Writerâs note: I am hitting âPublishâ on each chapter as soon as I am remotely happy with it, as a sort of minimum viable product. Once I have let everything on my mind out, they will all go under the knife, so to speak, and be tightened, refined, and made rigorousâboth conceptually and aesthetically.
âŠ
Table of contents
PART 1: NATURE » on the relation between man and nature: man as feeble and the consequence of forces.
PART 2: COURT OF JUSTICE: » on the relation between man and justness: reality as court and canvas.
PART 3: HOUSE OF MIRRORS » on the relation between man and others: the necessity of love and compassion toward the ill, that is, us all.
PART 4: EXISTENTIAL LETTERS
PART 5: IDEALS
Crossroads
đȘ 35 - Crossroads
Dear Inquirer,
By this point, the inner storms had calmed. I had been at rioting seas, but now I was spat out onto dry land. But the ultimate questions did not cease to be asked of me. Ah, and why would they cease? Even when âIâ, âMeâ, âMyselfâ had become axiomatic, I had only come to know who I was technically, but I still had no clue as to what I was to do, nor why I really was, and what for. My narration had found some firm footing on which it could remain grounded without being displaced by the dramatic mood swings of my mind. I had stopped frantically flailing about in the wind, yet I remained capricious. What am I to do? If I really know who I am, but not what I am to do, do I really know who I am?
What was that saying, âA ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built forâ? It is fair to extrapolate this imagery to my own inner crisis. Previously I was not even sure what a ship was, if I was a ship among ships at all, if I could trust the ocean beneath me or the ropes that fastened me to the dock. I would have nightmares of the Ship of Theseus. Moments in introspection would carry the signature sound of doubt. Yet, even though I had come to understand what I wasâthat I was a ship and that it was all that matteredâI remained a ship tethered to the dock, disengaged in action, aimless and useless. As long as I am unclear as to what I am to do, there is a resounding sense in which I still do not truly know who I am. Certainly, inquirer, this begs the question, does one really need to know what he is to do? Can a man not simply live in the present moment, take stock of his privileges, âcount his blessingsâ, and be grateful? Does a ship really ought to set sail afar; and if so, where to? And what do we make of a ship that does not set sail where it ought?
It is easy to observe the idleness of a ship. An able-looking vessel is caught wind of in passing, and if people see it tethered to the dock for too long, they make a curious remark. The operators would surely be aware of this, otherwise, they will be made awareâit is telling, and not easy to hide when a substantive vessel is idled for enough time without a clear reason. But the idleness of an individual, on the other hand, tends to be concealed; and no, by this I am not referring to the idleness of one confined to his dwelling or a homebody of sorts. The nature of man is such that regardless of where he is located, whether he is at home or at work, he is nevertheless always on the move. Narration substantiates his every moment, and action embodies his narrationâeven the act of stillness is an action, for example, for it is a series of anti-movements directed against the impulse, which is a movement regardless. I am not referring to idleness in this physical sense. What I mean is an inward-looking, psychical sort of idleness; I refer to a man who is aimless and undirected, who doesn't know where he is going and towards what. (Ah! Similarly, even the ship is never completely still, for even when it is aimless, it is rocked by the ocean, the ocean rocks it.) It is this form of dormancy that equates to the idleness of a ship, that is, a monumental potentiality left unused. And this is one of the stark ironies of humanity, for it is this dormancy in a person that tends to be concealed from the community, for how very rarely these inner states go noticed at all! As Kierkegaard writes, all of it âcan occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly;Â any other lossâan arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.âis sure to be noticed.â Even as I was going through my own inner crisis at the crossroads of action, it went unnoticed as such, barely pronouncing so much as a whisper. It was concealed from everyone else, my friends, my family, and for a long time, even myself, through a smokescreen of everyday normalcy. But is there any danger greaterâgreater than the anxiety one has over oneself, greater than the loss of oneself?
But the truth is, no one can be pinned down for being particularly at fault. Most people do not bother to talk about their inner crises, nor ask of others. Had they tried, it would be impossible to do justice toâand I say this in the full knowledge that had I, given the undivided attention of a trustworthy fellow, spoken about my crises for five hours and felt the sweet taste of catharsis, as soon as I was done expressing myself, it would feel like I had barely scraped the surface. My mouth would be worn and sealed shut, my heart would be gratified for a time, but my mind would not stop running the film, and it would feel as if I had only managed to express the preface of a book. This reminds me of that pop music phenomenon back in the 1950s-80s, when many chart-topping songs did not end decisively from the outro, but they faded offâending with a gradual decrease in volume over its last few seconds to give off the impression that it never ended, that it kept going on and on, in order to give the impression that the motif was still unfolding. I recently read an excerpt from the music theorist David Huron that piqued my interest: âWith a fade-out, music manages to delay closure indefinitely ⊠the âstopâ gesture is replaced by a gesture toward the âinfinite.ââ Now picture this flipped about as an entirely inward phenomenon! Though the expression of my motif formally ends, the impressions do not cease. No, my impressions were unfolding themselves to me ad infinitum, weaving through the unspeakable context of my life and history, making contact with every relation known and unknown, in every new passing moment as much as reflectively.
Now, this is of little surpriseâany expression of my inner crises itself will always be impoverished, a low fidelity version, since it can only be expressed concretely through language. Language is a finite vehicle, and an infinite story always has to be brutally compressed. Wittgenstein saw this limitation of language most clearly in his reprehensive characterisation of everything we say, including all philosophy, as a mere bout of âlanguage gamesâ. Correspondingly, the nature of losing oneself is endless as such; it is a bottomless pit, an abyss to which language is frantic and impotent. Is it really cause for surprise then, inquirer, that no one appears able to truly understand what you are going through, what you have gone through, what it is like to be you? You are a subject to whom the full load of lifeâs story is unravelling with no end. Yet this is one of those despairing actualities of my reality to which I am irrepressibly nailed, that at the end of the day, even as the events that birth and develop my inner life are not unique, I am fully apprehended or unapprehended only to myself.
The only recourse left for oneâs inner crises, therefore, lies in this endless wellspring of inwardnessâin the world of infinite impressions I am confined to, not in the world of finite expressions. My recourse lies in that endless dialectic that constitutes meâbetween nature and the cosmic in me, between that which confines me and that by which I am expanded into the infinite. Yes, though it is certainly true that the blessedness of accompaniment maintains our sanity, offers us meaning to toil, and sharpens or informs usâultimately, this is among those times when one is called to traverse the wilderness as a subject alone, to engage in dialectic with the cosmic in oneself. For the trials and tribulations of the inward are to be resolved by virtue of the inward; the war is waged on that battleground. Yet it is a necessity for the inner life, for in order to come of age, it has to pass through the stages of negativity. As the traumas of birth into the world are formative for an infant, so the subjective traumas are formative for the birth and development of the inner life.
âŠ
With that, I return to the scene of my inner eventsâas the angst of freedom called, I was confronted with the dizzying multiplicity. Though my sense of self was axiomatic to myself, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a just re-mediation of my action and my narration was still warranted. I know that I am who I am, but what am I to do? To invent or reinvent oneself is no easy task, as Nietzsche understood, and the subjective life in its eternal mystery does not come included with an instruction manual. I was thus as a vessel impatient to be released from the dock, and set onto a riveting destination, with the full capacity of the fuel and propulsion with which I was crafted, but the particularity of that destination remained yet unknown. It was always located somewhere far away, someplace unintelligible, shrouded by those benign yet vexing clouds of mystery. Vexing, indeedâfor it sought to be known in concrete terms, in order that it may be aimed at and propelled towards; it sought to be actualised in possibility, for then it might be actualised in actuality.
What of reality does such a peculiar longing express? This is how I see it: my angst began when I (consciously or unconsciously) saw life as a concrete effect, delivered by an unknown causeâthis speaks to the mysterious phenomenon of life, an angst of narration, which manifests in doubt. But the angst I had begun to face here had little to do with that. Now, there is another layer of causality pertaining to the existential that needs to be brought into the frame: for as an agent with the freedom of will (even though freedom may be easily called into question as the whole phenomenon of life), I am posited not only as a mysterious actuality, but now also as a dizzying potentialityâthis speaks to the infinite possibility of life, an angst of action, which manifests in aimlessness. I had begun to posit myself by my will, as a concrete cause, of which the effect was continuous, yet aimless and fluctuating.
This aimlessness recalled everything into question. For initially, I related exclusively to the phenomenon of lifeâs inexplicable actuality. But as soon as I found firm footing on solid groundâas soon as âIâ was effectively grounded as the point of departureâI found myself aimless, for I did not know where I was departing towards. Yet, if I did not know where I was departing to, could I really say that I had found my firm footing? I cannot really say I have found my footing firm until I know with certainty where it is I am moving, and where it is I ought to move. Though I had supposedly resolved my angst of narration, I found myself unwittingly carried into an angst of action, and its resulting imbalance recast that initial resolution of my angst of narration back into doubt! Or to put it another way, my angst first concerned my brutal confinement, as my spirit was down with a peculiar case of cosmic claustrophobia, yet upon my resignation to my predicament, my angst began to concern my expansion, as it moved into the infinite of its own accord, into everywhere and everything at once but without a corresponding object to apprehend.
What this brings to light is the dialectic between my narrator and my actorâof which what I call âIâ, âMeâ, âMyselfâ is the synthesis. And it is in this manner that I refer to the necessity of re-mediating my action and my narration. For it was at this juncture that I began to posit myself more so in a Nietzschean senseânot only as that which is acted upon, but as that which acts decisively upon. Even though the longing that drives my decisive action is itself something acted upon me, even though my very neediness to act is something acted upon me, I am at ease in the knowledge of that. I know that the âworld in itself is not reasonableâ, and I am resigned to the predicament of living as it presents itself, or as I am geworfen [thrown] intoâyes, along with all its absurd paradoxes. That is no longer the issue for me. Where I am now, I have been met with a crisis at the crossroads of action. Mystery has alighted from her alien realm, into my concrete universe, into the very organ of my will. There she stands, as she gestures toward some faraway object, with her face towards it. I try to look, but it is too cloudy, I try to squint as hard as I can, but I cannot make out where she is pointing. I can only see that it is Mystery who is beckoning me towards something, and I can tell from the urgency in her movements and the glimmer in her voice, that it is something divine.
âŠ
The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.
â Emil Cioran, in The Trouble With Being Born
Till next time,
Euwyn