{"id":1495,"date":"2013-06-09T18:29:30","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T22:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2013-06-09T18:29:30","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T22:29:30","slug":"be-clenched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2013\/06\/09\/be-clenched\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Clenched"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"032\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to post some ordinary wisdom each Wednesday on the Ordinary Legacy Facebook page and this week\u2019s ordinary wisdom was from Susan Sontag:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by the words \u201cbe clenched\u201d.\u00a0 How does one do that?\u00a0 I get curious, I get paying attention, and I get eager.\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t wrap my mind around being clenched.\u00a0 But I love the sound of it, I love the idea of it, I love the way it makes the right side of my brain spark.\u00a0 I began wondering where the quote came from, one of her books, some off handed remark, and so through the magic of Google I found this:<\/b><\/p>\n

Susan Sontag, Vassar speech, 2003 <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Despise violence. Despise national vanity and self-love. Protect the territory of conscience.<\/p>\n

Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don\u2019t have passports, don\u2019t live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even once flown in a plane.<\/p>\n

Be extremely skeptical of all claims made by your government. Remember, it may not be the best thing for America or for the world for the president of the United States to be the president of the planet. Be just as skeptical of other governments, too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good to laugh a lot, as long as it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re trying to kill your feelings.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t allow yourself to be patronized, or condescended to \u2013 which if you are a woman, happens, and will continue to happen, all the time.<\/p>\n

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration\u2019s shove or society\u2019s kiss on your forehead\u2026 Pay attention. It\u2019s all about paying attention. It\u2019s all about taking in as much of what\u2019s out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you\u2019ll be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice that I haven\u2019t talked about love. Or about happiness. I\u2019ve talked about becoming \u2013 and remaining \u2013 the person who can be happy, a lot of the time, without thinking that being happy is what it\u2019s all about. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s about becoming the largest, most inclusive, most responsive person you can be. <\/i><\/p>\n

Oh this is rich.\u00a0 This short speech delivered to the graduates of Vassar in 2003 is full of wisdom.\u00a0 Sadly, she was fighting for her life at this very moment, only to lose that fight a year later. What a gift from such a renowned intellectual to put forth so succinctly a manifesto for life.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m still drawn to the \u201cbe clenched\u201d.\u00a0 I find it interesting that in all the versions I\u2019ve seen of this quote the eluding to the \u201ctaking in as much of what\u2019s out there, not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you\u2019ll be incurring narrow your lives\u201d part is always missing.\u00a0 What a mistake omitting the very thing that serves as the juxtaposition needed to \u201cbe clenched\u201d.\u00a0 I think I get it.<\/p>\n

To be clenched is never to put the blinders on, no matter what you\u2019ve seen.\u00a0 To be clenched is to feel, the hair rising on the back of your neck.\u00a0 To be clenched is to savor food for thought and moments in time.\u00a0 To be clenched is to learn, differently than you\u2019ve learned before from interesting and non- traditional teachers.<\/p>\n

To be clenched is to know like you know that you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been trying to post some ordinary wisdom each Wednesday on the Ordinary Legacy Facebook page and this week\u2019s ordinary wisdom was from Susan Sontag: \u201cDo stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-company-of-women-2","category-pause-points"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-o7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}