Capacity and Currere

My first epigraph above speaks of an arena little talked about these days of terrorism, acrimony, and road rage. It speaks of interiority, that which is within all things and so has “capacity.” The word “capacity” interests me. Capacity suggests wideness, not narrowness; openness; space for possibilities not yet even imagined, or if imagined done so with a tremble. Capacity puts aside the correcting mind with its focus on the gold, the known end, public acclaim, drive, the impetus to demolish one’s opponent. Capacity is no friend of standards or accountabilities, opinion polls, common sense, facts, competition, and the like: those are the hobgoblins of small minds. Capacity does not truck with lobbying. Instead, capacity holds room for unknowingness and peculiarity. Capacity is fearless in its embrace of the other inner side of things. These days there is plenty to fear without, but there may be another kind of fear that shuns verticality because of the panic of self-discovery. As Gaston Bachelard puts it, “We need to unlearn our fear of the life within, the fear of temptation, the fear of our deepest instincts” (2002, p. 307).