Walking the Wall

I was catching up on all my Tivo’d shows after being horribly sick this weekend, and was really interested in this weeks episode of Boston Legal. Now, I just got interested in this series this year, I watched it on a whim when there was nothing on and really got a kick out of it. I have to say that James Spader’s character, Alan, is absolutely fantastic. He has to be the most charismatic character I have watched in a long time, just delicious. That aside, the show has a great mix of absurdity, moral and political dialogue, and just plain fun that it has hooked me like I haven’t been hooked into a lawyer show since Ally McBeal.

Part of this weeks show was Alan defending the rights of a little girl who had lost the ability to smile after a car accident. It was fascinating to watch the affect her soberness on those around her, and even on myself. We so take for granted the power that facial expression has, how much we rely on it as feedback and part of communication, how much we say with our faces without even knowing it. It certainly explains how there can be so much misunderstanding in an email, or an IM message, or board post, or a blog entry–we have cut out a great deal of the communication factor without expressions. Yes, there are all kinds of emoticons that can help, and I think that people are learning to write more clearly and understand that communication is different in the written word than the spoken word.

At the end of the show, Alan was talking with the little girl about the power of being different, and this is what really struck me, asking her if she knew of a philosopher named Epictetus. I hadn’t heard of him, but Alan went on to say (pretty close to a quote from the show), that Epictetus had written and compared "people who fit in to white threads in a togo, indistinguishable. He wanted to be the purple thread, the small part that was bright and made all the rest graceful and beautiful. Why then, he asks, do you ask me to make myself like the many, and if I do, how shall I still be purple?" I love this, and while the little girl wisely noted that sometimes being purple was painful, something Alan agreed with, it is so true. Why be a white thread when you can be a purple thread–it makes me want to knit a bright purple hat.