Sans Fig Leaf
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"It seemed…"
31 January, 2008
When I go through the
house to turn off lights before leaving, I always remember a
conversation between Ray and his mother, in which they were laughing
and teasing me about "running a light house."
The idea of turning out lights when I'm not using them was ingrained in
me as a child. Unfortunately, I also got scolded if my Dad caught me
reading in dim light. What had usually happened was that natural light
from nearby windows had been adequate when I started reading (or
writing, or whatever project I was tackling at the time), but during
the hours since it had grown dark. I was too engrossed to notice, yet.
So I tend to turn on more lights than I actually need for something,
with the intent to turn them off when I'm done. Except I don't turn
lights off when leaving a room if I plan to come back "soon." The
definition of soon is processed in some subconscious part of my brain,
and can vary quite widely depending on the circumstance. Which means
that later I'll feel compelled to check again to make certain I turned
them off.
One of the upshots of all this is that when I'm getting ready to go to
work on a typical day, I will turn on lights everywhere as I go about
my tasks. Which requires me to run around through the house one last
time before I leave, turning them all off. Except I won't do that if
someone is still in the house. Then I just leave everything going.
Ray and his mother laughed because they both had the engrained habit of
only turning on lights if they really needed them. If there was enough
light coming in from elsewhere to see what they needed to see, they
were just fine. In fact, they preferred "mood lighting" to a brightly
lit room.
This is why just about every lamp we owned when Ray was alive
eventually had a three-way socket installed. That way, Ray could turn
on just one lamp at low light, but still had the option of bright light
whenever he needed it. Conversely, the reason that most of those
three-way sockets have been replaced in the decade since his death is
that I almost invariably turned the lights immediately to their
brightest settings all the time--so why bother with the other two
settings?
None of this is conscious, mind you. Until the first time Ray teased me
about the way I turned lights on and off, I hadn't thought in depth
about what my electric light habits were. I turned on lights when I
wanted them, and turned them off when I didn't. Even since thinking
about it, I'm not completely certain that my rationalization is the
truth. It's an explanation that appears to make sense. It may seem
perfectly reasonable to all sorts of people who hear it, but then the
notion of a flat earth with the sun, moon, planets, and stars mounted
on invisible crystal spheres rotating above the sky seemed perfectly
reasonable to just about everyone for thousands of years.
We all like to believe that we are rational creatures who always have
good reasons for doing the things we do. But then you read about
parasites that can re-wire a rat's brain so it is no longer capable if
fearing cats, and you start wondering how much of your own mind is
really under your control.
And we don't need anything as exotic as brain-altering parasites. Who
hasn't looked at a photograph of themselves from ten or more years ago
and thought, "What was I thinking?" in regards to hair style, or
clothing, or the person we were dating at the time?
Sometimes the best we can
do is hope is smile and say, "It seemed a good idea at the time..."
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.
--Karl Marx
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