Lyd writes 28 May 2007 07:31 am
Theory of Relativity
NYC didn’t truly feel like home until this weekend. It took a few days in a different city before I identified my own city as home.
Which leads me to this thought: Can we only really comprehend something in relation to something else? Of course, that’s paradoxical — if it takes a different thing to understand the original, you can’t understand the different thing without comparing that to yet another different thing, and on and on. But I digress.
I’ve caught myself using comparisons a bunch lately to judge, explain, cope even. I often tell people I love riding the subway, even though some people find it unsavory. At least I don’t have to commute during rush hour, I say. Yet last week I found myself going from uptown to downtown during rush hour, and it was a completely different, less pleasant experience (duh). When people warn me about NYC summers, I say at least I don’t have to deal with a climate as hot and humid as D.C. Yet there I was this weekend walking around Washington in 90+ heat with high humidity, completely miserable. Or my ever-increasing anxiety over flying “solo” from JFK to LAX next month for the wedding/cruise — at least I’m not flying in one of THESE things (a small pod-like one-seater with paper-airplane-like wings), as I said to myself at the air and space museum today. They may not fly me to LA in a pod, but maybe the turbulence will be so bad that I’ll feel like I’m in one.
What do we do when we use comparisons to reassure ourselves, then we find ourselves on the bad end of our own statements of relativity? Do we take the comparisons a step further — at least the subway didn’t get stuck/I’m not in New Delhi where it’s 115/the plane didn’t have to divert to another airport — or give up using comparisons altogether, for fear of ending up in a situation that is our worse-case scenario? Notice I said “worse,” not “worst.”
In a world where there are so many options, paths, situations, it’s hard to say something is the best or worst, all we can do is compare it to other things we’ve experienced and can therefore fathom in our own terms.
In conclusion, I may not be the best writer, but I’m certainly better than Curtis.
—
Eyelids drooping down
The slow rocking of the train
The world whizzes past.