Jane Austen and the Wretched Indolence of Adulthood (June 12, 2022, the severed branch)
Finding an appropriate balance between relaxation and exertion
Lately, I have been thinking about all the five-year-olds who, fifteen years from now, will have accomplished more than I have in my entire life up to the age of 49. Perhaps this comes to mind because, although I am 34, so much of my musical taste has evolved toward younger artists. I listen to the original artistic creations of 18 and 19 year olds while contemplating the true difference between them and me. Why have they achieved their goals while I have failed in mine? In art, talent might be thought of as the most obvious choice. But whatever musical talent I might possess is as yet unknown, simply by virtue of the fact I did not learn an instrument as a child.
As I reflected on the sad laziness of my childhood, a passage from Jane Austen’s Emma struck me particularly hard. Emma finds herself feeling envious of the artistic skills which the much poorer Jane Fairfax possesses. Emma knows she cannot draw, play, or sing nearly so well as the highly celebrated Jane. Despite the advantages Emma holds in wealth and education, she knows she cannot match Jane’s elegance and competence. For Emma, it is deeply disturbing that Jane, an orphan and her socioeconomic lesser, could so profoundly exceed her in creative and technical ability. It is a distressing symbol to Emma of how little she has exerted herself.
Emma does not fatalistically blame her old rival’s artistic and musical accomplishments on an inbred superiority of talent. She does not believe that she herself is somehow innately inferior and could not have reached the same levels of artistry which Jane now deploys so easily. She knows the gap between her and Jane is her own fault. Reflecting on a night which included an acquaintance celebrating Jane as a “mistress of music,” Emma feels not just envy but also regret.
She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartedly grieve over the idleness of her childhood - and sat down and practiced vigorously for an hour and a half.
This grieving over a childhood idleness is one to which many can easily relate. Adulthood can sometimes seem to remove a sense of possibility. It’s too late, or too hard now, adults might say, to learn a language or an instrument, or to improve a skill not completed in childhood. The question is not necessarily what to do moving forward, but what one would have done if one could hit the reset button.
It is even how some of us communicate to children about the urgency of their learning. “It’s so important to learn a language as a kid, because it will be so difficult when you are an adult.” We have built the ideal of adult stagnation into our education system. To be an adult is not so much to be free as it is to be doomed and finished. It is to have every reason in the world to give up what one supposedly loved. There is a whole pre-built system of rationales for “not being able to do those things when you’re older,” and our elders hand it down to us when we are young as an inducement to take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded us in our childhoods. It is an occasion for amazement when an adult succeeds in deeply acquiring some new ability.
This is partly the dynamic which plays out between Emma and the recently married Mrs. Elton. Mrs. Elton claims a great passion for music, but she is eager to emphasize that her new duties as a wife will render its pursuit virtually impossible for her.
“For married women, you know - there is a sad story against them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.”
“But you, [said Emma,] who are so extremely fond of it - there can be no danger, surely.”
“I should hope not, but really when I look round among my acquaintance, I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music - never touches the instrument - though she plays sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs Jeffereys …. and of …. Mrs. Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has many things to call her attention. I believe I was half an hour this morning shut up with my housekeeper.”
“But everything of that kind,” said Emma, “will soon be in so regular a train - ”
“Well,” said Mrs. Elton, laughing, “we shall see.”
Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing more to say; and, after a moment’s pause, Mrs. Elton chose another subject.
It’s a conversation which repeats itself across the generations. A young person thinks that it must surely be possible to keep pursuing certain passions as an adult. The older person, meanwhile, laughs at the naivety of the idea. But it is the very ending of the passage which I love. Because Emma sees the truth: the married woman, Mrs. Elton, is making a free choice for which she marshals the ready-made rationales of a typical adult. If Mrs. Elton was going to become as skilled in piano as she might wish, she should have done it as a child. Now that she is married and has new responsibilities, she must content herself with her limitations. She may not be happy about them, but she would rather make profoundly dubious excuses than to actually put in any work.
Emma, who often feels guilty for a lack of dedication to music and art, generally fears the idea of marriage throughout the book. And with such cheerful prognostications of doom coming from the likes of Mrs. Elton, one can imagine why she might.
When I came across Emma’s regret over her childhood idleness, it reminded me of a passage from The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. When I read it nine years ago, I was the same age as the protagonist, Kate. It has haunted me across the ensuing decade, seeming to capture the paralysis that comes with certain adult mentalities.
She had reached a great age--for it quite seemed to her that at twenty-five it was late to reconsider, and her most general sense was a shade of regret that she hadn't known earlier. The world was different--whether for worse or for better--from her rudimentary readings, and it gave her the feeling of a wasted past. If she had only known sooner she might have arranged herself more to meet it.
Kate left me feeling anxious not to slip into this gloomy vision of life, although I already felt it just as strongly as she did. I was turning 25 the day I was reading The Wings of the Dove. I was full of regrets about having done an advanced degree which left me 80,000 dollars in debt. I was highly conscious of the fact that there were suddenly far fewer possibilities open to me than there had been at 18. Before I’d committed to a field of study, before I’d burdened myself with a master’s degree. I could not go back to the freedom of early college.
Although emotionally resonant during moments when regret about the past is at its peak, I must reject the drama of such hopeless determinism. There is at least just as much freedom moving forward. Fundamentally, it is a free choice each day between working toward what I want or indulging in a hedonistic and empty idleness. If the five-year-old has published a novel in fourteen years and I still have not, it will be because of the differences in how we conducted ourselves along a spectrum ranging from dedication to indolence. If the five-year-old is feeling satisfied with their accomplishments and I am simply still reminding myself of the same old Henry James passage, it will be because I have been lazy and passive. The same amount of time, after all, will have passed us by, and I am beginning with a far larger repertoire of resources and education. Idleness, in that sense, is a sort of suicidal sin. It is a unique kind of wickedness. It is a grotesque fornication which can only yield regret. It is a crime not against God and not against another, but rather against the future self.
Of course, being busy with goals is not enough. One also requires direction and focus and consistency, and all of it ideally should be directed toward one chosen pursuit. This is the most challenging hurdle in the way of the adult’s path toward greater artistic excellence. And in this domain, the five-year-olds have often hold significant advantages. In support of their conduct on the indolence-exertion spectrum, the five-year-old might benefit from encouraging parents who healthily pressure them to succeed in a selected domain: dance, music, singing, sport, art. Granted, probably not writing. The adult, meanwhile, has no parents to direct them. They must self-direct, and within a world where adults rarely master new skills outside the workplace.
I imagine the school child with enlightened authoritarians for parents. They solemnly lecture their industrious and rigorously disciplined children about the existential importance of achievement. They demand excellence as the only acceptable outcome of their third grader’s exertions. The child thus develops habits of self-discipline. The child learns the value of always following through. Not to mention, the child acquires a superior technical skill-set. There are no iPads for this child. No video games. Through the programs into which their parents place them, they are surrounded by other artistically minded children, with whom they strive in the daylight. Then, at night in the monk-like solitude of their telecommunicationally isolated bedroom, the child steadily masters their craft. There is so much more to it than simple hard work.
Emma’s childhood was quite different from the one described above. Her failures were not limited to a lack of hard work. For her, the issue was also a weak capacity for actually finishing her projects. She never worked to completion. It reminds me of many of my own past pursuits, begun with such excitement but never truly finished.
Her many beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole lengths, pencil, crayon, and water-colours had all been tried in turn. She had always wanted to do everything, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang; and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.
Emma has never really followed through with the dedication and consistency necessary to become the person her reputation suggests she is, the person she wishes she really were. As a consolation, she has contented herself with a vain basking in the false perceptions of others. Perhaps she was afraid to try. If she tried, she might fall short of the reputation which she undeservedly holds in society. For years most have praised her, have told her she has the most exquisite accomplishments. But she knows that this isn’t true. She knows she has been inactive and unfocused.
Not only did she refuse to submit to more than a minimal amount of labor. She also wanted to do so much that she never really focused. She never really chose one craft to perfect. Perhaps to some degree she overwhelmed herself with her options, wanting impossibly to succeed at everything. Nowadays, even when she sits down to practice her piano for hours out of envy for Jane Fairfax, I can feel her slowly succumbing to the lie that it is too late for her. It is easier to be sad about the past than to put in more consistent work moving forward.
For years, my job as a teacher was the greatest single excuse for my idleness. As a teacher, I was making more money than I’d ever dared dream of. The job provided me with a steady stream of temptations toward laziness. I had the ability to pay for trips all over the world to dozens of countries, and I had the vacation time of an academic calendar. Instead of working hard on my dreams to write fiction, I left them to the realm of fantasy and regret. I was far too addicted to the international thrills which my income provided me. I was offered easy riches, and I chose them over exertion. I still wrote, but I wrote like Emma draws and plays, piling up unfinished projects. And at the very same time, literal children were creating the music I would love within a few short years.
I wanted to be a novelist, although I easily convinced myself I did not have time to read very many novels. This notion of “not having time” was a way of avoiding taking responsibility for the choices I was making while the nine-year-old diligently practiced their instruments. Instead of immersing myself in my passion for fiction, I was attempting to enact my adult duties by reading the news and listening to current events podcasts for hours every day.
As the children steadily improved, I was posting belligerent political statements online in support of my beloved Bernie Sanders. I was getting into arguments with people on Facebook. Reading books became more difficult as the absurd political dramas of the Internet constantly distracted me. Headlines streamed onto my phone, and I spent hours of each day stressing out about politics.
Children rarely consume the news like some adults do. While I injected myself repeatedly with a never-ending onslaught of current events, a seventh grader somewhere was mastering guitar. And yet how vital it seemed for me to share those memes denouncing Pete Buttigieg! How eagerly I provoked my friend’s dad into blocking me! Meanwhile, how many seventh graders give a shit about Bernie Sanders? As the seventh graders laid the groundwork for future success, I lazily read analyses of opinion polls. I was determined each day to reassess the probabilities of various political outcomes. This supposed “need” to be “informed” took priority over writing and (real) reading. I had no attention to improve the former because my mind was fragmented and cluttered. And I had no capacity to focus on the latter because I “needed” to read the news, I needed to check the latest notifications.
The extreme daily stress of the job, meanwhile, left me with a whole repertoire of vile excuses to simply relax rather than work after the school day was complete. “You earned it,” I told myself, planting the seeds for a future regret without allowing myself to really reconsider. That was the fundamental difference between me and those who achieved, and it will be the same moving forward. News Junky or Artist? Self-Care or Striving? Luxury or Exertion? Indolence or Grind? Relaxation or Regret? Social Life or Existential Satisfaction? These are the either/or dichotomies which haunt me today.
I see it as an imperative to disrupt my own internal peace by deploying a puritanical and unforgiving logic against myself. Tranquility? Never! This must be rooted out before I succumb to the stagnation and stillness which it offers me.
Please do not try to save me by telling me that capitalism wants me to feel guilty for relaxing. This I can simply never believe. Capitalism wants me to embrace the ideal of treating myself. Capitalism wants me to consume, to buy things, to go into more debt by getting more degrees and financing concert tickets. Capitalism does not want me, as an adult, to work hard on my own projects, or to feel guilty for not working hard on them. Capitalism hears my guilt over my laziness, and it whispers to me, “shh, shh, it’s all okay… you don’t need to produce anything… here, buy this and you’ll feel better.”
Capitalism wants me addicted to luxuries and products and television shows so I will spend as much money as possible. It wants me to dick around on Instagram watching advertisements and feeding Facebook my data so that corporations can sell me more crap. Capitalism does not want me to find meaning in life by working and producing, but by consuming. Capitalism wants me to travel, it wants me to go to shows, it wants me to have fun (as long as it’s expensive). But what capitalism calls fun, I call idleness. “Salaries are a great evil indeed,” I mutter to myself while I solemnly fry a few eggs for dinner. “Salaries afford greater luxury. Luxury corrupts by creating temptations for evermore idleness and ever-less exertion. And idleness is the ultimate wickedness.”
Yes, very gloomy thoughts! Well, perhaps in my internal drama over my lack of accomplishment and my failures to achieve, I simply embody the typical man described in Writers & Lovers by Lily King’s protagonist, Casey.
Nearly every guy I’ve dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, a teacher’s prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it’s how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.
My father had this kind of drama in him, sudden surges of despair about his life and wasted chances and breaks he never got. It took me a while to understand that my wins on the golf course, no matter how hard he strived for them, only made him feel worse.
For Casey, this whole reflection comes up because a highly successful author is agonizing over the number of people attending his reading. He is deeply jealous of another writer, who he says attracts a larger audience. “I figured that an actually successful man… would have outgrown all that crap,” she thinks. There is a revolting despair in holding oneself to absurd expectations. “I am forty-seven years old,” the author tells her. “I was supposed to be reading in auditoriums by now. Did you see the cover of Book Review last week? That was my student. My students are blowing by me.”
There is an illusion in the idea that I would be happier if I had worked harder and “succeeded” as a child or as a younger adult. I do not even have a real definition for “success,” not one that is stable or specific, and yet it’s a specter which I chase. It seems permanently out of reach. Except when sometimes, I actually ask myself: what is it I want, really? I know I value control over my time more than I value the financial rewards of the workplace. And I also know I want to create something unique and original. But what is just as important, I have realized, is to ensure that I am spending each day intentionally working on what I love, and loving the process as I do so.
If I have existential anxiety pertaining to that work, it partly comes from a sense that I need to take responsibility for my life. If I instead yield to an indulgence in luxury and relaxation, then I risk dying with regrets about how I spent my short time on this Earth. But if I think some bar of achievement will grant my soul real fulfillment, at which point my struggles will end, then I risk neglecting far deeper joys while I am alive. It’s what happens when I turn down social invitations on the weekend, thinking I do not deserve them when I have so many words left to write. “You think an indolent creature like you deserves to socialize this weekend?” I ask. It’s a mentality which can be a great asset, of course. But if I spend too much time obsessing over my work while chastising myself for doing anything fun, I will miss out on relationships.
I learned a similar lesson a long time ago reading War and Peace when I was 19. A dying character realizes all too late that his worldly strivings and cynical mindsets missed the point. And the point, classically, is love, more or less. Yet even though this lesson so inspired me way back in the summer of 2007, I have still failed all these years later to internalize Tolstoy’s teachings. I find myself always distracted by a pressure to achieve. I admit I want a bit of both. It’s my own obstinance that leaves me where I am today. I strive to forever avoid that supposedly ideal state of contentment where achievement means nothing and only love is important.
Meanwhile, I cannot help but think with admiration of Jane Austen. She died young and might have written so much more. She might have lived some other way. But thanks to the work she chose to put into her art even in a time when her genre and her gender were not at all taken seriously, she still speaks to us across a distance of two centuries. As she saw only limited success during her life, however, I hope it was the process, not the outcome, on which she was able to rest her happiness.
Sources:
Jane Austen, Emma (1815)
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)
Lily King, Writers & Lovers (2020)
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1867)