No Big Deal

When I was fresh out of school, and a student of literature (in the 1970s) I learned to ‘bump up’ my writing style, to impress my teachers. 

Since those days, I have been trying to simplify my language, in order to communicate more directly.

Now, I would say that overblown, abstract language is laden with ego – designed to impress, score points, secure a place on some imaginary ladder.  (This little list here is itself a bit rhetorical - and so, I suspect, suspect!)

When I catch myself at it, I can see that these tricks are also designed to disguise any uncertainty I may be feeling - and to obscure the true source of my observations, which is - as ever - in my feelings.

The urge to impress is a sure sign of ego. 

As with many ego tactics, there is a double whammy effect here, for when I inflate my language to impress you, I am betraying myself (my true self has no need to impress) - and also arousing ego reactions in my readers, whether you are impressed or irritated, or a mixture of the two.

A helpful guideline for staying out of Egoland is ‘no big deals’.

My ego likes to make a big deal of everything – to ‘make something of it’. It is forever sniffing out problems, issuing me with ultimatums and deadlines, generating stress and dread, and insisting that things are URGENT and IMPORTANT!

It feels like Ego uses lots of exclamation marks. And adrenaline, come to think of it, is like exclamation marks in biochemical form.

Developing these Rough Guides, slowly transferring passages from my journals onto this website (or 'blook'), with its different sections and essay format, has freed me from the need to nail things down and construct some great arc of an argument, with which to try to impress a publisher.   It has enabled me to remain closer to my original thoughts and feelings, as I write.

In other words, no big deals.

There is a patchwork quality to this writing – and yet (I hope) it is also all of a piece.

(see Patchwork Curtains)