Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
On Resembling Oneself
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (February 12, 1910) : 27
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
To be amazingly characteristic of ourselves is almost the only thing that can be invariably counted on. It holds through everything, this tendency to do the thing no one but just ourselves would ever have done. Our friends show plainly that they are unable to become wholly used to our never deviating from our own particular line, and if our actions have no other effect, we do, by our very inability to change, lend a quality of constant freshness to human relations. It is always vaguely disquieting when one sees people laying such stress on the minor moralities such as not powdering and avoiding white lies. One cannot help feeling that if they use up so much moral enthusiasm on matters of such minuteness they will not have enough left over to carry them through sterner temptations. It always a little flattens one to hear men say, “I do not believe in smoking.” A rare achievement like a belief to be wasted on petty little things like cigars! It is tempting Fate. Then it is so unbelievable that one man by his single efforts has acquired enough sterling principles to be able to afford this lapping of them over upon side issues. A suspicion will arise that he is loose, not to say shifty, on the tariff, or rebates, or something else where a stoutly voiced stand counts. A suspicion will arise that he is loose, not to say shifty, on the tariff, or rebates, or something else where a stoutly voiced stand counts. 20260810
In the midst of a fire, after an emotional crisis, or at the end of a long separation, we remain so astonishingly like. It is a matter of surprise to ourselves. On dying we may say, “I was just going to be so different.” Who else would have said that? We have lived from our cradle in a state of contemplating a complete revisal of character, so naturally we die without having had the inconsistency to give up all thought of changing.
Some babies can be seen as nebulous corporation lawyers, a white waistcoat distinctly discernible if one half-closes one’s eyes, and, though they are watched closely through all the stages of their existence, they never do anything out of character. Later on in life their sparse white hair, ruddy cheeks, and trick of playing with a paper-cutter or whatever small object is at hand, remind one so forcibly of their baby selves that the two ends of their lives become inextricably entangled, and not to save you could you say whether their sulking pout came first and judicial pompousness later on, or vice versa, or whether the last is not the first made audible.
No one ever changes. We intensify as we grow older, we sometimes emphasize ourselves to the point of caricature, and finally we crystallize to a degree of hardness that makes change completely out of the question. If circumstances force upon us a difference so great as to incommode us seriously, we settle the matter much after the manner of the oyster. We cover the foreign substance with our own essence until it is lost to view and nothing has happened but an increase in our measurement, which only serves to make more noticeable the staggering useness of us
usness of us ? the staggering useness of us.
Very often we have to fight to remain as we are — people have such a liking for inciting one to grow — but we always do fight. It is the battle we enter into with most vigor. We cannot be deceived into thinking the process of another person our own. They tell us where they have come out, explain in detail the route they took to reach such a point, and beg us, now that they have blazed the trail, to hurry along it and join them. But our aversion to such a course is deep-rooted. We say, “That is not my way,” as though there were some integral honesty in using no other. We take in their exact location, and if we decide it is within our limitations to get there (every one has a sacred regard for his limitations and would not overstep them for worlds), we deliberately go our own round-about, puttering route, bumping over corduroy roads of prejudice and up hills of self-satisfaction and down dales of indecision; after much suffering and toil and enough breaking of fresh ground to give us a pioneer feeling of having deserved our destination when it comes, we finally bob up beside our patiently waiting friend, saying, “Hullo! you here?”
We beg to be forgiven so many things on the ground that we meant nothing by it, it is just our way. We grow resigned to ourselves so early in life and take the attitude that here we are handicapped by being ourselves, and, there being nothing that can be done about it, people should be lenient and not blame us for an unpreventable catastrophe. But it has been noticed that we are always very desirous of reducing ourselves to the lowest possible terms, half because, if we are still loved, then we are loved indeed, and half since, if we are loved for any qualities we lack, we may have to acquire them, and that is so repellent to us that we would almost rather claim vices we have not and so send the love packing.There is at least reason in our plea of being liked for ourselves, for since it is the one thing bound not to change, it is the one way to insure love lasting forever. But it has been noticed that we are always very desirous of reducing ourselves to the lowest possible terms, half because, if we are still loved, then we are loved indeed, and half since, if we are loved for any qualities we lack, we may have to acquire them, and that is so repellent to us that we would almost rather claim vices we have not and so send the love packing.
It is puzzling how clear a view we get of ourselves at an uncommonly early period. We seem to know, with no possibility of being argued out of our belief, the vast number of things we cannot do. And our sureness is such that one might almost think we had tried them. We shudder away from suggested undertakings as though there were a little something indelicate in being thought to be more than ourselves. And at the end of a long life we say, “My life has been such that I have been prevented from —” Oh, we are very, very sly in our mollusking ways.
When any one says, “I don’t smoke,” or, “I don’t play bridge,” then one supposes naturally that he is saving himself up for the things he does. The stern, heavy, “I do not believe in going abroad until one has seen one’s own country,” comes to step on the tail of one’s gayly flying kite, and one’s irritation against the person deepens into distrust. He may have enough conviction founded on solid thought to go around — one does not say that he has not — but from my point of view he is taking a risk. In well-ordered plans details come last, and it would be very sad to think that these reproving souls were fussing around weeding the grass before they had so much as started to dig the foundation of their house. This may be a reprehensible idea, but it would take a long time to settle all the big things so conclusively that one had reached the place of deciding definitely that powder on the nose was immoral. No, try as one will, it does seem as though these dear souls had patched a belief together, and, while they were carrying it to where it belonged, were forced from its exhausting weight to put it down on what happened to be handy at the moment.