What do I want to write about first in this essay? I don’t know what.
Let me rephrase that. What I want to write about is: “je ne sais quois” (ZHEH-neh-say-kwah) — the fabulous French phrase meaning “I don’t know what”. Let me explain why a phrase that means “I don’t know what” is actually saying that you DO know what — but you just can't find the words.
We all have relatives and friends whom we are crazy about, and we know exactly why. Perhaps it is their kindness, their sense of humor, their good deeds, or maybe their wondrous literary taste, as demonstrated, let’s say, by their love of Professor Engel’s lectures and essays.
But we also know people who have such an enchanting aura about them that we always love being in their company, and yet, if asked why, we simply can’t put our finger on exactly what it is that makes them so extraordinarily attractive. Here’s an example: I can’t really explain what I love so much about being with Darian; she just has a certain “je ne sais quoi” about her. (I could have used any name, but that particular name is responsible for cleverly revising and making sure my essays arrive in your Inbox promptly every other Monday, and so I am not above currying favor with this gal pal of mine).
These types of people we love are all the more charming because there is a great mystery — that “I don’t-know-what”— to their allure. One discouraging aspect of this online-obsessed age we find ourselves in is that we’ve banished this mystery, and the mystery of just about every other aspect of life. Thanks to the internet, such enticing mystiques may soon disappear entirely.
If we comment on social media that a film we just saw has a certain undefinable beauty, we can count on being bombarded by countless different replies telling us precisely what that indescribable quality is. Now that we have billions of instant answers at our fingertips, that shiver of mysterious wonder at our universe has been googled away and replaced by instantaneous cyberspace certainties.
And since I’ve mentioned films, we certainly saw the death of romantic mystique in movies more than twenty years ago, when the once artistic hints of sexual intimacy on screen gave way to graphic depictions of what so quaintly was once called “a romp in the hay”. Now we feel relieved if a few pieces of straw strategically cover the lovers’ “unmentionables” (another quaint term now having bitten the dust in our new age of mentioning and naming absolutely everything).
Gone are those movies when two lovers stand on a chilly balcony, with the heroine sighing: “Oh, darling, wouldn’t it be just magical if there were a snowfall overnight!” Now she just glances at her phone and reports, “weatherme.com says a low pressure deepening to the west will deposit 1.3 inches of snow between 1:30 and 2:00am. By the way, the record snowfall for this date was eight inches back in 1942.”
The mysteries of life aren’t problems to be solved, but unfathomable realities to be cherished. I can remember when my second grade class visited a farm. I still see my little self standing in front of a flock of lambs, and being astonished by the fact that they were being nourished by the grass they were eating. In this loud Information Age of ours, may we never forget to occasionally stand like awestruck, curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were all born.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here