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Prosaics in family
By Seeing the Everyday | October 28, 2009
What is at the core of the best family relationships is a question contemplated and explored in every age and by every family. While studies have found many factors that predict success in the home, much of modern research and experience converges on what may be the most notable indicator: prosaics.
“Prosaics” is a term, coined by contemporary literary philosopher Gary Saul Morson, used to capture a way of thinking that
“. . . Questions whether the most important events may not be the most ordinary and everyday ones—events that we do not appreciate simply because they are so commonplace. To adapt Abe Lincoln’s saying, God must have loved the ordinary events because he made so many of them. Cloaked in their very ordinariness, the prosaic events that truly shape our lives—that truly are our lives—escape our notice. The truths we seek are hidden in plain view, and for that reason are all the more difficult to discern.”
In other words, the big milestones of life, important as graduations and job promotions are, may cause us to overlook what Morson calls
“the infinitely numerous and apparently inconsequential ordinary ones, which taken together, are far more effective and significant. After all, memorable events are memorable just because they are exceptional. To imagine that they are important just because they are memorable and noticeable would be like concluding that because only treetops are visible on a distant hill, nothing exists there but trees.”
Prosaics assumes that
“[order] is always the result of work. It is never given, but always made.”
“Whatever wholeness we achieve requires enormous work, which is the effort of life; and that work is never complete . . . . [We work] to develop the habit of evaluating and correcting ‘the tiny alterations’ of our thoughts moment to moment.”
“[Creating good] demands energy, like the moment-to-moment conscientiousness of a good mother.”
(above extracts from G. S. Morson (Autumn 1988), Prosaics: An approach to the humanities, American Scholar.)
Our most common, ordinary, daily life experiences take place at home—in families. By applying the philosophy of prosaics, the work of family and all of our interactions therein become the most effective and significant of all we do.
Topics: Research |
October 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I love this theory and I think it is so true. What we miss waiting for memorable moments!!!