A Momentary Taste of Being

Silence the clatter of judgment in your own head. Judgment is the noise you make at night to scare away the burglar who is downstairs before you go down to find that everything is all right. Judgment is our own self-doubt crying out, saying, "Make sure I'm still important. Make sure I still matter. " By judging we claim control, power, certainty. But what we get when we judge is a certain fixity of viewpoint, a certain hardening of the lines of who and what we are, a certain diminishment of joy. Because when we judge and exclude harmless and beautiful things, we close off access to the treasures they contain. Treasures countless others have tasted and known, but which we find "beneath us." When we judge a person, we set up a barrier, a line neither can fully communicate across. We gaze into a mirror and exaggerate and demonize what we do not like about ourselves. So what instead? Instead, let us, each one accept what comes to us...

An online friend and I have what I hope is a congenial disagreement over the relative merits of the two broad categories of writing featured in the title of this post.  Like most men (if I'm to believe the polls and studies) he finds the world of nonfiction more substantive, or perhaps more comfortable, or still again perhaps, more interesting and lively than the world of nonfiction. Naturally, this is the source of our disagreement.  I find the world of nonfiction useful, but apart from a few scattered books and one whole category (religion and philosophy) relatively uninspiring.  And when I cast an eye over what remains to us from the Canon and the great works of the past, what I discover is that except for foundational works and the category identified above, nonfiction perforce supersedes itself and doesn't really enter the realm of the eternally readable.  That is nonfiction as a genre tends not to last beyond its usefullness for the age.  There are many ...