present self. Selfhood should be a friendly continuity rather than a stressful contest—your future self isn't a better you, just a more richly-sedimented and calmly-settled you (hopefully).

Anyway, yesterday's quote got me thinking about this again and I agree with my past self (because I've been staying still this whole time clearly!), that ambition is unnecessary and there are beautiful lives to be lived not through motion, ambition and reinvention but through stillness and openness and presence—attuned to the world, curious, quiet, and whole.

[shisasan]

𝙹𝚞𝚕𝚢 𝟷, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 𝙺𝚊𝚏𝚔𝚊, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶-𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹

[ID: July 1. The wish for an unthinking, reckless solitude. To be face to face only with myself. END ID]

[ghostowlattic]

'A golden ram and a stone lion, unearthed from a tomb at the ancient archaeological site of Gonur Depe in Turkmenistan, dating back to 2400-1600 BC.'

[malojasnake]

— Sunrise, by Louise Glück

[havingapoemwithyou]

the origin of birds by Nicole Callihan

[misscromwellsmonocle]

Hero by Stuart Dunkel (*1952)

[thesorceresstemple]

Old traditional costume, Dagestan.

[metamorphesque]

— Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra — Joseph Lorusso, Playing Their Song —

[filmnoirsbian]

Spent tonight talking to a lovely married lesbian couple who have been together for roughly 10 years. They didn't meet until they were in their late 40s and mid 50s respectively, long after they had both given up on the idea of marriage at all--after decades spent thinking they'd never be able to legally get married, anyway. One of the women saw her wife at a coffeeshop one day, and realized she frequented it around the same time every week. So she went there at that time, every week, just hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Until finally one day they were standing close enough to strike up a conversation. I think these days, there's so much pressure to live your life as quickly as possible. To be kissed by a certain age. To have sex. To fall in love and get married and have kids. The older we get without having done these things, the more worried we become that we'll never do them at all. (And some of us won't, and that will be fine, and we will be happier for it.) But it's nice to be reminded sometimes, that there's no expiration date for falling in love. Maybe you'll find the love of your life on a dating app when you're in your early 20s. And maybe you'll find the love of your life when you think your loving days are over, admiring them from across a coffeeshop, hoping they come say hello.

[darkearthsuggestions]

I would press the morning like a flower- hold it hidden between slips of paper and let it out only when I knew it wouldn't rot away. All that light, all that time- I would ask it to stay with me, even as edges curled and blue faded, the whole sky stained on a crinkled page. But I cannot do anything of the sort. Each dawn dances only once, and I am glad I cannot stop her, because I am weak, because I would. The light fades. The time crumbles. I watch the horizon with a collector's jealous eye. Another morning suspended in the dew. I cannot stop this. I shouldn't. I would. The morning falls away.