He or she knows there are other worlds but doesn’t know the way. “I wish,” the person says, “I could change the world as easily as changing the channel on the TV.” Things don’t seem to work that way. Every channel has the same show. Is there another way?
It seems when things become thus desperate, no exit in sight, that people turn to a sort of magical thinking (or worse yet, to substance abuse). We grasp for any last straw that may be flying in the wind; hoping for miracles, winning the lottery, God’s intervention, or any balderdash for sale in the popular media, promising the sure path to eternal bliss. And such “quick fixes” may do the trick for a time, as long as you can keep your eyes closed, but when you open them, you will find yourself back to the beginning of the original desperation.
Yet the question remains. If one finds one self in a situation that appears hopeless, intractable, what to do? I have no answer. Perhaps if I did, I would write the next bestseller for sensitive seekers and pop bookstore browsers. But I could tell you what I think. The first distinctive philosophy to come out of North America was Transcendentalism, with the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and others. Emerson claimed that there was always an unattained but obtainable self; or “around every circle another could always be drawn.” Yet such thoughts leave me in a quandary. How can there be another self other than your present self? Or you may say, an aspect of your self that is unknown to you — your self-unknown? If such a self is truly unknown, how may you become it?
There must be some connection between the self-known and unknown. But that presents a problem. The person afflicted with despair or depression seems blind to any such connection, does not see it or believe in its possibility. What, pray tell, can the connection be? Perhaps it means you must draw a bigger circle. Go global! Perhaps your troubles are but the birth pains of a self-unknown awaiting rebirth.
Are such wild thoughts realistic? I don’t think so. They’re idealistic, an Idealism well lost in the traffic of the times. May we regain it? Hope, love, joy, compassion, tenderness: the precious positive emotions? Are they within us? (Well, where else?) Does it all depend on that vague thing we call belief? Thoughts seem to limit us, but can they also free us? Is there an horizon well beyond the one we see? One that envelops the entire planet and spirals out to infinity? How to see the unseen, know the unknown. That is the paradox prevailing.
Pep talks don’t work; the walls are too thick. But there are no walls, only metaphors and words. The self a victim of itself; a malfunction at the subatomic level. We must adjust the dials. But there are no dials. Only metaphors and words. Quickly, quietly, the days pass. Slowly, the wonderer comes before the computer screen, forming words almost arbitrarily, almost, not quite meaningless sounds in cyberspace. Music of silence in the air. Will the machine adjust itself? Does it have that capability? Who knows?
So fancies like fallen leaves pinwheel from the trees. There was a knock at the door, a pizza to devour, a phone call from far away. Then the words: “Talk to you later.” Chance events, meaningless, but not quite so. There is living and dying, the sounds of passing cars and trains, bird calls before the twilight. The sound of tapping fingers on the computer keys. There are desires, erotic but devoid of expectation. There is hope beyond hope that a step will be found that leads toward freedom, resolution. Nothing comes softly into the room. A car door slams in the parking lot. A child is sleeping. Drink a glass of water. The muffled sounds of someone’s TV. Take a pee, take a drag, walking barefoot on the rug. A moment’s hush, hear the wind rush. But just for a moment. Until it begins again. The constant drone of passing cars, voices in the distance. Chimes of life electric in the 21st century.
I return to Emerson for some further hint: “The one thing…we seek with insatiable desire, is to forget ourselves…and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle….” A dynamic, evolving circle, a metaphor passed on for thousands of years, without beginning or end…a memory of an idea informing reality. A perfect thought of perfection, the shape of the table at which I sit and ponder the next move. The circle of the pond I ponder, the play of circles in the ripples of the thought. Hundreds of years ago a stone was dropped into the pond somewhere in New England and the ripples reach me as I wonder along the shores of the lagoon of my needful thoughts. And what is that to me Mr. Philosopher, a sign of things to come?
A person may fall into this state through no fault of his or her own. Losing a job, or a loved one, or whatever, the triggers are many. But what is worse is the self-blame that follows. The loss of self-esteem. The circle of self seems fragmented; the spark of life seems vanquished. Freud says that such a condition will not last forever; but for the sufferer it seems so. No possibilities lurk on the horizon in his or her eyes. Saturn won’t leave the premises. So you wait it out, wallowing in regret, remorse, self-pity, as if caught in quicksand, sinking. Why is it that humans have this stern, sadistic faculty of self-criticism? What childhood phantasm conjured into being? Such complex creatures, turning upon ourselves. Is there a way we may overcome the predicament, this human condition? Does one just keep on punching, or stay still until another hands you a stick to pull you out of the sand? And is that other the self-unknown you never knew was there? Is this the compassion of the caring self, the circle you could not draw? Fine words and metaphors like fallen leaves ablowing in the wind, or dewdrops arriving with the dawn.
Puzzle
Here is a game for your classroom: Take the set of numbers { -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 }. There are two players, and you each pick numbers one after the other (without replacement). The winner is the first one who has three numbers that add to 0. Is there any way to play so you can’t loose?
Answer to last week’s puzzle
The person at the crossroads asks the person sitting under the tree, while pointing to one of the roads, “Did you come from that village?” If the answer is “yes” it is the way to the truth teller village; “no” the way to the tellers of falsehoods.
