The violence of everyday living:
Connolly, Paid
SMALL VIOLENCE KILLS THE SPIRIT The violence of everyday living PAUL CONNOLLY To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to...
...I work at home...
...Most days are busier, more violent than this...
...I fear I must see the dentist...
...We can arm ourselves," a voice replied...
...But to secure a more universal and enduring peace . . . what can be done...
...WE cooperate in violence, most of us, every day the violence of myriad demands, concerns, and projects that fracture our lives into a thousand broken reflections...
...What can we do...
...Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander TODAY IS LESS violent than most...
...Merton wanted peace with a passion...
...Take a vacation that is probably what most of us do when we feel a need for peace and quiet: Go south or skiing, escape the wars for a while, sign a separate peace...
...I have a report to write and letters...
...Yes, I should attend a talk tonight, by a Prominent Speaker...
...We are besieged further by junk mail, cocktail chatter, conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence the multiple warheads of modern living...
...My roof leaks...
...applaud speakers...
...Such small violence does not make the front page of the tabloids, true, but like the wondrous neutron bomb, it kills the spirit even while it leaves the body standing...
...My private problems are insignificant, compared to those of the larger world...
...I need new shoes...
...prepare flyers...
...Listing my distractions does not bring me peace, but it does provide a semblance of security: The illusion that I know what my problems are...
...The best way to avert war is to prepare for it...
...the longest cold war is fought in senseless chores, mindless duties, and those obligations we accept only because we are flattered to be asked...
...Petty violence is everywhere, more grave a threat to personal and public peace than those murderous headlines we at times almost relish for their comforting assurance that matters are worse elsewhere...
...Then a woman, dismayed by the arsenals and by the anger of the world, cried out in anguish: "What can we do...
...The phone does not ring...
...In truth, the most obdurate and insidious violence exists not in the Middle East nor in Eastern Europe...
...He is the author of Building Family: An Act of Faith (Abbey Press...
...There are no meetings...
...SMALL VIOLENCE KILLS THE SPIRIT The violence of everyday living PAUL CONNOLLY To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence...
...fight for peace...
...Outside, the power company breaks through the pavement with backhoes and jackhammers, and puddles of rain cover the ground...
...I do not want to go...
...But such passion, he gradually concluded, was as violent as any other...
...The car is broken again...
...We are "distracted from distraction by distraction," wrote...
...Several weeks ago, I attended a meeting on war...
...show films...
...What can we do?'' The question did not hang in the air for long...
...It destroys his own inner capacity for peace...
...PAUL CONNOLLY is an associate professor of English at Yeshiva University, in Manhattan...
...It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful...
...I have had time to read and to reflect...
...The Pentagon has no monopoly on weapons of destruction...
...My shirts are in the laundry...
...A film demonstrated how many times over my bombs could obliterate my enemy wherever he is before his bombs annihilated me...
...The meeting ended in argument...
...I have composed myself for a moment...
...Hold meetings...
...But it is for a good cause, and I should show my support...
...It is, however, an unusually peaceful day...
...That last answer attracted Thomas Merton in 1965, twenty years after the first atomic bomb broke up the desert...
...My typewriter seems terminally lame, like the cat...
...I keep a list of such demands, the petty violence of daily living...
...it rumbles almost unnoticed through the streets of our daily western lives...
...A priest spoke passionately for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Proposal and against the injustice of nuclear warfare...
...The cat is lame and wants care...
...True, my eyeglasses need repair...
...Having retreated into monastic solitude to compose his being yet finding himself angered nonetheless by the Vietnam war, the arms race, social injustice he observed: The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
