Pardon (I'm Sorry)?: On the Just Said

One always writes in order to confess, to ask forgiveness.

— Jacques Derrida

It seems as though, when you write, you are asking forgiveness for a number of different things:

• For presuming to speak and thus to presume you have something worth saying as well as to impose labels and meanings on others by what you describe; for requesting that others sacrifice their own time and meanings for the sake of yours, and that they sacrifice this particular opportunity for them to speak in order to listen to you instead.  You are also asking forgiveness for those who do spend (and possibly waste) their time reading what you have said, and those who may come to believe or live what you have said in all its shortcomings.
• For your life; by trying to make sense of your life and world and communicating that to others, you are seeking to justify yourself.  You may also be asking forgiveness for the selfishness of this process of self-justification.  We all face death and feel we need to "have something to say for ourselves"; that could fall under this category.  Additionally, in the sense of memes and cultural evolution, you are apologizing for your life by trying to pass your ideas to others and to future generations; you are hoping to make restitution for yourself by planting these seeds, and again you are presuming that the seeds are more worth receiving than certain mutually exclusive words written by others.
• For offering forgiveness to others within one's writing (as well as to one's own culture and world or others foreign, past, or future).  To grant forgiveness, you must also ask forgiveness for granting it imperfectly and incompletely; forgiveness is always in process.  This is necessary even if your writing only says, "Then neither do I condemn you.  Now go, and sin no more."  You are asking forgiveness for offering it where you shouldn't or can't or won't as well as for where you haven't offered it but should have.
• For sacrificing all the other things worth saying to the particular thing you do choose to say in that moment.  Anything you write is implicitly an apology to everything else, which is denied an opportunity to come into being and to be said; other truths and phrases are put to death.  Also for choosing this moment to say what you say rather than another; i.e. for not having said it before, and for not waiting until later.  Also for sacrificing all other activities you could have partaken in; thus, sacrificing friends, third-world orphans, and other noble causes to the words you write by giving time and energy that could have been directed elsewhere to your writing.  Kierkegaard says, "The moment of decision is madness"; you must ask forgiveness for that madness.
• For being unaware of the many dimensions in which you transgress, including the above; thus, for not being aware that you are asking forgiveness and thus imposing on those who could possibly offer it without you realizing that you do so.
• For what you write being always and forever incomplete and in many ways unloving.

It's a little like offering condolence to someone.  Anything you would choose to say is the wrong thing to say—a stale platitude, an attempt at humor, trying to distract the one in grief or pain by talking about something else or about yourself, sharing an "insight" into the situation (which you cannot possibly feel or think about in the same way as the person to whom you speak) with the intent of offering comfort; but it is also wrong to say nothing, and to do so would perhaps be saying something about the situation as well.  To avoid guilt is impossible; we are always asking forgiveness.

This isn't to say that we don't also do good things, and that there isn't something redeeming in the things we do choose to say or write.  We are, however, obligated to others to extend the same kinds of forgiveness we ask for and to be at least as gracious as we are grateful.  "Forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive those who trespass against us."  We trespass in that we (presume to) forgive, and we forgive in that we (presume to) trespass (by being willing to incur the guilt involved in offering forgiveness and in all the aforementioned ways of writing, in which we ask to forgive).

I say all of this because (in addition to the aforementioned reasons) I am going to try to blog more this summer.  A few reasons I'd like to do this (who doesn't love bullet points?):

• A few friends are trying to get back on the blogging track, and I'd like the shared experience and solidarity as well as to encourage them to do it, be encouraged to do it myself, and to partially justify my benefiting from their venturing to say things by being willing to do so myself.
• I'd like to do a better job remembering and synthesizing what I read; hopefully part of this blog will include summaries or reflections on things I read, and I may also write some formal reviews to be posted elsewhere.  In general, I think maybe I should seek more balance in my proportion of reading versus responding.
• I think it's worthwhile to try to present my thoughts before at least an imagined audience rather than simply in my head or in a personal journal . . . in some ways it's almost cheating to write only for myself in that I can make certain leaps and assumptions that I really ought to examine and consider.  It's like talking to someone who will always agree with you; you aren't being held accountable for what you think.  With an imagined audience, I can't always assume they want to hear what I want to say, or that they want to hear me out.  I don't really like to argue, but I do like to explain, and I think blogging could encourage me to do that.  Audiences also bring out certain kinds of things to say and ways of saying them that wouldn't occur to me if I wrote in a private journal: humor, transitions, vocabulary choices . . . inspiration is always at the mercy of conditions, restrictions, and circumstances; I think of things because they're apropos, so I need to put myself in certain situations if I want to get certain results from myself.
• If I really believe the things I am reading are worth reading or that some of my thoughts are worth thinking and preserving, I will probably believe it's worthwhile for other people to hear them and interact with them as well; blogging is one way to answer to what I've read inasmuch as it calls me to share it with others.  It's like how part of the Gospel call is to share the Gospel; I'm hearing the call singly, but it's calling to many (to all), and I'm responsible to answer for the other potential hearers inasmuch as I've heard that call (which calls to many).  This isn't only true of the Gospel, but of anything beautiful.  There's a lot more to say here, and when I get to blogging about Jean-Louis Chrétien's The Call And The Response I'll try to say more.
• Also, knowing I may end up writing about something I'm reading causes me to read it differently.  It certainly did this past semester when I knew I'd be writing philosophy papers to read aloud to my class; I'd like to retain something of that level of attention in myself.
• Writing can, of course, be just for fun, a creative outlet to blow off steam.  I'll be helping Freddy manage his blog (and Facebook and Twitter) this summer, too; sometimes he insists on typing his own entries, but other times he would prefer not to bother with the menial aspects of maintaining a blog (all the more menial since he doesn't have fingers).  Both of us might be writing for The Poptimist soon, too, so keep an eye out.

Enough!  Away with thee!  There's living to be done!  For a heads-up, though, I'm currently reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American (which I might let slide by without much public comment, although I'm enjoying it; sometimes it's better to pleasure-read without the pressure of having to say anything about it, but I may decide to later) and will soon be reading Peter Rollins' How (Not) To Speak of God and, when I can find a copy, Jesse Ball's The Way Through Doors.

This has been pleasant and professional.  Good luck in the coming business year.