Caveat Lector

Hey, nobody has to justify their possession of a mobile phone to me. None of my business. Next time I’ll keep my surprise to myself.

I don’t know, though, that the Japanese really have much on the West in terms of two-bodies-one-mind thought. I would have to do some serious skimming to bolster my point, but my instinct is that there’s plenty of gushing stuff about the communion of minds and souls in Western lit.

I still don’t buy it. Sorry, Jonathon; I enjoyed the information you presented, but I just don’t think your ideal is, well, ideal.

If I were in a grunchy mood, I would be tempted to ask just who is expected to read whose mind. Not to mention why. Is said mind-reading thought to be fully reciprocal? I rather think there’s meat to those questions. I’m not, however, in a grunchy mood at the moment (and a sigh of relief envelops my corner of the blogsphere…), so I’ll leave that investigation to others for the nonce. Reserving the right to come back to it later.

I simply find value in the act of sharing. It’s good that it takes effort to share, that human communication is explicit rather than implicit. It’s good that there is a line between what is shared and what is not; it makes shared things more valuable, that they are the result of a deliberate decision to share.

Nor am I entirely enamored of the suggested near-identity of two souls able to communicate without words. (Check me on this, but that’s what the lovers-and-spouses-only restriction communicates to me.) Who really wants to marry the reflection in their mirror? More to the point, who wants to marry someone who wants to marry the reflection in their mirror? Yick.

Okay, that’s overstating the case a bit. Still. There is value in difference, too—and even more value in learning to live with and appreciate difference. The friction between minds, the empty spaces, the honest efforts to understand… these are not to be despised.

Maybe it’d be easier sometimes if David and I really could read each other’s minds. Maybe. Be a lot less enriching for both of us, though, because we wouldn’t really be two minds anymore—would we?

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote what I think are good bits about introverted marriages. We picked a Rilke bit to read at our wedding, in fact. (Oops, here come the Copyright Police. Oh, well.) Like me, Rilke discounted the possibility of the “marriage of true minds.” He’s the first I ever read, though, to see value in the alternatives. As I do.