The Willingness to Walk Away

July 14, 2006

Eric Sink (via Craig Newmark) isolates what he believes is the key to negotiating prowess -- the willingness to walk away. As a few commentors point out, there are many other things to build on that foundation, but never ever perceiving oneself as helpless or even needy is the bottom line. As a genial former husband of warm memory was accustomed to chant like a mantra in the face of every dilemma:

I am not without resources.

When the Good&Happy blog began, a backlog of ideas here at Chez Dilys demanded an airing. In addition, the rowdy days of RatherGate, and risibly diminishing Episcopalian plausibility, made some of us want to smoke out and dance with our natural allies.

All that has changed.

An encouraging number of natural allies, compatible friends, and sharp-tongued interlocutors have by now made their appearance here, or off-blog. The choreography remains to be notated.

One person's personal Episcopal dilemma is solved, and its playing-out on the larger stage is generating predictable comments in loops larded with "be nice, now." Whether the starved and embattled stalwarts will ever get off the dime / sixpence, remains to be seen. One convert to an Ancient Church wrote recently:

If the (American Episcopal) General convention is now of academic interest only, I think you'll find as the years pass that you'll feel about it as you feel about a Little League game in Boise, Idaho, or the meeting of the town council of Pensacola, Florida.

In a similar vein, the direction of the little portion of the blogosphere I frequent is wavering. The usually-clear are stating their cases with less precision than usual, and the supercilious ad hominem savagery with which commentors are dismissed has become, I cite a personal threshhold, distasteful and counterproductive. Light is best, heat is manageable. Cold self-regarding modern prejudice sported by the blinkered ill-educated, begging to have their brilliance acknowledged, not worth electrifying a screen for.

So it's time personally to move back and onward into one's small impact on the molecules-and-atoms space, from negligible impact on The Discussion of What EVER.

As Robert Frost intuited, the game of musical chairs can be called at any moment; at the end of the day, literally, it pays to have one's personal supply of oil for the lamp purchased and stored, to be positioned for self-reliance. The oil is not only 401(K)'s and a network of the intelligent and productive -- it had better also be generic optimism about one's flexibility and vision, and fearless faith in the goodness of life. Whatever it takes, the freedom to walk away is golden.

Good&Happy will remain open to notate the occasional interesting source or meditate on an idea, a conversation with ourselves to be had only intermittently, with or without eavesdroppers.

Dilys herself is just now lumbering over the sunset hill.

There's a note:

Thanks to everyone for the river experience.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

I fully understand a waning devotion to blogging. Stay in touch, Dilys. I'll stop by now and then. You've had a fortunate influence on me.

[dilys]

Thanks Richard. And vice versa.

[mrsdarwin]

I'm sorry to see you depart the blogsphere, if only because I'll miss your inimitable and somewhat opaque :) style. I hope you'll still visit around.

[Alice]

I'll miss you too. Can't help thinking molecules and atoms space is a little bit neglected round the nets these days, though. Be happy!

[Molly Gordon]

I love the above reference to your "inimitable and somewhat opaque" style. It is so close to part of what I feel when I read you. Most of what I feel is pure delight, especially when you go on a bit (as short and opaque can leave this bear of little brain frustrated). I so love how your mind works, and as to your use of language -- delicious.

Perhaps another alter ego or three will weight in from time to time, spelling Dilys (oh dear), free to be erratic and periodic thanks to her lumbering (yet oh, so gracious) departure.

Fairwell!

[Kevin]

Dammit! Another link to delete from the blogroll.