You, Me, and My Banshee of A Neighbor
Some lessons on grace and gratitude
We all know people resembling what Lewis Carroll (in his A Miscellany) calls
.. irrepressible conversationalists, who are found in every branch of Society ..
Must know one or two at least? During unfortunate encounters in the wild with these hooligans of society I readily recall the infamous Ricky Gervais quote, that being stupid and being dead are similar in their effect because you don’t know that you’re stupid, or dead, yet others are in pain because of it. Yeah. That happens.
Anyways here’s an agonizing tale with lovely morals.
Iam plagued by my neighbor’s verbal diarrhea. She embodies the empty vessels make much noise notion. I wonder if she’d swell up like that aunt in harry potter and then burst, because she might not be able to stomach the internal deluge of toxicity and that might lead to sepsis and thenceforth (most probably) the projected swelling and bursting — if she keeps quiet for half a day.
Congratulations are in order. I was morose for many a celebrate dumbness day° whence I became angsty over tactless, churlish remarks carried by the wind over the wall from the matronly lady’s kitchen to mine; but as the tide turns I turned out to be vividly apathetic to her existence, and at practiced ease with the continued clamorous discourses.
And I take heart. It’s not only for producing two half chewed drafts of Lessons from a dusty roman emperor, Golden words that hit me in my face etc. over the past one and half years that I studied the first six pages of Meditations. (Six pages of the C.E. 171–175 book is a riot to digest and might take me five more years.) It’s also to acknowledge that I’ve learnt something.
I’ve learnt that the value of your attention is directly proportional to the object of attention. Technically from that I derived ‘Focus on dumb, you’re dumb’. (°ergo the celebrate dumbness day mentioned above)
I’ve also learnt, that you can learn something or the other from anyone. Which means you can learn good things, bad, ugly, graceful, peculiar, worldview altering, beautiful, morbid, abstrusest of things — from people. The author, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius elucidates that you must be receptive and observe the transpiring events to be able to extract the lesson being relayed, and decide, like a wise ass, what you wanna do with the lesson?
Parallely also teach yourself to be humble enough to acknowledge the gift, and thank the giver. The first paragraphs in Meditations are awash with glowing gratefulness from the emperor towards his loving grandfather. The next pages hint at variety comrades who’ve taught him what entails ungraceful behavior and his decisioning to refrain from picking up those traits. Readily you start imagining that cerulean horizon spanning out from olive-cradled marbled vistas, staring at which this wise Stoic statesman revealed in his personal notebook — the soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
That’s why I said, I take heart. I’m very good at it too. In the case of my banshee of a neighbor, frankly, it’s not in my control. I must duck and run into thick walled rooms whenever I feel my emotions overcoming my senses. I do wonder, how boring her life must be if all she can do is harp about mine. In any case, I can’t really comment if she is truly dumb, but I can conclude with confidence that I definitely am if I choose to think about it. That’s a doozie, yes. Moreover, and get a load of this — in recent times I’ve started feeling thankful in my unguarded moments, for her. This new me would feel like a betrayal of character to the old me. Usually I’m visited by these quaint thoughts when I register wisps of her raucous yapping and just to remind you afresh — these are similar moments during which I used to see red since moving in beside this residential circus of a family. Any which way, now I am rather thankful to her, for making me teach myself all the above. I learnt, through my long and not-enough-distant relationship with her, what it means to be graceful. Here’s an example.
In spring the mulberry tree fruited which inevitably brought gangs of bees and birds and semi tall kids flocking to it right outside my garden gate. I watched with rapt attention from the terrace as my neighbor periodically kept rushing out of her gate resembling a bit too much that witchy hag of lore who chases kids and hurls sticks and words at them for doing exactly what kids across millennia have done. As I watched I also noted that the humanesque monkeys, in their attempt to harvest berries, were freely trampling on my delicate Indian rose bushes below the tree. This then, was the situation, which caused me to pose the question to myself — should I be like that neighbor in hilarious agony in my upcoming years?
Decisions, decisions. To be prudent, to harbour good judgement, to be graceful inside and out, to become kind in thoughts, to walk on one’s own path and to live, and learn, and to let live.
The world is a funny place.
To conclude, here’s a wonderful moral from Carroll from his epic Alice in Wonderland —
Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.
