To speak or...

When the subject came to banking, I took a mental step back. You were clearly strong in your conviction that the big banks deserved some pity;  I was convinced you were wrong, radically wrong on every point general and particular. But I danced around to avoid letting on what I thought; what's the point of rebuttal, I wondered. No minds would be changed and the party would become polarized, and less convivial.

The week before, in New Haven, visiting novelist Colum McCann (known for helping children in difficult circumstances tell their stories) came across a man shoving a woman to the ground. The woman refused to accept the writer's offer of  help, that is, to call the police, and he walked on, only to be punched from behind in the head by the man, so that he fell to the ground and smashed his face. Perhaps he should just have called 911, he speculated after the fact.

Running this morning, I reviewed just what I should have said, as Mr McCann must have reviewed many times what he should have done. 'I ought to have...' is the grammatical formula just waiting to used in these circumstance. The real problem, in my experience, is not that we wouldn't speak or act, but that we haven't thought through our responses, usually because we're ambivalent: the value of a honest argument vs the risk of disrupting the evening for everyone; the scruples about preempting personal choice vs the violation of human dignity (and safety).

The world has no scruples about putting us in difficult spots. Indeed, these situations often arise at such awkward moments that we can imagine a kind of glee at our discomfiture at having to pick which is good and which is better. It's often an occasion by occasion decision but it can be guided (or misled) by principles and is influenced (or protected) by inertia and social timidity. What exactly to do stubbornly refuses to come into mental focus (much like this post as I write it now.)

But isn't this really just our part of our on-going conversation with the multiplicity of Others who inhabit our common space. We interact with each Other on many levels, each of our many agendas and value systems overlapping in the space between us. Conversation is often a complex navigation on a three-dimensional (at minimum) chess board. Absolute prescriptions just don't do justice to the richness of that space between me and you, even if you are misguided or brutal.

Still, the gift of time is to force us to decide or extract unwilling decisions from us. However intricately intertwined the considerations, time cuts the knot. 'Look if you like, but you have to leap,' wrote Auden; and opening night is on a different plane from even the dress rehearsal.

I admire what McCann did, though he might have been more canny, and don't admire what I did. I'm not going to elusive and hard-to-pin-down anymore. I'm going to be a presence.