I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Saturday Reflections, I take time out to reflect.
When I was in my twenties, I felt tired all of the time. I worked as a software engineer and it was difficult, mentally taxing work. I did it in a male-dominated setting where I always questioned my competence and right to be there (as did many of the men).
When I was newly pregnant with my first child, my then-husband and I went on a trip to Yosemite with my cousin, an energetic man my own age. I was so tired and nauseated all day long at that time. My cousin asked me, “what do you like to do with your free time?”
“Sleep,” I said. Shocked at my answer, he just laughed, but I wasn’t joking.
My then-husband used to kid me that I was in training for the sleep olympics, because I slept so much, when I was pregnant, and when I wasn’t.
Lassitude and languor
Yesterday I wrote about the fantasy of acquisition and how I’m trying to put it down. I’m envisioning for myself a new identity — not just an aesthetic — the mountain grandma, someone so autonomous and independent that she would feel at home living in a remote (but luxurious and comfortable) mountain cabin by herself or maybe with a couple cats and a dog.
Today I thought to read about Roland Barthes’ lectures on the neutral, and I came across the idea of the will-to-possess which can be countered by weariness, a shift away from will to non-will, a letting go.
Barthes gave a series of lectures at the Collège de France in 1977 and 1978; these were later published as The Neutral. Barthes’ neutral is intended to counteract the binaries that we regularly confront — gender binaries, noise and aggression vs sleep and silence, tactfulness vs imposition. Barthes sought to characterize his idea of the neutral with a series of figures, different approaches to escaping the binary conflicts and oppositions of ordinary life.
The idea of weariness as a good thing — as an antidote to the will-to-possess — this pleases me and attracts me.
But Barthes was lecturing in French and the actual term he used was la lassitude. I think that translating it to the English word lassitude might better capture what he was trying to get at.
Lassitude is defined as “a condition of weariness or debility: fatigue” or “a condition characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit: languor.”
Languor may be even better, at least how I understand what Barthes was getting at from my cursory review. The Cambridge Dictionary defines languor as a “pleasant mental or physical tiredness or lack of activity.” It suggests pleasant inertia and a lack of urgency towards doing anything. Merriam-Webster defines it as “weakness or weariness of body or mind,” or “listless indolence or inertia.”
Languor and lassitude can be antidotes to Byung-Chul Han’s achievement society, in which you must constantly drive yourself towards goals imposed by your culture — get healthier, make more money, build a bigger audience, gain social prestige, find a partner.
I like the idea of approaching my daily life activities with languor. Especially because it is so hot this summer.
Han’s tiredness vs Barthes’ lassitude
Right after the surgery I had in April, I wrote of Byung-Chul Han’s idea of fundamental tiredness (riffing off of Peter Handke’s ideas in Essay on Tiredness). Handke proposes that there’s a form of tiredness in which there is less “I” in the world — “more of less of me” — and more room for the world itself and the Others in it. He proposes “we-tiredness” set against the self-centered “I-tiredness” or solitary tiredness destroys the world. We-tiredness makes one smaller and also more accessible and open to the world.
Han’s fundamental tiredness and Handke’s we-tiredness inspire and allow spirit and intellect to emerge:
Tiredness enables the human being to experience singular calm [Gelassenheit], serene not-doing. It is not a state in which the senses languish or grow dull. Rather, it rouses a special kind of visibility. Accordingly, Handke speaks of “candid tiredness,” which grants access to long and slow forms that elude short and fast hyperattention… For Handke, deep tiredness rises to become a form of salvation, a form of rejuvenation. It brings back a sense of wonder into the world: “The tired Odysseus won the love of Nausicaä. Tiredness makes you younger than you have ever been…. Everything becomes extraordinary in the tranquillity of tiredness.
Could tiredness, languor, lassitude, weariness be a way of approaching the world with greater spirituality, less attention to self, more openness to experience and wisdom?
Watching Anna Karenina
I’ve been watching the 1977 ten-episode BBC miniseries version of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I began to read the novel and had a hard time engaging with it, so sought out the most novel-faithful version to watch.
Each episode moves slowly, and I have to bring a languorous attitude when I sit down to watch. After I finish it, I’d like to watch some more modern film versions such as the 2012 movie version by Joe Wright with Keira Knightly and Jude Law, in order to compare, to experience the freneticism that audiences demand in their filmed entertainment.
a languorous Saturday
Today I’m going to approach everything I do with languor — with an unhurriedness, with a lazy presence, with an opening to up to what is happening and what the world offers rather than puffing my self up and making my self some sort of machinery.