Hobgoblin

After shopping in The City for several hours, we finally left the crowded traffic and stoplights and headed toward the comfort of the boonies.  I felt myself relax as the road narrowed from six lanes of traffic to four lanes, and eventually two.

A few miles beyond the last store, we passed a couple of small lakes that were already wearing a coat of premature ice - a fact explained by their protected location and shallowness.  The scope of human experience had been on my mind, and the stark image of those lakes triggered a thought. 

“What does hobgoblin mean?”  I asked my husband. 

“WHAT??”  He looked at me with one raised eyebrow, as if to say here she goes again, the word freak.

“You know, hobgoblin.   As in, ‘Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”

He’s well accustomed to my linguistic preoccupations, and the eyebrow graciously dropped back to its normal position.  “I guess I don’t know.”  He paused. “But I don’t agree with the quote.  I mean consistency is often a good thing, right?  Like consistency in seeking God.  Consistently choosing the harder option - being reliable and trustworthy - because it is the right thing to do, not because it is easy or feels good.”

“Sure.”  I decided not to debate, even though I’m usually one to wave the banner in favor of creativity.  I let it go because, well, he was right. We drove on, watching the wintry landscape, noting how quickly it had become barren, how rapidly the Christmas season had arrived, how green and lush the pine boughs looked next to the barren branches of their spindly, broad-leaved neighbors. But my wonderings continued.  Hobgoblin was such an interesting-sounding word with layers of undertones. 

We passed by hilly fields rough with corn stubble.  I thought they resembled giant male cheeks and chins with two-day-old beards.  Rough.  Big.  The opposite of the small, frozen lakes.

Several hours later, I searched the web for the meaning of hobgoblin and found two possibilities, one more sinister: an object of dread, harassment, fear, worry; a bugbear. Then I looked up the actual line I'd quoted in the car, and found I’d left out an important word: foolish. 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this in his essay, Self-Reliance. 

This evening I’m replaying all of this, coming to conclusions about Emerson’s quote and my own application of it. Consistency in virtue and faith, clinging to basic truths and balancing a right response to reality and perceived ideals, is wise.  Consistency in these arenas grows us big, beyond our own limits.  It yields crops.  Harvests them.  Grows more.

On the other hand, when we foolishly practice small thoughts and perceptions without room for growth toward holiness, for divine mystery’s movement in a different direction, we stagnate.  In that case there is no room for new, creative ideas, and so the old ones become a means of confinement, a prison cell of small, stale sameness that replays the same limitations over and over.  These eventually form a barrier to discovery, enlightenment, and original expression - an ice cap on a diminished heart and soul. A hobgoblin.