I passed through a site today--no one in St. Blogs, so don't get any notions--where I so desperately wanted to make a comment that could in no way be made as charitably as I wanted to make it. Correction is always difficult. So after attempting it five different ways, I abandoned the enterprise and went on, with this error still rankling in my head.
Now I write about it to exorcise its ghost and to wonder why I should be so concerned about the relatively minor errors of other. This after all wasn't a matter of faith or morals or even right and wrong in the religious sense--it was a matter of sensibility, taste, training, and to some extent presumption on the part of the person posting. But is it up to me to correct presumption and error? If they think Rod McKuen will be remembered and savored alongside John Keats, is that my problem to correct? If Thomas Kinkade is their artist of choice and they think that all of those worthless Vermeers in the art galleries should be replaced, should I worry? So long as they don't run an art gallery and are merely redecorating their living spaces, why should I be concerned?
And then it occurred to me as well that we all have areas where we are deeply concerned about formation and about depth and breadth and understanding. My particular weak point is the question of art, music, literature, beauty, truth, and goodness. Where someone fails in these, I have this urge to lecture, to correct, to say things that in all truth needn't be said and will not ultimately profit either party.
I would that I could learn these things before I warm up my typing fingers.
Sometimes even those things that can be said in charity need not be said. Often, silence is the better part.
