Is being calm still a quality? For many people, it would seem that it is not. They think that calm diffuses an odor of monotony where it reigns and that you need to escape it to avoid drowsiness. Agitation, confusion and nervousness are seen as something that must be sought after or at least tolerated in this twilight of Christian civilization.
The curious thing about many who think so is that they often criticize the lack of calm in others. Meanwhile, doctors’ offices and hospitals are filled with patients complaining of nervousness and related illnesses.
However, true calm is not monotony. Quite the contrary, as Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira says,
This calm I am describing is full of freshness and mobility. It is ready to accept a variety of things and not remain viciously attached to a single object to the exclusion of others. It is a kind of flexibility of the whole soul, proper to the joints and liveliness of a living organism. As life’s events unfold, it shapes and accepts or refuses everything with joy and well-being.[1]
The problem is not new. Born in 1908, Dr. Plinio describes his time as a boy in a colorful way:
I felt enormously vivacious. It was not a vitality of agitation but a strong, gushing vitality of calm. I was not a boy who jumped up and down; I was very calm. Our Lady kept me like this throughout my life. Within this calm, I felt a vital spurt, a possibility and a will to live, a will to do, a will to be. [2]
* * *
Calmness is not monotony. On the contrary, it is to move at the right time. This book analyzes an article by General Weygand comparing the General Headquarters of Marshal Foch – head of the Allied forces in World War I (1914-1918), with no less than the calm of a Benedictine abbey. Calmness in the middle of war!
Calm is strength, and those who are not calm have no real strength.
But let us return to the boy Plinio and his memories of when he began to perceive the calm versus nervousness issue:
When I was fifteen, a man aged 74 seemed established and defined, with all his problems solved. [3] Sitting on a rock with no more scares or surprises and calmly getting on with life. All is solved. At that time of tranquility, everything was so stable and secure that one had the impression that an old man settled in life was firmer than a skyscraper with countless floors. I would compare them to the vitality that existed in me. I felt enormously vivacious but without any agitation. [4]
* * *
What is the deeper meaning of the word calm? It is easier to define what it is not: nervousness, agitation, noise, movement. But what is its positive meaning?
Dr. Plinio states: “Calm is the temperamental state inherent to innocence. Calm produces innocence, and innocence produces calm.”[5]
This book fits into a stream of interest in innocence. But who is innocent? Dr. Plinio defines it:
Innocent is the man of all ages who adheres to that primeval state of equilibrium and temperance with which man was created and, therefore, remains open to all forms of rectitude and the marvelous. Innocent is the one who did not sin against that primeval state of equilibrium and harmony and, therefore, remains open to and with an appetite for all forms of the marvelous.[6]
This is the authentically calm man. In this work, calmness fits right into this quest for innocence and the marvelous.
* * *
As with other books in this collection, Dr. Plinio’s thoughts have been gathered from countless lectures delivered over many years. Thus, as always happens in such cases, oral delivery had to be slightly adapted for publication.
The author has not revised the texts we transcribe.
[1] 9-25-83.
[2] 4-3-83.
[3] Dr. Plinio was 74 when giving this lecture.
[4] 4-3-83.
[5] 12-12-83.
[6] Primeval Innocence and the Sacral Contemplation of the Universe, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Institute, São Paulo, 2008, pp. 35-36.