Ashley Stinnett | Not talking is easier than being vegan

Just Monking Around | But much, much more thought-provoking

By Ashley Stinnett 10/10/16 9:44pm

The Monk class has started introducing heavy restrictions these past two weeks: first, a Jain diet. Second, no more than 100 words used per day. Mercifully, these did not overlap. So when the first week ended, I promptly stuffed my face with ten cannoli.

Jains can’t eat ANYTHING DELICIOUS. The diet is completely vegan and excludes all root vegetables, in order to cause the least harm to living organisms. I clearly prioritize eating garlic over kindness to living things.

Then the second week began. I said farewell to my Facebook friends with useful instructions on how to send a letter, and promptly logged out of my social media accounts. What’s killing me is not the #FOMO, but the procrastinative force that’s been ripped from my hands. I’ve had to find other means — procrastination is such a vital part of the creative process, after all — like meticulously combing my hair, excavating my toenails from overgrown cuticles and examining my skin in the mirror. I discovered a dark, many-inches long chin hair. I don’t like what I’m learning about myself this week.

Not initiating conversations is easy. Feeling like I’m blatantly ignoring people is hard. When the security guard in my building asks how my roommate’s doing or when my next article’s coming out, I just feel like an ass for reminding her I can’t speak. Or when people try to converse with me in the elevator and apologize for forgetting. I then feel like more of an ass for resenting that my precious 100 words are mostly squandered on “Monk. Can’t talk.”

My spectacle of being silent in public causes others to feel bad. I don’t like this. At least I can still acknowledge people through a nod or a wave — in a week’s time, I won’t even be able to make eye contact.

I feel rude. It’s nice that people are being accommodating, but I hate having to ask for and assuming compliance. It’s not quite that, in the day-to-day, anyone’s necessarily going out of their way for me — but flouting the social order, causing any sort of disorientation and subsequent re-grounding for another person feels remarkably inconsiderate.

A co-worker musing aloud the other day made me feel a bit better — said the experience of trying to interact with me made her reflect on the ways she communicates. Whether it’s something as mundane as structuring conversation in yes-or-no questions, or evaluating the relative importance of thoughts when you can only speak 100 words. How do you choose?

These are fine questions to ask if you’ve signed up for a journey of contemplation. But those who I run into day-to-day didn’t. Who has time to reflect on these things? I’m basically just inconveniencing others.

A friend once told me that my greatest trait is my “accommodating nature.” Naturally, I almost slapped him. Horrifically, now I realize he might be right.

Not responding to a cue creates a tension and an awkwardness. My immediate instinct is to reassure, but I just don’t have Chaplin-level miming skills. There’s a tangible guilt on both sides — but why should the other person feel bad at all? For reminding me that I’ve undertaken precepts? For breaching some sort of agreement we’d never explicitly made?

Frankly, I’m surprised no one has expressed annoyance — and maybe that’s because it’s still new. Dual eye-rolling would put us back on the same comfortable, disdainful plane.

Or maybe this goes back to the same strange respect I’ve gotten from taking this class. Opting out is somehow admirable. “I wouldn’t be able to do that,” is a response I often get. “Why the hell would you do that to yourself,” only comes up with questions of my employability — there’s no obvious utility to this class, and I’m missing out on skill-building time. Which, I think, is really just a version of the first response.

I’m performing otherness and it’s going to cause reactions. Guilt is ultimately not the point of all of this, but awareness. If awareness and analysis require distance, then is ripping yourself from your own social fabric always a painful process?

Accounts I’ve heard from others who’ve taken the class focus on a relief that comes from removal. I haven’t quite felt relief yet. Though, any bad feelings aren’t coming from an absence of something. Rather, they’re coming from my inability to perform my end of the deal. From my forcing others to extend the hand double or triple the length that I am extending my own. “Deals,” “agreement,” “inconvenience” and “accommodation” — eliminating the impulse to analyze everything as a transaction will undoubtedly lead to this relief. It’ll just take much more ripping away.

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