A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet, Self-Reliance, 1841
I love this quote. Even though I do get some small comfort from consistency myself, I find that it is a foolish comfort most of the time.
This bit from Emerson comes up for me today because there is a person on the periphery of my life who is consistently, and I mean one hundred percent, consistently negative and insulting. It’s amazing.
Hurtful at first. Then, not so much. So consistent are the insults that I can do little more than laugh now. So predictable. So shallow. So small-minded. And he thinks he’s very suave and sophisticated. He fancies himself quite the poet and storyteller and general life-guru. And yet his remarks to me could be computer generated.
I’m amazed that I could be hurt by people so easily when I was younger. When there was a need for them and their approval. It was a tough time, to be so needy, to be so vulnerable.
Life and experience and time seem to have converged to not so much protect me from people who want to hurt, but simply to give me a different plane to experience it on. Something deeper, something that moves quicker, farther, faster. I don’t wallow in or feel the sting. Oh I know there are people who can smash me. But I doubt anyone can simply throw a dart, or hurl an insult, and get the reaction they want (and need?) any more.
Doesn’t stop some from trying – which is, in itself, another story and one I may find worth exploring.
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