Hedgehogs and Foxes

Something the other day reminded me of the movie “Husbands and Wives” and I decided to rewatch it. It wasn’t as funny as I remembered but there’s one part that still made me laugh. During a romantic bedroom scene, one of the characters can’t stop her thinking brain even at that moment. Here’s the A-I description of that line in the movie: “It is spoken by the character Sally (played by Judy Davis) as she obsessively categorizes her acquaintances during a love scene: “And I thought Michael was a hedgehog and Jack was a fox. And then I thought Judy was a fox and Gabe was a hedgehog. And I thought about all the people I knew, and which were hedgehogs and which were foxes.” I couldn’t remember where that came from and found out it’s from a Greek parable by the poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Hedgehogs relate everything to a core idea. Foxes draw on a variety of ideas but lack a unifying theory. I decided I’m a fox and my husband is a hedgehog. We’ve been married practically forever so in our case, it’s probably good that we’re not the same. Okay, so then, just like Sally in the movie, I started thinking about all the people I know and whether they fell into the hedgehog or fox category. I’ve known grants to be awarded to study all kinds of random things and wondered if I could get one for that. Sadly, I decided, probably not.

Photo courtesy Alexas_Fotos at Pixabay.com