The following was written in Part ii of this increasingly aimless accretion: 

Why must you begin? Because you must.

As mentioned in that same post, must is a musty way of thinking. So let’s hit it with the power washer and see what, if anything, remains underneath. 

Must should ought… In English, these are called modals (or modal auxiliaries, when they’re paired with other verbs). Modals live in a smeary, opaque state. They’re moody little buggers, and they mood they invoke is uncertainty. They’re uncertain because they speak to a person’s attitude, and attitudes are notoriously shaky. An example: I will floss my teeth this afternoon is definitive and leaves no uncertainties that I am a good person who cares about his wellness; I ought to floss my teeth this afternoon is squidgy as holding a jellyfish: you don’t know if I will or I won’t, and frankly, neither do I. 

I ought to floss my teeth appeals to a standard (flossing teeth) that is healthy and good while simultaneously acknowledging a strong likelihood it won’t be achieved. Musts and their kin feel like duties: following them might produce good outcomes (better dental hygiene) but it’s also kind of a drag.

(Did you see how unpredictable the might produce made the “good outcomes” in the sentence above?)

Like we do with most things in our culture, we approach duty schizophrenically. We revere duty—it’s the stuff of commercials for trucks and by God we couldn’t start a football game without a parade of uniforms—while we simultaneously reject it as an antiquated eddy that will only slog progress toward self-fulfillment. I’m not here to rehabilitate duty (my defibrillator is on the fritz), but I do believe that duty, in any senses that point toward discipline, perseverance, consistency, following-through, etc., is a good.

I don’t know how many people I’ve met who, after some chatter about what I do, admit that they’ve always wanted to be a potter, brewer, author, musician, painter, chef. In short, something creative. The essential ingredients to being any of those things were already listed above: discipline, perseverance, consistency, following-through. (It helps if you have talent, but it’s not a prerequisite, and contrary to the absurd Romantic notions that stick around like barnacles, talent can be learned and developed)

The duty is twofold: to yourself as creator and to the medium (cooking, say, or language or whatever).

Duty to one’s self likely makes intuitive sense, even if it sounds a little clunky. Probably it’s useful for a Navy SEAL or a Buddhist monk, but honestly you just want to get through your day without too much hassle so let’s keep our feet on the ground. Duty to a medium may sound foreign and for that reason might be something worth returning to another day.

(Witness how may and might make returning to this subject unstable and unpredictable, doubly so when used with the passive voice—Modals!)

Duty to one’s self is aspirational if a little heavy-handed. It feels awfully weighty. It also raises the question of one’s self, and that’s a hornet’s nest we’ll kick another day. For now, we hopefully have a better understanding of modals, although we’ve made no discernible progress toward anything greater. 

NOTE: 

I have limited goals here. I open up the last entry I wrote, scan it quickly, and start writing. I don’t plan ahead; there is no outline or researching or preparation. If the best that can be said upon completion is: No-discernible-progress-toward-anything-greater-was-made—well, great.

First, that’s only a temporary statement and it will change; second, and more importantly, progress, in the sense of accomplishing something or doing or learning or anything else that kneels before the requirement that all time must (MODALS!) always and in all ways be passed productively, is not the point of this space. I can’t affirm what the point of this space is, but I’m happy to let it grow outside the press-and-screech of our usual economies of production and trust that by doing so, something nourishing will eventually grow. 

You could argue that nourishment is a sub-category of production. If I were a farmer, this would likely be true. But the nourishment I’m speaking of will not satisfy your caloric requirements. This gets us back to the question we ended on: what is this self we’re seeking to nourish? We ought to return to that another time; for now, we’ll conclude with one final tip of our hat to modals.