Perfunctory Confession

...or, "The Difference between Quitting and Resigning"

It always goes like this. There are spirits crying for structure, and then once you give it to them, they turn on you. Then you're left with a big frame, just sitting there like a broken down car on blocks in the front lawn.

So many times this leads to rationalizations which lead to quitting. But, this time, perhaps I'll quit rationalizing.


You see, I think that this is the difference between resigning and quitting. When you quit, all the loose ends remain. But when you resign, you have determined the way things ought to be. Resigning is the act of coming back to reality. You get going with all that busy-ness, but then, when you're done, you resign. (A similar line can be drawn with retirement, but not right now.)

When you resign, you face the music. It is active and passive, in all the right places. It's passive, because when you're ready to resign, you must. You just can't go another day in the lie that building this or that tower is where you want to be. It's either jump off in despair, or climb down in resignation. There is then, in resignation, the process of coming back down the ladder, of writing that letter of resignation. People will see you as you pass on the elevator with your box of files, coffee mugs, and that sealed envelope. They will know, all at once, that you're to be pitied and envied. It's there that it's active, existential if you will. You have submitted to the fact that you're resigning. There you stand, you can do no other.

This, then, is how I justify, to myself and perhaps to you if you were wondering, why I am writing here. You see, I had a need for an outlet, but one does not need to blog to type. Yet, heaven forbid that I come to the internet with the Answer. Think of this as the process of my own coming-down-from-the-tower experience. You are somewhere on that tower too. Maybe you're climbing up, maybe you're coming down, or maybe you're just standing there watching and wondering. Thus, I shouldn't hide from you. I'm not resigning because I want to commit suicide. I don't hate you, or myself. We are passing here because we are somehow connected, and this is as it should be. To resign from the tower should never be to resign from community. Otherwise, the jump would have been the more efficient and scenic route.

There are so many people out there trying to build that f(r)ame, to establish that platform, to put another brick in the wall. I am resigned(ing) to all that. I was thinking about this earlier, looking at the books I'm reading. I picked up the Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard again, reading Merold Westphal's essay on Kierkegaard and Hegel (which I read because recently Jamie Smith said something on Twitter about how SK (almost) ruined Hegel for him....whatever.) While I was at it, I re-read the essay on 20th century receptions of Kierkegaard. It is always striking that Kierkegaard is useless, and yet so many have found his work to be of great personal importance. It is the work which changes lives, and yet it builds no structures. I joked that maybe I'll pioneer a way to use Kierkegaard's theory of self to establish a neighbor-love ethic for treating with people with special needs as humans. Is there something there? Sure, bits here and there. Most of the work has already been done, but just needs to be applied to SPED. But, what a charade. Kierkegaard didn't write to construct, he wrote to resign. Here he was free to say things that really needed to be said, a prophetic voice against the Spirit of the Age.

It's enough to make me want to quit blogging. What's the point? Yet, the damnedest thing about Kierkegaard is that he didn't hate his peers, though he was more than willing to criticize. He even employed other names so that he wouldn't take on a posture of presumption. No, Kierkegaard loved the Danes, I think, much as Paul loved the Pharisees. So, also, I should love you. Paul still wrote those letters. Kierkegaard still wrote. I suppose, though I don't have the flame of genius, I'll still write.