One of my favorite lines in the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (about a Jewish housewife turned stand-up comic) goes something like this: “What’s more fun than going to court?” someone asks. Mrs. Maisel responds: “A late-in-life bris.”
Well, what’s more fun than a late-in-life bris? Writing a paper comparing the thoughts of nineteenth century German idealist G.W.F. Hegel and French reporter-cum-philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville on the composition of a federal government. While in the back of a car going quickly around the curves of a 7,000 foot mountain pass. And while having to ignore the music playing in the car and the inviting banter of two friends in the front seat. And while fighting nausea from the intense pangs of that time of the month, sweating from the deadline and the heat and the pain.
The Hegel-ing doesn’t stop when the car does. The Hegel follows me onto the plane which is bound for home. But I can’t let the Hegel come home with me.
As the travelers around me turn to their Kindles or TikToks or sponsored new-release movies, I gingerly open my laptop to reveal the document that I’ve spent weeks shaping and molding and destroying. The dim glow in the darkened cabin reveals no new truths. The page is as unyielding as ever.
I think, it could not get any worse. Then the woman to my left starts flying through her Instagram with loud, clackety nails. And the man to my right releases two hard-boiled eggs from their wrapper in a sulfuric cloud. Turbulence hits just as the flight attendant is about to reach my row with the (long-awaited) free Biscoff cookies and orange juice. The situation is so over-the-top, so absurdly bad, that I laugh out loud.
I finally finish Hegel-ing in an overpriced airport café. I make it home, unburthened.
I’m in my own bed again, but I dream of constitutional monarchs, and ethical unities, and civil servants, and being with oneself in the other.
