The Geometry of Avoidance

There is a vulgar superstition, fostered chiefly by men who carry their hats in their hands and their grievances in their breast pockets, that trouble is an atmospheric condition: a fog, perhaps, which descends impartially upon the innocent and the imprudent alike; a rainstorm under which every umbrella is equally absurd. This is sentimental nonsense. Trouble has an address. It takes the omnibus. It rings doorbells. It arrives, very often, by appointment—though never, regrettably, through one’s secretary.

The first law of serenity, therefore, may be inscribed upon the brass plate of every civilized person:

Proximity ~ Trouble

No proximity, no trouble; or, at least, no trouble of the intimate, invoice-bearing, subpoena-scented variety. A tiger observed through opera glasses is a zoological curiosity. A tiger seated beside one on the divan, pawing at the sherry tray with an expression of democratic entitlement, is an administrative emergency.

We are forever being advised to “face things.” This phrase, with its military jaw and parish-council morality, has ruined more afternoons than gin, debt, and bad Latin combined. There are, naturally, occasions when a gentleman must face something: a duel, a tax inspector, an elderly aunt in a tiara, perhaps the consequences of his own handwriting. But the modern appetite for confrontation is a peculiarly unrefined enthusiasm. One is urged to “deal with” persons whose principal occupation is to make dealing with them intolerable. One is told to “have the conversation,” as though conversation were a harmless garden implement, rather than a cabinet containing dynamite, old letters, and a small, venomous animal.

The more exact formula is this:

Proximity + Anger = Punishment

Not always punishment in the theatrical sense: no judge banging a gavel, no black carriage waiting beneath the rain-polished windows, no prison governor with whiskers of philosophical disappointment. Punishment is frequently more provincial than that. It comes as a message at midnight, a complaint from a person whose life possesses the structural elegance of a collapsing accordion, an accusation translated badly into three languages, an expense, a rumor, an invitation to explain oneself to someone who has already elected to misunderstand.

And every country, every city, every legal weather system has its own climate of consequences. In one place, indiscretion is a scandal; in another, it is evidence. Here, a raised voice is merely bad breeding; there, it acquires stamps, signatures, procedural offspring. One may find oneself punished not because one was wicked—wickedness is often too expensive and requires better tailoring—but because one stood too near a person, an institution, a dispute, a doorway, a telephone, an intoxicated cousin, an unlicensed idea.

The prudent man does not imagine that he can reform the jungle. He does not negotiate with the hyena concerning tone. He does not invite the mosquito into the drawing room in order to understand its childhood. He notes, with respectful detachment, that certain creatures are attracted to movement, warmth, noise, wounded pride, and unattended fruit. Then he adjusts his route.

Distance is not cowardice. Distance is architecture.

The amateur believes boundaries are emotional declarations: a trembling speech delivered in a café after too much coffee, ending in the ceremonial phrase, “I just need you to respect my space.” The seasoned person knows that a boundary is not a speech. It is a system. It is a gate, a vestibule, a timetable, an unanswered call, a business address rather than a private one, a polite intermediary with excellent handwriting and the moral density of a granite obelisk.

The truly enviable life is not necessarily the one with fewer enemies. Enemies, properly placed, can be decorative—like gargoyles on a cathedral. It is the life with fewer points of access.

One must cultivate, in other words, an avoidance personality—not the shabby evasiveness of the liar or the coward, who is merely chased by what he refuses to name, but the ceremonial avoidance of the old diplomatic schools. The man who cannot be reached at once is not necessarily hiding. He may simply have discovered that immediacy is the preferred weapon of the unreasonable.

“Call him now.”

“No.”

“Make him answer.”

“He is unavailable.”

“Why?”

“Because he is alive.”

There is enormous wisdom in an office. An office is not merely a room with papers in it; it is a theological assertion. It says: you may approach, but you may not arrive unannounced in the sanctum of my nervous system. It says: your urgency has been received, catalogued, and placed in a tray beside several other urgencies, some of which have been waiting since the reign of a previous monarch. It says: the world may knock, but it cannot simply walk in wearing wet shoes.

A secretary, meanwhile, is one of civilization’s gentlest miracles. Not necessarily a human secretary; the function may be performed by a calendar, an email address, a contract, a gatekeeper, a business number, a ritual of delayed reply, or the magnificent blankness of an unanswered message. But every adult who wishes to preserve the finer furniture of the soul ought to possess some intermediary between the public and the pulse.

For direct reachability is the spiritual equivalent of leaving one’s front door open during a parade of lunatics.

The important thing is not to become cold. Coldness is merely proximity’s disappointed cousin. One should remain gracious, even generous; one should answer in time, speak clearly, pay fairly, and never confuse mystery with cruelty. But grace without perimeter is an invitation to occupation. A castle may serve wine in the courtyard while keeping the drawbridge under independent management.

Proper communication, then, is not endless availability. It is the art of arranging contact so that contact does not become capture.

There are people who believe that access is love, that interruption is intimacy, that the right to disturb is proof of affection. They are mistaken in the touching, ruinous way that people often are when they have never had a proper door. To care for others does not oblige one to offer them a key to every room. Indeed, the best relations are often those conducted across a healthy distance: close enough for warmth, far enough to prevent combustion.

For life, despite the obstinacy of certain persons and the bureaucracy of certain nations, is lavishly furnished. There are books waiting to be opened in quiet rooms; music requiring both hands; sunlight on old walls; meals that deserve no argument beside them; journeys, rehearsals, beaches, gardens, beautifully unnecessary objects, and the occasional splendid silence. There are friends whose laughter does not demand an affidavit. There are loves that do not require surveillance. There are mornings which, if defended properly from the world’s professional agitators, can pass without a single dramatic telegram from the empire of nonsense.

Why surrender these things to proximity’s little tyrannies?

The gentleman of sense does not flee life. He places life behind good gates. He permits visitors; he does not permit invasions. He learns the geography of inconvenience, the scent of approaching rancor, the small preliminary noises made by trouble before it puts on its boots and comes upstairs.

And when, from some distance, he sees the familiar procession—an offended face, a rumour in a hat, a grievance dragging a suitcase across the horizon—he does not argue with destiny.

He takes the longer road home.