Finding Watson
Actually, your ideas need the warmth of personal intimacy to flourish.
Finding someone who not merely tolerates, but is interested in your ideas and how your mind works is one rare gift in life. People thinking interesting things—at least things they find interesting—are common. The only scarce thing is a simultaneously interested and intimate audience. You either have intimate people who are not interested—family and friends. Or you have interested people who are not intimate—like readers on the internet. But to have the two traits in one person or more is rare.
Often, people tweet "I love intellectually stimulating conversations." And I see the declarers scampering from Reddit to Twitter to Quora to find this stimulation. On the one hand, they are right that they need intellectually stimulating conversations. It is better to do so than smoke cannabis—although Twitter (stupid X) hits like crack. On the other hand, they seek it in places with interested people but not intimate enough to sustain the weight of their ideas.
The real combination remains a mix of interestingness and intimacy.
Consider that everyone thought Sherlock Holmes was queer and interesting. But no one was willing to poke at the intricacies of his mind until Watson came along. And Holmes—“who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul”—testified later of Watson that “I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own little adventures.” They went on to be roommates. And Doyle only reveals how Holmes worked from Watson’s perspective.
You might say, “pfft, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are fictional characters.” Well, consider that one man expressed a crucial fact via two characters: a powerful intellect needs a bosom friend.
If, still, that does not pacify you, consider that we would have never seen The Lord of The Rings had Tolkien and Lewis not been such close friends. Tolkien had this effect on Lewis: he helped him reconcile his imagination and reason. While Lewis influenced Tolkien to publish what he had previously written only for a private audience. “But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion,” Tolkien said after Lewis died.
It may also fascinate you to know that Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was the child of a discussion between friends at Geneva; Lord Byron and Percy Shelley discussing Charles Darwin’s findings while Mary attended the conversations with interest. Such a circle with continuous, not one-off, discussions is the maternity ward of really interesting, and occasionally world-changing ideas. This makes finding your Watson key.
Although Ludwig Wittgenstein went full hermit to conjure what became the massive Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he invited G.E Moore to be with him in Norway for two weeks at his hermitage. He also corresponded at length with Bertrand Russell on his ideas. As Nigel Warburton rightly stated, “this stereotype of the genius at work in isolation is misleading.”
While stimulating interest is a need, where we might stimulate interests is scarce. If it were not so, online forums would not be buzzing with the demands. Everyone seems to have a thought. But everyone seems to be missing a Watson who can catch the content and enthusiasm of his thoughts and see it through to fruition. We are left with, as Roger Scruton describes, a “life full of uncompleted gestures, half-formed thoughts, and unplanned explosions of emotion, all occurring in rapid succession.” We resolve this by ignoring the next guy in the room and go online to seek an interested audience. Hardly does that solve anything.
I know two boys who lived together but hardly spoke to one another. No they were not feuding. They simply lived in their phones. I allowed it—not like I could force them otherwise—because I saw that their phones provided vastly more interesting company than living together did. Their Watsons were elsewhere. People with whom they had more in common and they grew—like plant to sunlight—in that direction. In the end, only a Watson, not a Lestrade, nor a Stamford, nor a Jones, can be a companion to a Holmes.
Certainly, there is an organ in us that considers rejoicing in ideas as its highest reward. Not many people know it or feel this way. That’s great for them. However, some others suffer everyday; turning left and right, with pangs of epididymal hypertension—in the mind, hoping that someone, a companion, would come and save them.
Nonetheless, a relationship based on ideas alone will fail; it simply lacks the intimacy it needs to survive and flourish. Twitter, Reddit, Quora, and every other outlet we run to do not satisfy because they are interesting but hardly intimate. They hang by a weak connection that evaporates when you lose your mobile phone, social media account, or the other person decides to abruptly discontinue the conversation. The need remains to build a personal space—as furniture and decoration makes a home—for your ideas and intellectual life. Your ideas and the life of the mind need the warmth of personal intimacy to flourish. We decorate our intellectual space with the furniture of our shared human emotions.
You will be just as starved of life with a pal with whom you spar on mathematics but with whom you cannot tell that you have started to fancy the girl next door. Our heads remain connected to our hearts— to the common passions of love, joy, grief, and gratitude. This demands that you establish a communion beyond a communion of ideas. I always imagine the joys of having a Watson for a wife, who can follow the content and enthusiasms of my thoughts. The life of the mind may be about nurturing the mind but it is never about escaping the world. It is about living it in full.
Here, of course, is your meme. Let’s do so quick mafs:
There’s a feeling that readers get when the writer so beautifully, puts their perspective into writing.
The kind that gives the reader goosebumps, and teary eyes.
And then the Venn diagram at the end that made me chuckle despite my emotional fit. 😂
From experience, I know this feeling gives a sense of fulfillment to the writer. I hope it gives you that, Busy Mind.
Cos you have made my day, heck, maybe my year. Thank you.
As the kids say: THIS. Thank you for putting into such eloquent words and examples precisely what’s missing from creative output these days. And thank you for helping me uncover more gratitude for my own rare Watsonesque moments with my people. I need to cherish these relationships.