Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

I watched my siblings come of age, try in vain to choose a life for themselves, wander a while, feeling the pull, feeling their betrayal, returning finally to settle in sight and in safety.

Since girlhood I had an instinct for retreat, knowing perhaps even then that withdrawing into myself was my only talent, the only way I had and ever would have of exercising any control over the situations in which I found myself in the course of my life, a control that was negligible but nevertheless all I had.

personal disclosure, that seemed to be the problem. I said so little and yet it was too much. Much too much. I vowed to make myself smaller and smaller, on numerous occasions throughout my life I had made this same vow, after speaking too rashly in the primary school lunch room or in the high school corridors, I would sit in my bedroom telling myself over and over again, hour after hour, that I would not speak a single word the following day, that I would limit myself in all ways, that I would take up less space.

Every single one of us on this ruined earth exhibited a perfect obedience to our local forces of gravity, daily choosing the path of least resistance, which while entirely and understandably human was at the same time the most barbaric, the most abominable course of action. So, listen. I am not blameless. I played my part.