The Counteraction

'For every action,' Maria do Carmo observed placidly, 'there is a counteraction.' One does and one undoes, one turns on and off, one says and unsays. A counteraction implies that one can retrace one's steps until there is nothing left of what one has done, as when one plays a film from the end. But things may not be so simple. Undoing what one has done is not exactly like turning off a light that one has turned on; and in fact it does not require the same type of action in all cases: it depends on what one wants to undo.

When something is left behind when you finish making something that wasn't there before, like a woollen scarf when you finish knitting it, undoing it requires technical activities. But these activities are not always feasible, even with things that have been made. We can undo a scarf, but we can't undo a loaf of bread. And there are cases in which what we made disappears when we finish making it. In these cases, there is not even an opposite. Stopping dancing is not the opposite of dancing: it is stopping dancing; turning on the light is not the same as stopping turning on the light: it is having pressed the switch; and going back on something is not about pressing a switch: it is about saying a sentence that we said preceded by 'I didn't mean to say', or 'Sorry,' or followed by another sentence in which we said the opposite.

As if these difficulties were not enough, there are actions that we think have no opposite because there are no words to describe that opposite. Although it is technically difficult to undo a loaf of bread, we can imagine situations in which what we do is more or less equivalent to the opposite of making a loaf of bread. But sometimes we seem to lack the basic tools to imagine the opposite of certain actions. We undo but do not stain; we see people falling off cliffs but no one jumping off them; and when we fall back down we do not resist. Could it be that these impossibilities come from the lack of available words?

The fact that words are available does not make much difference. The impossibility of the opposite of certain actions does not depend on the lack of suitable action verbs. No one would say that in Portuguese law, "se austina" (to austinate) is used; but we can easily imagine what it would be like for someone to austinate. On the contrary, there seems to be something, probably something that the laws of physics deal with, that prevents us from staining a pig or falling over. Because of physics, whenever someone falls, they fall, whether there is a verb or not. For similar reasons, climbing very high, very fast and without mechanical aids is more difficult, even if there is a verb. Despite the verb 'to ascend,' ascending is a very sporadic human activity. If things had been properly arranged, there would be no verbs for such rare activities, and certainly not for the opposite of actions; but things were not properly arranged.