Well, in general, you have to think about what your goals are--there's an old saying in some old wise culture somewhere that suggests if you want to find water, you're not going to get there by digging 100 shallow holes. You have to dig one, and go deep.
But if you want a lot of topsoil, well, then you dig differently.
I think we're largely too distracted in this culture. (Umm. . . what was I talking about?)
We are pulled in too many directions. The consumer-based nature of our culture multiplies our desires, and encourages us to believe that a quick, easy, superficial engagement with any thing or person or idea is enough--or should be. If it takes too long or is confusing, that's not our fault.
So, since that mode strikes me as dominant, I say: resist. Dig deeper. Get bored with something, even, but stay with it. (Walter Benjamin says "Boredom is the dream-bird that hatches the egg of experience. " For whatever that slightly hallucinogenic thought is worth. The point I see in it is that boredom has a kind of fecundity, possibility.)
At least carefully examine your reasons for wanting to spread out.
[Oh, here's a little bit more of that Benjamin thing--from an essay in Illuminations about the art of storytelling, but I think we should at least consider the possibility that it's relevant to any art:
"This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places - the activies that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening [i.e., I say: paying attention and internalizing something in a deep way] is lost and the comminity of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained." |
