Walter Mitty Moments
Today I had one of those moments where you wildly overdramatize a prosaic situation in order to keep yourself amused. The classic expression of this tendency was set down by James Thurber in his short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. So anyway, I had some fairly unglamorous work to do (little stories for the local newspaper, not the fancy-dancy magazine work I prefer), and I was mentally bewailing my lot, and I thought of Captain John Smith.
Mr. Smith was born in 1580 in England, went all over Europe and the Near East fighting in armies against just about anybody who wanted to fight back, it seems, but in 1602 he was wounded fighting against the Tatars, was captured, and then sold as a slave. I thought of him today because he must have thought, at some point while he was a slave, that he was doing relatively unglamorous work. But he got out of being a slave somehow—he claimed his Turkish master sent him as a gift to his Greek mistress, who fell in love with Smith, but Smith was not the most reliable source of information about himself, to be frank, and many of his stories should be doubted in the absence of corroboration—and went on to do all sorts of interesting things, including founding the first permanent English settlement in the United States.
This goes to show that if you're doing unglamorous work on Tuesday you might nevertheless do something of consequence on Thursday. Captain John Smith managed to get out of being a slave somehow—he showed some gumption and didn't take it lying down. He didn't brood about it and wonder what deep inner flaw created this state of affairs. He just dealt with the situation.
Anyway, Captain John Smith liked to embellish things to make life more interesting. So do I. But right now I'm hungry and I have to go buy bread. I'm out of bread. I'm going to walk to the store and get some. It's a matter of survival! I need food! Across the burning sands of the desert I'll walk, hungry, starving, nothing forcing my stumbling feet forward but my blind will...
Mr. Smith was born in 1580 in England, went all over Europe and the Near East fighting in armies against just about anybody who wanted to fight back, it seems, but in 1602 he was wounded fighting against the Tatars, was captured, and then sold as a slave. I thought of him today because he must have thought, at some point while he was a slave, that he was doing relatively unglamorous work. But he got out of being a slave somehow—he claimed his Turkish master sent him as a gift to his Greek mistress, who fell in love with Smith, but Smith was not the most reliable source of information about himself, to be frank, and many of his stories should be doubted in the absence of corroboration—and went on to do all sorts of interesting things, including founding the first permanent English settlement in the United States.
This goes to show that if you're doing unglamorous work on Tuesday you might nevertheless do something of consequence on Thursday. Captain John Smith managed to get out of being a slave somehow—he showed some gumption and didn't take it lying down. He didn't brood about it and wonder what deep inner flaw created this state of affairs. He just dealt with the situation.
Anyway, Captain John Smith liked to embellish things to make life more interesting. So do I. But right now I'm hungry and I have to go buy bread. I'm out of bread. I'm going to walk to the store and get some. It's a matter of survival! I need food! Across the burning sands of the desert I'll walk, hungry, starving, nothing forcing my stumbling feet forward but my blind will...
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