20/09/2024
For most of history, societies equated good lives with active outward noisy ones: lives spent achieving high office and fame, amassing riches and honours.
To this, the modern age has added its own demands. A good active life should involve commercial success, a wide circle of friends, frequent foreign travel, close knowledge of a number of cities, awareness of leading ideas in art and technology, a sense of fashion, viewership of recent drama series and, almost inevitably, a twice weekly high intensity workout.
The modern world makes sure that we know at all times just how much we might be missing. It is a culture in which intense and painful doses of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) are almost inevitable.
There are books to read, films to see, people to visit, and opportunities not to miss. Art has tracked our noisy enthusiasms, displaying brave aristocrats and religious feats. Yet as the world became ever noisier, a minority tradition emerged with a new mission in mind: artists like Vermeer, de H***h, Hammershoi, Engert, and Todd Harper opened our eyes to the unexpected charms of ordinary, modest lives.
Defenders of quiet lives know that there are, of course, some genuinely special things going on in the world, but they do not let the obvious signs of glamour be their guide to these. The quiet understand how much can be drawn out of a single experience, if one takes the time to turn it over in one’s mind.
The quiet are not simply quiet out of appreciation, they are also quiet out of caution. They understand the toll that noisy lives surreptitiously exact; they know – perhaps better than those who still maintain crowded diaries – how prone we are to exhaustion, over-stimulation and collapse.
To learn more, click the link:
https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/for-those-who-privately-aspire-to-become-more-reclusive/
