IT’S OCTOBER. I read
somewhere that people tend
to consider the month they
were born in as their favorite
month.

{ was born in mid-October, and
there is indeed something about that
time of year (hat makes me feel gen-
erally more alive than I feel during
the other months.

Now this is obviously ong of
those statements you can quibble to
death with. What do I mean by
“more alive?”

Surely it varies. And of course it
does, but it remains that at the very
least I almost automatically feel
more philosophical in October, and
I equate that with being “more
alive.” You know — not just being
alive, but thinking about it.

So permit me the luxury of wax-

- ing philosophical. Equate it with
something like leaves falling or the
rains thickening.

In this mood — a bit of seasonal
distance, I guess you vould call it —
it occurs to me that if there is a fun-
damental line that divides people, it
has less to do with race, creed or
color than with whether you see
your own life as an infinitesimal
slice in the great wavelength of
Creation, or whether you think it's
one of the biggest deals in the
world.

I’m talking about the line
between true egomaniacs and us just
plain maniacs. Given that we're all]
crazy, living in a crazy world, it’s no
sin to be goofy.

' The sin is to take yourself too
seriously.

It is very easy to project one’s
own life experience onto the great
events occurring in the world at
large, as in: “I met Harry and the

tulf.War happened.”
“7? After all, we only see the world
:through one set of eyes at a time,
-. and those just happen to be our own.
wy We are our owe media, actually.

it is a serious mistake to believe -
something is true simply because

. you say it is — to be mesinerized
by one’s own words, one's own °
thoughts, the sound of one’s own
voice — unless, of course, you can
‘say for sure that history would have
tumed out differently had you not
beeri born.

- And who but a handful can say
that? .

“This may be something that

comes with age (what a horrible

thought), but nowadays I find I

strictly
personal

don’t get quite so caught up in what
I'm saying or what anyhody's say-
ing as | used to.

It takes a Jot more to get me
excited, enraged, horrified or simply
moved.

To shock me or astonish me is
even harder.

And it is almost impossible to
get me raving on about something |
believe passionately in, for the sim-
ple reason that I’ve heard all my
own rants before, and I’m not sure I
want to listen to them again, any
more than I want to listen to anyone
else’s.

No matter how important and
pregnant with history-in-the-making
our own utterances might seem to
each of us, as likely as not the
whole universe will unfold the same
way it was going to anyway, regard-
less of whether we yapped our little’
brains off or not.

This could, of course, be false

modesty, but | suspect that the many
charged and witty conversations 1
take part in do nor change the world
in any way whatsoever, enjoyable as
they may be.

The world changes ilself, and we
in turn are changed by it. Inia bit
on the deterministic school of
thought side on this one.

Mostly | feel like I’m just one
more molecule ping-ponging around
in the slippery structure we call real-
ity.

I don’t think it has to be an awful
thing that each of us is a part of
something infinitely more complex
than ourselves, @ social organism,
maybe even a planetary organism.

The awful thing is to have to lis-
ten to someone taking their own rap
so seriously that they can't hear
themselves in perspective, Le. as a
tiny additional racket in the cosmic
cacophony,

It seems to me — especially this
October, when | am a year older
than [ have ever been before — that
99% of most conversations could be
edited out, and the universe would
suffer no net loss whatsoever.

Most yattering that | hear strikes
me as just that: yattering.
Background noise, like birds chirp-
ing. Ours is a society that welcomes
dialogue.

We encourage public discourse.
We engage in political debates, We
discuss, argue, critique. criticize,
cajole, implore, engage and general-
ly wear each other's eardrums
down. We use the phone more than

any other people in the world.

Sometimes it is the biggest and

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noisiest of the debates that could
profitably be edited the most.

The debate about the future of
Quebee falls into this category, to
my mind.

If, somehow, the raucous shouts
of the partisans could be blanked
out, so that there was blissful silence
instead of shrill rhetoric. | can't help
feeling the world might be a
smarter, slightly less crazed place.

Listening to Bouchard, Parizcau
and Dumont, for instance, I realize |
am on the other side of the funda-’,
mental dividing line from them — .
not them as Quebecers, but them as
individual human beings, because
they fali into that category of ego-
maniacal people who take their own
words so seriously they can no

longer be reasoned with.

And certainly they are no fun to
be around.

The difference between the peo-
ple who believe in their own mes-
sitnic selves and those of us who
have come around to not being par-
ticularly impressed by anybody’s
words, thoughts, policies or visions,
including our own, is that #ey cause
all the trouble, and we try to stick to
ourselves and keep our noses to the
grindstone.

We live in a communications
age.

While this is, of course. wonder-
ful and groovy, there is a dark side. 1
think we over-communicate. We
yatler too much.

Maybe, in the legislatures of the
land, instead of a Question Period,
there should be a Picking-The-Lint-

’ From-Your-Belly-Button Period.

It is an October kind of thought,
but silence is golden.

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