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A friend told me once that the key to success in the field of journalism is not quality necessarily, but consistency. I don't believe in the value of consistency, unless it's a consistent inconsistency, which is the hobgoblin of MY mind. This is because the world, as I know it, is inconsistency incarnate (with seas and streets incarnadine). Never mind the age old problem of why we park in driveways and drive on parkways; I'm pondering the nature of what Plato may have called "the Good (patent pending)". Or that which I call red is blue to my neighbor.
And yet, at my place of work (think Dilbert without the wit), I am a champion of consistency. Hard to achieve with 13 souls...each of which is in itself inconsistent routinely. Consistent inconsistency. Sometimes. Uuugh...to quote another friend.
I think it's fun to react to the same stimulus differently from time to time (especially when there are constant background figures observing. Sometimes there is just this look of shock that beggars description. Usually there's nothing...but it's worthwhile for the rare times, for the rare times.....indeed.
I wish they could be more rare.
But consistency...consistency is to a large extent a matter of self-discipline. The wherewithal to pursue the same, unexciting course with dogged determination day after day after day...after day, as when we go to work (the unfortunate among us). Can art be a thing of consistency? Art evolves, sometimes grows, much like a child. but there are usually central qualities that do not change much in their nature. Youth, especially, is a period of great inconsistency, with the temptation and necessity to try many styles, many different paths, searching for something that fits what becomes your unique style. This principle of inconstant youth is applicable all across the board, in art and sport, in fields of science, in life.
And then, there are people who never achieve a consistent state, and that is somehow wrong, in our collective consciousness. These people find themselves on the fringes of society, usually lonely, poor, and culturally irrelevant. Our world does not reward inconsistency, or does it? It depends on the situation (and there is nothing which creates inconsistency like circumstance). The same is somewhat less true of consistency, which is often ignored or abused, seldom praised.
In the absence of definite values in our society, schools of thought arise where what is important is not necessarily the merit of what is done or said, but the circumstances or the background involved. And there are many factors which color one's background or circumstances...factors which some say we must consider. There is some merit to having a consciousness of the relationship between environment and growth, but there are many pitfalls that such situational thinking must avoid if it is not to become absurd in the extreme. With the sensationalism of bad news in this country (the United States if you're wondering), we have no lack of situations where people have tried to mollify their evil deeds by referring to unfortunate circumstances (there is the classic example of the Nazis only following their orders, a defense which was skewered mercilessly at Nuremburg). Awareness, on the whole, is a good thing (TM); blaming the murder of five children in a bathtub on "depression", for example, is evidence of high insanity.
It's fun to be inconsistent. As human beings, with some reason and wit to call upon, and memory, we tend to pigeonhole people we encounter, or nickname them. The class clown, the thug, the snotty intellectual...they miss a little, at least, and at most the whole point. This identification and tagging of the people in our lives has its purpose, but it covers the (usually) rich texture of social interaction with a veneer of stock phrases and reactions, from which there is no real escape. Even I, who revel in inconsistency, can be counted upon to be so, by those who would pigeonhole me. Thankfully, it is I, and not they, who live my life, and can appreciate (sometimes) the truly beautiful and unusual people I have encountered in my too-too short 24 years.
On a side note, on this date (April 13) in 2001, two things ended: my career with Giant Food, and the life of Mr Calvin Gladden, who called me 'blood' and warmed my heart.