Some people love tension more than others do. They think that a struggle or fight gives meaning to life. We all know there's meaning in struggle to some degree, but some people are always more comfortable in a battle than out of it.
Last week I posted a bit about D.H. Lawrence, and now I'll say more about him. He was a guy who lived for a fight.
In one letter, he wrote to friend that he hated any talk that was "dull as dishwater, and of no use to anybody." Tension, and not tranquility, is the mother of truth. "How I loathe ordinarness!" he wrote to his friend Aldous Huxley. By "ordinariness" he meant complicity. "To fight, to fight, to fight, and to fight again," is what matters, he wrote to his mother-in-law in 1923, "And one needs courage and strength and weapons." Lawrence lived with weapons--which he thought was the same as living with brains.
People like this are prone to inconsistencies if the inconsistencies can fuel a fight. They'll argue one point emphatically one day, and another emphatically another. The fact is they don't believe in either position as much as they love to see their own authority in action. Lawrence loved to see other people react to his language more than he considered the gentle messages behind his language.
Along this line, Lawrence could write hilariously contradictory letters to his friends. For example, on June 5, 1924, he wrote a letter to his friend Mabel Luhan that pinpointed her one problem in life: The woman could not relax. Learn to let go!, he said: "[And now, about] your letter about ‘flow.' Anyhow, can one make a flow, unless it comes? To me it seems you always want to force it, with your will. You can't just let it be. You want evident signs, and obvious tokens, and all that. ...I wish to heaven you would be quiet and [just] let the hours slip by."
In that letter, he sets up opposites: Lawrence is the guy who can live inside "flow"; his friend is far too stiff. But just three months later, Lawrence must be in a different flavor of oppositional mood, because he writes her a letter with an opposite complaint. She is too undisciplined, he says; and if she ever wants to develop as a person, she should rally her forces in the direction of will: "The thing to do is to try, try, try to discipline and control yourself," he wrote her on Sept 14, 1924. It's as if Lawrence toggles between two sides of himself and then projects frustrations with his own interior life onto people around him.
This is a guy who loves tension and plays out his own problems by citing problems in his friends.
I wonder if you know this type. There is something of the narcissist in them. They only feel vividly alive when people react to the way they flex their muscles. They need to enter a room and find problems, because by fighting those problems, they instate their power among others.
Know anyone like this--either an historical figure or a personal friend? Give me examples?
