Mechanical unhappiness, disorder, instability…
‘We are full of mechanical actions’.
Mechanical being. The will, the body, the mind, the soul: on autopilot.
Let the news, social media direct.
Or the people I live with every day, whose voices I hear and listen to, the conversations I hear and partake in.
The little griefs that show up every day, annoyances, pains.
‘Dans un homme qui sait vouloir…’
What I read walking into my room, peeking at the doorway (where the quote from Alain is posted on a sticky-note).
‘In a man (in a woman, in someone) who knows how to want…’
Do I know how to want?
At times. But most of the time no, I’m led by habit, mechanical manoeuvres (even the griefs, the bad thoughts).
We fall into a routine of something, that begins to play out to more or less the same tune, over and over and over.
Know how to want?
That is to know how to change; to be willing to do what you (or the mechanical part of you that clings to the safe and easy, the path of least resistance) — to be willing to do what you do not want to do (the higher part of you wants to, that part of you that knows that what’s difficult and painful is necesarry to growth).
Gray Haskins 