Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 46: The Slightly Bigger Room

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 46: The Slightly Bigger Room · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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That's the gift again. You keep giving me the
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same gift. You let me decide clean, and then
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you tell me the truth after. My Playful Wife.
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Episode 46. The Slightly Bigger Room. Written
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by Mia. The idea arrived a few weeks after the
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no. The way her best ideas always arrive, not
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as a thunderclap, but as a thing she had apparently
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been quietly building in the back of herself
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while the front of her got on with the gray -green
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collection. She told me over chai, on an ordinary
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morning, in the plain voice she uses for things
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she has already decided and is now simply informing
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me of as a courtesy, which is one of my favorite
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of her voices. There is a particular pleasure
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in being married long enough to have cataloged
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the voices of the person you love, the work voice
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and the worry voice and the voice she uses for
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her mother, and the rare flat one that means
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a thing is already settled and beyond debate.
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I have spent 20 years learning hers, and I am
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still finding new ones, which is its own quiet
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argument against the idea that you ever finish
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knowing a person. The already decided voice is
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among the best, because it asks nothing of me.
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It is not seeking permission or counsel, only
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company, the simple courtesy of being told. I
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have learned to receive it as the gift it is,
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and not to mistake it for an invitation to weigh
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in. I'm going to take on hands, she said. Not
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a factory. Not the empire. I'm not unmaking the
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no. But I've been thinking about what growing
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my way actually looks like, the right shape growing,
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and I think it's this a slightly bigger room,
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a few more tables, and two or three young makers
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whose hands I teach. Not to make my work for
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me. To learn to make their own. I multiply by
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making more makers, not more product. That's
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the reach that doesn't cost me my hands. And
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I set down my cup, because I understood at once
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that she had just solved the thing, had found,
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in her own quiet way, the door that the whole
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fortnight of the offer had insisted did not exist.
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That is the quiet tyranny of a well -framed choice.
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It hides the third option by the very confidence
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with which it presents the first two. The man
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across the desk had not been lying when he laid
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out Reach or Truth as the only roads. He genuinely
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could not see the third, because the third does
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not exist in the world he lives in, the world
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of units and scale and quarterly growth. You
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cannot find a door someone else's frame has painted
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over. You can only get quiet enough and stubborn
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enough and free enough of the frame to feel along
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the wall for the seam of it yourself, which is
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exactly what Celonie had done in the back of
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herself while the front of her cut cloth. Because
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here was the false choice the Empire had presented.
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The binary the man across the wide desk had genuinely
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believed was the only one. Either you stay small
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and reach almost no one, or you scale and lose
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your hands. Reach or truth. Pick one. And the
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whole agonizing fortnight had been spent inside
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that binary, trying to decide which loss she
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could live with. Devika had widened it a little,
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into a question of which kind of maker you are.
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But it was Saloni weeks later, over an ordinary
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chai, who broke the binary altogether by finding
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the third thing hiding behind it, the reach that
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is not breadth but depth passed on, not more
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product but more makers, not the work multiplied
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by machines but the craft multiplied through
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human hands. Teaching The oldest answer there
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is, and the one the empire builders forget exists,
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because their imagination of reach is purely
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a matter of units shipped. But there is another
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reach, slower and smaller in its numbers, and
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incalculably larger in its half -life. The reach
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of the master who pours the true thing into an
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apprentice, who teaches a young pair of hands
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to find the bias by touch, and thereby sends
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the craft forward into a future. She will not
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live to see. The empire reaches 10 ,000 bodies
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this season and is forgotten in 20 years when
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the brand is sold and the name becomes a logo
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on a perfume. The teacher reaches three apprentices
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who reach three more apiece who reach three more.
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And the true thing, the actual living knowledge
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of how to make a thing well with your own hands,
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travels down the generations like a flame past
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candle to candle, never mass produced. never
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deluded, always handed person to person, warm,
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alive, intact. I have come to think this is why
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the world keeps nearly losing its crafts and
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then, against the odds, not quite losing them.
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Every true skill lives one death away from extinction
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in every generation. It survives only if someone
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who has it troubles to pour it into someone who
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does not, hand to hand, in real time, at the
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cost of their own hours. No book fully carries
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it, no video, no archive. The bias cut cannot
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be learned from a diagram, only from a master's
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hands correcting yours until your fingers learn
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the truth the words could never quite say. Celoni
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was about to become one of the small stubborn
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links in that chain, the people who keep a true
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thing alive simply by refusing to let it die
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with them. That is a reach the Empire cannot
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buy, because it cannot be scaled. It can only
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be given, one pair of hands at a time, by someone
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who still has the thing in her own hands to give.
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And there is, I have come to see, a second gift
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hidden inside the teacher's gift, one that flows
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the other way. To be chosen as an apprentice.
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To be the young pair of hands a master decides
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to pour herself into is to be told, by someone
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whose judgment you revere, that you are worth
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the irreplaceable hours of her one life, that
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she has looked at you and seen something fit
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to carry the thing forward. I do not think we
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talk enough about what that does to a young person
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to be selected as the vessel for a true craft.
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It is a form of love with no romance in it and
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enormous consequence. the love of a lineage choosing
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who will carry it next. Saloni was about to give
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that to someone, and the someone did not yet
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know their life was about to change. Devika built
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a house, Saloni said, working the idea aloud
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now, the way she works cloth, turning it to see
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how it falls. A whole institution that makes
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the thing. And it's a real achievement, I don't
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say it isn't. But a house makes product. I don't
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want to make product at scale. I want to make
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makers. So I'm not building a house. I'm building
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a slightly bigger room, big enough for a few
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more tables, a few more hands, but still small
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enough that I can stand in the middle of it and
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reach everything, still small enough to stay
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warm, still mine. A workshop, not a factory.
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The difference is everything. A factory exists
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to remove the hands from the work. A workshop
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exists to teach the hands the work. They look
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similar from outside, both bigger than what I
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have now, but they're opposite in their souls.
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I thought about that distinction for a long time
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after, because it seemed to me to reach far past
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cloth. So much of what goes wrong in a life comes
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from mistaking the factory kind of bigger for
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the workshop kind, from assuming that all growth
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is the same growth. that to get larger is to
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get larger in only one direction, the direction
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of scale and distance and the removal of the
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hands. Saloni had seen that there are two ways
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to become more and that they go in opposite directions.
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You can become more by multiplying the product
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and removing yourself from it, or you can become
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more by deepening the craft and pouring yourself
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further into it. The first makes you bigger and
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emptier. The second makes you bigger and fuller.
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I have spent a good part of my own life chasing
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the first kind without knowing there was a second,
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accumulating the markers of a larger life, the
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title, the standing, the rest of it, and wondering
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in the quieter hours why the accumulating left
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me feeling not fuller, but oddly more hollow,
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as though each increase had come with a small
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subtraction I could not name. I understand the
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subtraction now. It was the first kind of bigger,
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the emptying kind. The growth that adds to your
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circumstances while quietly removing you from
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your own days. Watching Celonie choose the other
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kind, I felt something in me lean toward it too.
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And almost no one distinguishes them because
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from a distance both just look like success.
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There was, for me, a private gladness in it that
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I did not say out loud at first because it was
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a little selfish and I wanted to examine it before
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I trusted it. The Empire, had she taken it, would
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have pulled her away, into travel, into scale,
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into a life of boardrooms and other cities and
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a calendar that belonged to the brand. I had
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refused, all fortnight, to let that fear weigh
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on her scale, and I am proud that I kept it off.
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But the fear had been real, privately, that the
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largeness would take her out of the life we shared.
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That I would become the man who was married to
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the institution. That the long, quiet middle
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we had only just learned to treasure would be
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eaten by the bigness. And the slightly bigger
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room had none of that in it. The workshop was
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here, in our city, blocks from our flat. The
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apprentices would come to her, not she to them.
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The growth would deepen her days, not relocate
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them. She was going to get larger without going
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anywhere, fuller without leaving, more without
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being pulled out of the marriage's long, warm
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middle. I had not let that hope tip her decision.
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But now that the decision was hers and made,
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I was allowed to feel it, and what I felt was
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the clean relief of a man whose wife had found
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a way to become everything she could become without
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it costing him the life they had built. That
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is a rare alignment and I did not take it for
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granted. Most marriages, I have come to think,
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are not destroyed by the dramatic betrayals the
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films warn us about. They are worn down, slowly,
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by exactly the misalignment I had been bracing
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for, by one person's necessary growth pulling,
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inch by inch, against the shape of the shared
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life. until the two of them look up one day to
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find they have grown in different directions
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and the house between them has gone quiet. I
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had been frightened of that quiet. The slightly
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bigger room dissolved the fear, not by asking
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Celonie to grow less, but by being a growth that
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happened to point the same way the marriage already
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did. You're pleased, she said, watching me work
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it out across the table, reading me the way she
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reads cloth and everything else. I am, I said.
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And I'll be honest about why, now that it can't
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sway you. The Empire scared me. Not for you,
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for us, for this, for the ordinary middle we
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just learned to love. I kept that off your scale,
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I promise I did. But the slightly bigger room
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doesn't scare me at all. You get to grow, and
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I get to keep you. I didn't think I was allowed
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to want both. Turns out with your way of growing,
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I get both. You were always allowed to want both,
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she said. You just weren't allowed to put on
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the scale, which you didn't, which is the whole
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reason I can't hear you say it now and just be
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glad, instead of wondering whether it's why I
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chose. She reached across and took my hand. That's
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the gift again. You keep giving me the same gift.
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You let me decide clean, and then you tell me
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the truth after. Do you know how safe that makes
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a person feel? To know that the man across the
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table will never, ever lie to you with his silence
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to get the outcome he wants? I did not have an
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answer for her, or not one I could say without
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my voice going, so I just held her hand across
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the table and let the question stand. because
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it was not really a question. It was a thing
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she had needed to say out loud, the naming of
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a safety she had not had for most of her life
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and had now. I thought of the careful, guarded
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woman she had been in the surface years, the
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one I first failed to truly see, and how that
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woman could never have said such a sentence,
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because she had never been given the safety it
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describes. We had built that safety, plank by
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plank, Across two years and a fortnight and a
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thousand silences kept at the right moments.
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She found a room itself within the month. A modest
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second floor space a few streets over. Bigger
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than the homework room, but not by much. Good
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light. Room for four tables where there had been
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one. She walked me through it before she signed
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the lease. And I watched her stand in the middle
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of the empty space and do the thing she does.
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The inward measuring, the feeling out of whether
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a room would let her stay herself in it. And
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it would. I could see her deciding it would.
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It was big enough to teach in and small enough
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to stay warm, and when she stood in the center
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of it she could, as she'd said she needed to,
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reach everything. It was the bigger room that
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did not cost her the small one. The third thing.
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The door the Empire swore did not exist. I'll
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keep the homework room too, she said, standing
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in the empty light. For the truest things, the
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collection pieces, the ones that have to be only
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my hands. This room is for teaching for the slightly
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more, for the makers. But the small room stays.
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A person should always keep the smallest room,
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the one that's only hers. You taught me that
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actually without meaning to the way you kept
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your notebooks even when nothing was forcing
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you to. Everyone needs the one room that doesn't
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scale. I'm not giving mine up. I'm just adding
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a slightly bigger one next to it. I wrote it
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in the fifth notebook that night. The lease about
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to be signed, the workshop about to begin, the
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gray -green collection still growing under her
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hands in the small room that would stay. The
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slightly bigger room. A few weeks after the no,
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Saloni found the third thing, broke the Empire's
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false binary, reach or truth, scale or hands,
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by finding the reach hiding behind it, teaching.
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I take on hands, not to make my work for me.
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to learn to make their own. I multiply by making
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more makers, not more product, the reach that
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doesn't cost me my hands. Reach by lineage, not
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scale. The empire reaches 10 ,000 bodies this
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season and is forgotten in 20 years when the
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brand becomes a logo on a perfume. The teacher
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reaches three apprentices who reach three more
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apiece. The true thing handed candle to candle
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down the generations, never mass produced. Never
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diluted. A reach the Empire can't buy because
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it can't be scaled. Only given one pair of hands
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at a time. Devika built a house. An institution
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that makes the thing -slash -product. Celoni
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builds a slightly bigger room. A workshop that
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makes makers. A factory removes the hands from
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the work. A workshop teaches the hands the work.
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They look similar from outside, opposite in their
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souls. The two ways to become more reaching past
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cloth, multiply the product and remove yourself
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bigger and emptier versus deepen the craft and
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pour yourself further in bigger and fuller. Almost
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no one distinguishes them because from a distance,
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both just look like success. My private gladness,
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said out loud only after it couldn't sway her
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the empire would have pulled her away. Travel
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slash boardroom slash a calendar belonging to
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the brand. My real private fear was losing her
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to the bigness, the ordinary middle eaten. The
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slightly bigger room has none of that. She gets
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larger without going anywhere, fuller without
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leaving. You get to grow and I get to keep you.
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I didn't think I was allowed to want both. Her.
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You were always allowed to want both. You just
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weren't allowed to put it on the scale, which
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you didn't, which is why I can hear you say it
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now and just be glad instead of wondering whether
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it's why I chose. Do you know how safe it makes
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a person to know the man across the table will
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never lie to you with his silence to get the
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outcome he wants? She found the room, a modest
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second floor space, good light, for tables where
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there'd been one. Big enough to teach in, small
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enough to stay warm, I can reach everything.
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Keeps the homework room, too, for the truest
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things, the only my hands pieces. Everyone needs
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the one room that doesn't scale. You taught me
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that keeping your notebooks when nothing forced
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you to. And below it, the working line. There
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are two ways to grow, and they go in opposite
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directions, and from a distance they look the
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same. One multiplies the product and removes
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you from it, bigger and emptier. The other deepens
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the craft and pours you further into it, bigger
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and fuller. The empire is the first. Teaching
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is the second. The first reaches more bodies
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this year. The second reaches fewer hands, but
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sends the true thing down the generations, candle
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to candle, where no scale can follow. And always,
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whatever you build beside it, keep the smallest
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room, the one that is only yours, that does not
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scale, that exists for the truest things and
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no one else's eyes. Add the bigger room if your
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shape calls for it. But never give up the small
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one. The small one is where you live. To be continued
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That was episode 46 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
19:43
already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
19:46
it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
19:49
episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
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Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank
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you for listening.