Talk:Robbie/Timeline RMCC

The idiom, comme il faut

The idiom, comme il faut, literally says "as it is necessary" and comes to refer to what is conventionally required because in settled social circles, many conventions take on an appearance of necessity, requiring those who will conduct themselves effectively to follow the conventional expectations astutely. But the phrase can turn very ironic when necessities of life diverge from the social necessities. With the move to the farm, social necessity still controlled, I became alert, tacitly but consequentially, to these ironies as they arose and took advantage of them to center there, for better and for worse, my own independent lifeworld.

Soon after that 3rd birthday, my parents announced we were moving to the farm full-time. I don't have actual memories of my emotions that this announcement triggered, but I know that in due course they developed into emotions of hearty approval and eager participation. Let's try now, as writer and readers, to grasp the inner experience I would probably have had as the circumstances of living at the farm, absorbed and displaced those of living on Gramercy Place. Parallel movements would be occurring for the adults, particularly my parents, as their aspirational expectations became absorbed and displaced in developing into a changed sense of place, shaping how they attend to and act on the actualities they encounter.

I'll fill in what I've come to learn about them as they were then and fill out lacuna with considered judgments about what must have probably been the case. That way I can grasp a little about the lifeworld into which I arrived. It's a difficult matter, which I should face at the start. Robbie (talk) 11:03, 13 January 2026 (MST)