Neglect, Choices, Elegance

What does it mean to neglect something? It comes from the Latin word neclegere, which in a literal sense means not to pick something up. To not pick something up is to leave it lying there. In the sense in which we use "neglect" nowadays, we mean something along the lines of "to be indifferent to," "to disregard." That which is neglected is something that one doesn't trouble oneself with. It is not cared for. If a thing is neglected, one does not enjoy oneself with it, nor do anything with it at all for that matter.

Considered in this literal sense, the opposite of neglecting something is picking it up and holding it. The opposite of neglect is care and present usage. We can also look at the literal etymological root of "neglect" and consider it figuratively without stretching it too far, as we often talk about holding something in one's mind, or letting it drop off. The thoughts we neglect are the thoughts we have forgotten, that have dropped off and don't come to mind.

To pick something up, (i.e. to use it, practice it, or even occupy one's thoughts with it), one must give it their attention, and in so doing, something else gets set aside, or even dropped. This is because we only have so many hands to hold things with, and only so much time in the day to care for them or use them. Even someone with a hundred hands could still only hold a hundred things, and the catch is always that a hundred other things are left lying around. There is only so much time in a day before we have to sleep, and only so much space that can be used in a room before things have to get put in a closet. When we set up our spaces, we choose the things that will stay out on the tables and get dusted off now and again, and some things will wind up in the closets, gathering dust, neglected.

For the sake of this entry, I am more interested in the figurative sense of neglect. For instance, it is not uncommon for someone to say, "I have been neglecting playing this instrument." I sometimes say "I have been neglecting my writing," or more specifically, "I have been neglecting this blog post I was intending to finish." When we talk about neglecting a practice, neglect means falling out of practice, usually for a while. Maybe something we used to do every day, we now only do once a week, or once a month. Truly neglecting something would be fully forgetting it, but often we still notice the things we neglect, like the bookshelf you've been meaning to dust off for months but haven't gotten around to. Potential in something may still be noticed, yet there it lays, untouched.

Just as neglect is indifference, being fully engaged in a practice or habit is to be interested in it, caring for it in some way. But indifference doesn't have to be permanent—most of the time we can pick these things back up. Getting re-accustomed to a practice may require some time, like the fingers remembering effective placement over the holes or strings on an instrument. To be fully enjoyed, an old neglected object will likely require some dusting off. But for one who has played an instrument enough times, even if it's been a very long time, the fingers will remember where to go more easily than they would if trying something completely new. The table in a corner with some objects that have not been wiped in so long that they begin collecting dust is not as neglected as the box in the corner of the basement that may not have been picked up for years. The table is easier to dust off, but both can be dusted.

We can also talk about leaving a habit behind, which in a way is a kind of neglect. If a continued practice can become a habit, we can neglect the habit as we can neglect a practice. After all, we commonly use the phrase "I picked up this habit." Of course, some things take more will to pick up, while others are easy. Some things we don’t see ourselves as neglecting because we think they are better off being left to lie. For example, smoking cigarettes is an easy habit to pick up, but you never hear someone who hasn’t smoked in a while say they have been neglecting smoking, or neglecting their cigarettes. On the other hand, going to the gym requires a lot of will to get into for most people, and people will often feel they have neglected working out if they miss a few days or a week of going. But if we can sensibly use the word "neglect" to refer to our habits, from here it’s not such a stretch to say that one who has stopped using some addictive substance has neglected his or her appetite for that. They have become indifferent to it—they have dropped it. In this strange way of bending the usage of a word, “neglect,” there might be a bit of truth in saying something like that.

But again, habits are like objects—there are only so many one can hold onto at once. In picking something up and holding on to it so as to use it and be with it, one is always neglecting other things. In picking up a cigarette habit, I could be neglecting looking after my lung capacity, or paying attention to the complaints of my throat after smoking one too many. In still smoking more, I am neglecting the ideal of being as healthy as I can be, in favor of satisfying a certain appetite. If someone goes to the gym regularly, through the duration of being at the gym, they are passing on the chance to sit around and read or play games, or smoke cigarettes for that matter. It is interesting to take the literal sense of neglect and bend it to consider mutually exclusive concepts.

Because there is a limit to how much we can literally practice, care for, and hold on to, there is an art to deciding what will end up being neglected. Since we choose the things we hold on to and those which we neglect, there can be elegance in the way one spends one's time, in the habits one chooses to occupy oneself. It is like how when we set up a room, some things get displayed on the tables, while others get put in boxes in the closet, and the decisions as to what gets displayed and neglected make up one's style—and almost everyone who goes through this process sets up their room with their own peculiar sense of elegance. Indeed, our word "elegance" comes from the Latin word "eligere," which literally means "select with care, choose," and comes from the same root as our word "elect."

Being humans, with bodies of particular structures, it just so happens to be that we can only hold on to so many things at once. Existing in a single place in space, we can only do so much at once, And existing for a limited span of time, there is only so much in total that we can do. So it goes, and so it is not an uncommon experience for someone to reflect on the past from where they stand today and think of how much has changed, and how much may seem to have been lost. For example, someone might say, "I remember when as I child, I used to love dinosaurs and wanted to be a paleontologist. How I have neglected that passion in my adolescence and adulthood!" But this is the consequence of choosing among our limitations, and if someone could do literally everything at the same time, it would be quite impressive, and perhaps even tantamount to godhood, but it would certainly not be elegant. Perhaps that is one of the gifts of mortality and limitation—it necessitates the potential for elegance.

As we can talk about neglecting habits and practices, we can also talk about neglecting certain thoughts, and certain frames of consciousness. In every moment we live, we are thinking one thought or another. How often do you repeat the same thought throughout the day—day in and day out? (Bearing in mind the uniqueness of every given moment in which we exist, is it ever really the same thought?) If we think in phrases and words, those words can be repeated an immense amount of times throughout the day. If we think in images, those images can be envisioned repeatedly. "I am going to do this tomorrow." How many days will someone think this thought before they actually find themself doing the thing they thought about doing?

We can think about this in terms of our values as well—the habits and practices we value, and the thoughts and images we value. To return to the example given above, the choice between spending the night reading and smoking cigarettes, or spending the night at the gym, can also be thought of as a choice between the values of pleasurable relaxation or healthy physical activity. One cannot always satisfy both values simultaneously. Moving to a new pattern of valuation is leaving behind the old one. But it is always there waiting in the corner for you to return to it and pick it up again. Maybe, as some people hold on to smoking in lieu of healthier habits, some people hold on to thinking self-destructive and sabotaging thoughts in lieu of helpful and encouraging thoughts. It is true that the mind has a much greater capacity for holding on to various thoughts than hands do for holding on to various things. We only have two hands, but the mind can juggle an uncountable number of thoughts in a very short span of time—but this time is still limited.

In the space of a moment, there is only one thought that can be thought at that given time—but a short span of time can be divided into nearly infinite moments. How do we hold and care for ourselves, and what thought-patterns do we hold on to? Moment after moment passes, and maybe those productive, encouraging thoughts have been neglected, as a series of moments became a very long time. That which is neglected and tarnished, we can pick up and polish, and we can see it in a new way after it has been left for so long. Just like someone can start playing an instrument well that they once played, even if it has been neglected for a long time, and begin to make beautiful music again, so can we start thinking those helpful thoughts that bring us to the places we want to be, becoming the beautiful selves we have always had the potential of being. You can pick something up that is brand new. Can you pick something up that is old and look at it in a brand new way? Maybe you neglected it for so long, it began collecting dust. But that better version of yourself is waiting in the corner, ready to be uncovered, polished off, picked up, given a little bit of care, and held again.