Of thumbs

Montaigne writes essays about all kinds of themes. Some themes are very personal while other themes are so banal that one wonders why he has written about them. For example, essay II 26 in his Essays is about thumbs. Why should you write about thumbs and what can you write about thumbs, if you are not a doctor? But Montaigne does. His essay on thumbs is short and on the face of it it tells us not more than the kind of “funny facts” that abound on the internet, for example on Facebook. So, Montaigne tells us that teachers in Sparta bit the thumb of a pupil in order to punish him. Or that a Roman soldier was exempted from service in case his thumb was wounded, which is pretty obvious, I think, for how to handle a sword, when you can’t use your thumb? Are such facts really word to mention and are they really worth to devote an essay to, even if it is only a short one? Apparently, Montaigne changed his mind later in life, for you find such essays only in Books I and II of his Essays and not in Book III, which he wrote much later, when he had become a mature man.
But are such themes really banal? In a sense they are: Life is short and you can spend your time better on more important subjects, so many people think. Besides that it’s always a question what is important and what isn’t, you can wonder, however, if one must always be serious. Moreover, I think that there is more. To say it short: Is what we call banal really banal? I don’t want to deny that banality exists, but many things that we find not worth to talk about and not worth to pay attention to can suddenly become important, when they are not there or when there is something wrong with them. Take thumbs. I think that there are not many people who would get the idea to write about such a “banal” theme like thumbs (if you are not a doctor). However, as Montaigne’s example of the Roman soldier shows, thumbs become important when they are hurt and even more so, when we miss it. A Roman soldier couldn’t fight when his thumb was hurt. When it had been cut off in a fight, I think he would have been dismissed, which is far from being banal.
In the same way, our daily life is full of banality. We go to the office, park our cars, do our shopping, clean the windows and peel the potatoes. Banality? Without this banality – or something like that, depending on where in the world you live and on which culture and society you belong to – the stream of life would not be possible or be deeply disturbed. Such routine – so “banal” – actions and events become suddenly important, when you are unemployed, poor or ill. Then you feel their importance. Maybe this kind of banality is one of the most important things in life. On purpose I write “this kind of banality”, since I don’t want to deny that “real” banality exists, though many of what is considered banal is not that banal as it seems at first sight.
That we ignore the normal routine and the normal things of daily life, says a lot about life today, I think. I wonder whether it isn’t a recent phenomenon, for in the past life was so full of risks and unexpected happenings that it was hardly possible to speak of routine. Also many normal daily activities lacked routine. Illness, death, accidents, war, hold-ups, sudden meetings (note that nowadays we call up when you want to meet someone, but until not so long ago you just walked or travelled to his or her house without giving notice that you would come) were once integrated in daily life. A big part of life was like a whirlpool. But medicine, social order, technology and so on have brought the life stream under control in many respects. For many of us banality set in and it became increasingly exceptional that the routine was broken. And so banality became a characteristic of modern society, but that doesn’t mean that what we now call banal has become less important than in the past.