Mine! A Bird’s Eye View of Narcissism

I have nothing to say. Of course, since you are reading a second sentence you know that the first is not entirely true. I have never been really stuck for words—I am an English teacher and mother of five. Some might argue that I have way too much to say. However, faced with posting some thoughts about narcissism, I am suddenly timid. After all, writing is dangerous. It assumes a high degree of self confidence, even arrogance, the supposition that one’s words—one’s life—are not only worth reading, but in fact, should be read. The step from this to assuming that one is a luminary of note is slight. The urge to leap into one’s work is seductive and can destroy the most thoughtful prose. So where is the balance? What constitutes clear insight in contrast to the squawk of the conceited? It rests in a combination of factors:a deep understanding of oneself and one’s place in the world; an ability to look outward, to touch others and know that one’s experience may be of universal significance; and finally, an ability to manipulate and use language to capture the attention of restless readers and draw them into one’s story.

In “Blindness” Jorge Luis Borges writes about the link between and poetry and physical sightlessness. He recites a litany of great poets—from Homer to Milton to Groussac—who have used their common challenge to write great literature. “A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art…Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that re eternal, or aspire to be so” (included in Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay, 385). Borges links thorough self knowledge to general experience. Thus, Julie, the anonymous Boston area woman writing the blog entitled “a little pregnant,” uses the death of her father, her own grief, and the inability to conceive to ask a profound question about the relationship between the body and what we perceive as life. “But is it unseemly, or even inhumane, I wondered later after the funeral, to be so ready to divorce the body from the being? Am I too hasty to dismiss the last physical scraps of someone — anyone — unique and precious? Do the people who bowed in front of that box know something I don't? Maybe. But I know something, too: What our bodies can't do is not who we are” (Julie of "a little pregnant"). Borges would agree, but both he and Julie use those infirmities, blindness, old age, infertility, and grief, to understand humanity a bit better.

Annie Dillard explores the theme further and explains that to really see the human condition takes discipline. In her essay “Seeing” she explains that in order to understand what is sublime, one is must acknowledge what is mundane, and then lift one’s sights above it. “The world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness…you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects rest and act purely, without utterance” (Lopate 705). Her epiphanies of the world around her imbue the everyday with the divine. She is in all of her writing, but the reader sees instead what is common to all. Like Borges, she understands her place in the world and is able to use her existence to touch eternity.

Conversely, Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop” reveals just how little she understands of normalcy. She describes her newest fashion finds: “Recently, I have enlisted the services of an old friend in the style department. Elizabeth Saltzman, the long time Fashion Director (and now Contributing Editor) of Vanity Fair and one of the best dressed girls I know has been getting me dressed when I need to dress up. She’s used her discerning eye to pick trends for fall that will work for falls to come – these shapes and fabrics can be used as inspiration and modified for the everyday” (Paltrow, “Get”). Gwyneth’s suggestions are, at best, laughable; at worst, they are a slap in the face for working women who are helping to support families, dealing with diapers, dirty dishes, and economic stress. Her blog, an attempt to share her wonderful life and “nourish one’s inner aspect” (Paltrow), would actually starve the reader looking for any depth of thought. Paltrow is not alone in her superficiality. The blogosphere is full of writers sitting on the edges of our computers screeching “Mine! Mine!” However, sometimes, a voice like Julie’s pierces the clamor and calls us to question, to think, to consider. And our lives are enlarged because of these voices.

Perhaps I do have something to say. I have fifty years of words and experience in my slightly saggy body. I do know that the older I get, the less quickly I use those words to answer questions, and the more I hold them and listen to what others are saying. Borges and Dillard write with the eye of the poet, their language and images draw us into their prose, to their lives. They are within their writing, but we see beyond their specific to what is true. My hope is what I write will add to truth, to illuminate rather than to increase the cacophony of egotism clamoring for our attention.