Yesterday morning I listened to a wonderful long Petőfi Rádio interview with Gergely Balla and Sebestyén Czakó-Kuraly of Platon Karataev. It went in many different directions, but one favorite part when they talked about the importance of solitude and about how fruitful the Covid lockdown had been for them (even with many setbacks and challenges, such as Gergő’s fever and hospital stay), and how now, with everything open and available, they have had to set some limits for themselves, not accepting every invitation, not attending (or playing) every possible event, but instead protecting their quiet.

I have definitely been too busy this fall and have had to pull back too. The thing about pulling back is that most people will not understand or accept it. At least they won’t understand your specific choices. In their minds, what they want from you should come first; they don’t realize that you see it differently. None of us has complete control over our lives, but our choices, to the extent that they exist, will never be accepted by everyone.

Yet the vast majority of the world’s population doesn’t care what we do; that’s a bit of a relief. Even those we imagine we’re disppointing terribly have other things on their minds. Moreover, pleasing others (completely, all the time) has no point to it; it brings no satisfaction, because it dries up the soul. To exist in a true sense, you need some resistance. Not random resistance, not automatic resistance, but your own particular friction with the world, which you come to know over time, and which can change a little but won’t go away.

Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Soul selects her own Society” is so well known that it can slip past the mind. But pay attention to the middle stanza:

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

The repetition of “Unmoved,” the images of Chariots and Emperor, the sense that both of these are stooping low for her, paying her homage (because they want something), and instead of falling for it, the soul stays upright—that’s something to think on. And then, in the final stanza, Dickinson transforms the initial metaphor of the “door,” turning it into the “Valves” of the Soul’s “attention,” now compared to “stone.” I wonder—this occurred to me just now—whether Wisława Szymborska was thinking of this in her “Conversation with a Stone.”

But sometimes “pulling back” doesn’t require a clap of stone, just a sense of the spaces between the moments or days. That’s part of the meaning of Shabbat (which I haven’t been too good at keeping, but which is on my mind). You just set aside the time for rest, period. Treat it as an obligation, not something you do if you find yourself with time. Also, it’s possible to simplify things on the run, not only in your schedule, but in your mind. Not getting bogged down in thoughts about all the things that have to get done. Just doing them one by one and taking rests in between. My fall break has been quite intense (I attended three wonderful concerts, translated a long story, gave an online poetry reading and talk in the middle of the night, worked on Folyosó, had minor surgery that went well, and lots more), but the last day is rather restful, unrolling quietly before me. And I am not changing that, not rushing anywhere, not trying to squeeze anything in.

The other side to this all is that it’s good, when possible and appropriate, to say yes to things, participate in projects, venture onto new terrain, and so forth. If we could all figure out what to accept and what to decline, life would be simpler, wouldn’t it? But we will never figure it out for good; there is no formula for it. We adjust, readjust, take on, give up, and start over.

Art credit: L.S. Lowry, Going to the Match.