In whom would you rather place your trust, a fickle or a steadfast person?
Let’s set up the pros and cons. First, the pros of fickle people. A fickle person offers you novelty. We all enjoy that, don’t we? Keeps us alert. Novelty renews us. Quirkiness has its charms. Who wants to be an “old stick in the mud,” relegated to doing the same things day after day, year after year, resident of a mental office cubicle? Who wants to be locked in lockstep with the unchanging dullness that the lack of creativity and surprise bring? Second, the cons: Where does one find any stability in fickle people, any trustworthy assurances? Wake up one day to find the world has changed dramatically? Come home to a different house after work? Creativity and surprise, yes. Constant unpredictability, no. Everyone wants some stability. Everyone wants to trust the floor will hold, that the basis for a relationship will underlie it through time and trial. How can anyone plan anything with a fickle person, one blown about on swirling winds?
The pros of steadfastness differ, of course. A steadfast person makes stability the foundation of relationships. Creativity can occur, but in a context of a consistent drumbeat, a march toward the next goal, a purposeful response to a changing world. A steadfast person provides an unwavering commitment based on principles. But there are cons in everything. In steadfastness lies the potential for stubbornness born of inflexible plans and ideas. Of adherence to questionable, untenable, or even selfish principles. In steadfastness lies a potential inability to adapt as circumstances warrant.
Inflexibility has proven itself to be as flawed a character trait as capriciousness. So, there are types of or degrees of steadfastness. There is the steadfastness that provides a knowable and strong foundation and a steadfastness that makes a foundation that is brittle and unable to withstand the tremors of change. It cracks rather than bends to the forces of Man and Nature. Inflexibility befriends the obsessive and the elderly who are set in their ways; it befriends the fundamentalist view, or rather, fundamentalists of any kind, religious, political, and ideological. It invites disasters of every degree by clinging to faulty assumptions, and it finds itself constantly justifying by a tyrannical dismissal of questions. It is the “grumpy old man” of human characteristics. And its fixed nature often reveals itself in heartbreaking folly.
In Rigoletto, the Duke, ironically a fickle man, sings about the fickle nature of “women” in one of the most famous of Verdi’s arias. He desires Rigoletto’s daughter, but Rigoletto, knowing the Duke’s reputation and intentions and being steadfast in his love for his daughter, pays an assassin to kill the Duke. To protect his daughter, he sends her away dressed in disguise as a man. Fickle Nature, however, intervenes as a storm turns her back to the inn. In the meantime, the assassin’s daughter convinces him to spare the Duke and kill the next man who walks through the door. And yes, if you haven’t guessed it or seen it acted out on stage, that “man” is Rigoletto’s daughter.
Why should I relate that story? Consider steadfastness and fickleness in the context of the American hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. For twenty years, America was steadfast in its commitment to Afghanistan. In a blink, it withdrew. Now, no country’s commitment to another is permanent, as evidenced by, say, France and England, often at war—heck, one of those wars lasting more than a hundred years—and often at peace with each other—as in the First and Second World Wars. So, alliances come and go, and the one between the late Afghan government and the United States has gone—abruptly. But in what context did the steadfastness end? Was it in a capricious move? Could it have been planned so that those now in jeopardy did not have to be in jeopardy? Twenty years and about a trillion dollars went all for nought in a moment of capriciousness.
As I write this an embodiment of Rigoletto has asked the daughters of Afghanistan to escape a brutal and enslaving group, but they can’t because a storm is turning them back. Let’s pray that they do not meet the same fate as Rigoletto’s daughter when they walk back through the door of the inn.
Let’s set up the pros and cons. First, the pros of fickle people. A fickle person offers you novelty. We all enjoy that, don’t we? Keeps us alert. Novelty renews us. Quirkiness has its charms. Who wants to be an “old stick in the mud,” relegated to doing the same things day after day, year after year, resident of a mental office cubicle? Who wants to be locked in lockstep with the unchanging dullness that the lack of creativity and surprise bring? Second, the cons: Where does one find any stability in fickle people, any trustworthy assurances? Wake up one day to find the world has changed dramatically? Come home to a different house after work? Creativity and surprise, yes. Constant unpredictability, no. Everyone wants some stability. Everyone wants to trust the floor will hold, that the basis for a relationship will underlie it through time and trial. How can anyone plan anything with a fickle person, one blown about on swirling winds?
The pros of steadfastness differ, of course. A steadfast person makes stability the foundation of relationships. Creativity can occur, but in a context of a consistent drumbeat, a march toward the next goal, a purposeful response to a changing world. A steadfast person provides an unwavering commitment based on principles. But there are cons in everything. In steadfastness lies the potential for stubbornness born of inflexible plans and ideas. Of adherence to questionable, untenable, or even selfish principles. In steadfastness lies a potential inability to adapt as circumstances warrant.
Inflexibility has proven itself to be as flawed a character trait as capriciousness. So, there are types of or degrees of steadfastness. There is the steadfastness that provides a knowable and strong foundation and a steadfastness that makes a foundation that is brittle and unable to withstand the tremors of change. It cracks rather than bends to the forces of Man and Nature. Inflexibility befriends the obsessive and the elderly who are set in their ways; it befriends the fundamentalist view, or rather, fundamentalists of any kind, religious, political, and ideological. It invites disasters of every degree by clinging to faulty assumptions, and it finds itself constantly justifying by a tyrannical dismissal of questions. It is the “grumpy old man” of human characteristics. And its fixed nature often reveals itself in heartbreaking folly.
In Rigoletto, the Duke, ironically a fickle man, sings about the fickle nature of “women” in one of the most famous of Verdi’s arias. He desires Rigoletto’s daughter, but Rigoletto, knowing the Duke’s reputation and intentions and being steadfast in his love for his daughter, pays an assassin to kill the Duke. To protect his daughter, he sends her away dressed in disguise as a man. Fickle Nature, however, intervenes as a storm turns her back to the inn. In the meantime, the assassin’s daughter convinces him to spare the Duke and kill the next man who walks through the door. And yes, if you haven’t guessed it or seen it acted out on stage, that “man” is Rigoletto’s daughter.
Why should I relate that story? Consider steadfastness and fickleness in the context of the American hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. For twenty years, America was steadfast in its commitment to Afghanistan. In a blink, it withdrew. Now, no country’s commitment to another is permanent, as evidenced by, say, France and England, often at war—heck, one of those wars lasting more than a hundred years—and often at peace with each other—as in the First and Second World Wars. So, alliances come and go, and the one between the late Afghan government and the United States has gone—abruptly. But in what context did the steadfastness end? Was it in a capricious move? Could it have been planned so that those now in jeopardy did not have to be in jeopardy? Twenty years and about a trillion dollars went all for nought in a moment of capriciousness.
As I write this an embodiment of Rigoletto has asked the daughters of Afghanistan to escape a brutal and enslaving group, but they can’t because a storm is turning them back. Let’s pray that they do not meet the same fate as Rigoletto’s daughter when they walk back through the door of the inn.
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