Suspicion

Lost in ecstasy, we are insane. Locked in discipline, we are miserable. Yet measures of the two are anything but incompatible.

Discipline implies suspicion. People who control their drink are aware, almost invariably, of those who don’t. The sensitive see louts, the generous meet greed, the chosen or elect find the damned on every corner. It is often fear that drives our disciplines, but not always. Positive values too can bend us to effort and sacrifice. And suspicion.

Some people place a certain sort of experience at the top end of their scale of values, a rapturous and unlimited joy or sense of well-being. An ecstatic state or experience is decidedly undisciplined, and likewise removed from suspicion. But if no defined discipline or craft is necessary to the achievement of this experience, how does it differ from the bliss produced by opiates, mere smiling hap or manna? I prefer to think of joy as an achievement of craft and pleasure intermixed. It will be limited and compromised, but it will subsist. Of anything absolute, unlimited or easy, I am suspicious.