Waiting #2: A World That Cannot Journey With Self

From Devel​opY​ourEn​ergy​.Net

A world that can­not wait is a world that can­not jour­ney with the self.

This is the 2^nd Post in the AngPere­grino Series on Wait­ing. Start read­ing here for Part 1.

There is a qual­ity of liv­ing in the world today wherein you do not let the things that hap­pen around you affect you, emo­tions do not reach the mar­row of your bones, and your life is lived as if all that mat­ters is today. You can actu­ally be very effi­cient in this kind of life–as an effec­tive man­ager, an intel­li­gent sci­en­tist, or even as a pop­u­lar ath­lete. But you see that life is in sham­bles where it really mat­ters. The first para­dox of our time is this: that while you can orga­nize the peo­ple around you, you can­not even make an appoint­ment with your­self.

When peo­ple ask how you are, you really don’t know what to answer because you hon­estly do not know. So you just say “ok” by rote. It seems as if you really do not know who you are. You do not really have a “hold” of yourself–you feel scat­tered and with­out focus. This is a “for­get­ful­ness of being” of an alto­gether dif­fer­ent kind—you try to catch up with the world, and you for­get your­self. There is just no time to do such a “petty” thing as self-reflection.

To do self-reflection is pre­cisely to jour­ney with yourself—to allow your­self to catch up with you. Many philoso­phers have pointed out this fact of life as jour­ney. St. Thomas Aquinas said that the jour­ney of life is really the return of man to him­self. It is a return to Par­adise Lost, and to God as well, but ulti­mately, a return to self—an exi­tus and a red­i­tus. Gabriel Mar­cel would call man homo via­tor—say­ing that the essence of man is that he is on the way; on a jour­ney. And as with all sto­ries of jour­ney in the Great Books, it is not just about arriv­ing at a des­ti­na­tion; it is about find­ing your­self, becom­ing a man, exor­cis­ing your demons, as you journey—on the way, along the road.

Pre­cisely because it is a jour­ney, there is a need to wait. And con­versely, because you wait, you are able to jour­ney with your­self. Self can only be remem­bered and recov­ered when you allow your­self to catch up with what is hap­pen­ing around you. On the one hand, there is a need to look at the world; on the other hand, there is a need to look at yourself-as-you-live-in-the-world, which really asks of you both outward-looking and inward-glancing eyes. This process of look­ing at world and yourself-as-you-live-in-the-world helps you find mean­ing for even as you make sense of the world, you also begin to make sense of your own life: you start to see your own cru­cial place in the world. Life becomes mean­ing­ful because the world becomes your world. You find your­self, once again—before all these things hap­pened to you—as a human being in the world.

The wait­ing here is not pas­sive. That is why the image of jour­ney and quest is apt—you are not just in limbo, wait­ing for the answers to come to you; you are mov­ing towards the answers. But you wait, because you do not con­jure the answers out of thin air. A pil­grim waits—a pil­grim who can­not wait is in despair long before he reaches his destination—if he ever reaches his des­ti­na­tion at all!

A pil­grim also knows that there are some things in life that have to be waited on: per­sonal issues do not solve them­selves overnight, growth hap­pens grad­u­ally. When we wait, we give in to the real­ity that not every­thing is under our con­trol. We acknowl­edge the fact that not every­thing is up to us. We acknowl­edge our lim­i­ta­tions. This is a very hum­bling expe­ri­ence, and while the world that can­not wait despairs over this, the pil­grim advent-ures on in his jour­ney towards growth.

Click here for Part 3