Series on Waiting #3: A World that Cannot Go Deep

From Bea­cons­For­Life

A world that can­not jour­ney with self is also a world that can­not go deep. We have heard of the world’s incli­na­tion for super­fi­cial­ity. We see its hand in the impor­tance placed on celebrity sta­tus (some peo­ple can relate to movi­es­tars more than to their own rel­a­tives), on form rather than sub­stance, in quick-fix solu­tions to prob­lems. In this coun­try, our sense of pol­i­tics have blurred with our sense of show­busi­ness. We have actors “play­ing” politi­cians, and politi­cians dab­bling in show­busi­ness. It’s an anthropological/cultural prob­lem more than any­thing else, but let me haz­ard a guess: isn’t this blur­ring of pol­i­tics and show­biz due to the fact that the audi­ence (us, the Fil­ipino peo­ple) love it?

This is the 3^rd Post in the AngPere­grino Series on Wait­ing. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.

We vote for actor-politicians and we adore celebri­ties. Think about it: it is not them buy­ing us, it is us buy­ing them! They are only able to sell them­selves because we demand it. The sec­ond para­dox of our time is this: while the world has become so fast and while dis­tances have been cov­ered, and breadth has been bridged, the world that we have can­not go deep.

It is a world that can­not seem to delve into deeper issues and sys­temic prob­lems, and con­ceive long-term solu­tions. We want quick-fix, stop-gap mea­sures, instant every­thing, the easy way out. We do not want to go deeper because it will ask a lot from us: effort, com­mit­ment and time. We do not have the patience for that.

A per­son who has a good hold of him­self is more able to give him­self to another in vul­ner­a­bil­ity and com­mit­ment. And wait­ing is about being vul­ner­a­ble. It brings you to sit­u­a­tions where you real­ize that you’re not really in con­trol, and it is only when you are vul­ner­a­ble that love can enter more deeply into you.

Rela­tion­ship with an Other is most real when you’re not there to con­trol, or dom­i­nate him/her. As Lev­inas would put it, rela­tion­ship with the other goes beyond knowl­edge, pos­ses­sion and power. So that quick-fix, stop-gap mea­sures are not the way to go when you deal with an Other—to per­sist in this is even a sign of disrespect.

Par­ents, for exam­ple, have lost this sense of rela­tion­ship with the Other with their chil­dren. There is great fear of the many exter­nal and perceived-as-evil influ­ences on the youth, and so par­ent­ing takes on the form of con­trol: in the choice of what course to take in col­lege, in what career to fol­low, in the choice of friends, even in the choice of a life-partner. Par­ents try to con­trol think­ing that they are effec­tively solv­ing prob­lems for their chil­dren. What they have just done is effec­tively cut them off from the expe­ri­ence of grow­ing up which includes the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing mistakes.

Rela­tion­ship with the other (and chil­dren are other, whether par­ents like it or not!) goes beyond knowl­edge, pos­ses­sion and power. Vul­ner­a­bil­ity is pre­cisely abdi­cat­ing power, pos­ses­sion, and knowl­edge. The fact that you do not know the Other, and can­not place him into your ego­tis­ti­cal cat­e­gories and self-centered boxes, is pre­cisely your sal­va­tion! Because only then can you meet the Other as he really is—someOne you do not really know, but you respect; who is good, even if imper­fect; a real some­One with his own heart. The stance needed here is one of wait­ing, because you do not have con­trol over the Other. You do not com­mand love, you wait for love. You do not com­mand love to come to you, you can only give love and how­ever much we want ago­nize over it, we can only wait in hope that love comes back.

So that deal­ing with the Other takes a cer­tain kind of passivity—waiting is needed because you are not in con­trol. On the other hand, wait­ing can actu­ally lead you to deeper activ­ity with the Other. This is because wait­ing also strength­ens commitment.

This world that can­not wait and can­not go deep has deval­ued com­mit­ment. Peo­ple jump from one rela­tion­ship to another and can­not stay put in one. Because peo­ple can­not wait, noth­ing seems to last any­more. Divorce is easy, because mar­riage was eas­ier. Of course, we all agree that mar­riage is a lot more com­pli­cated than that, but we also have to agree that we seem to have lost the capac­ity and the patience to work things out. We have lost the sense of what is pre­cious and sacred because we no longer sweat it out and face difficulties.

A decep­tively sim­ple exam­ple illus­trates this fact: an ath­lete who takes performance-enhancing drugs will not be as ded­i­cated to his train­ing reg­i­men as one who knows that the prover­bial blood, sweat and tears is his only ticket to suc­cess. Only those that are suf­fi­ciently waited upon, can last; and only those who know how to wait can stay committed.

Com­mit­ment is a beau­ti­ful thing: it is the free choice of two Oth­ers (two Selves) to enter into a rela­tion­ship. It is not a strug­gle between two free­doms each try­ing to con­quer the Other. Rather, it is play—a to-and-fro between Self and Oth­er­ness; a dialec­tic that leads to deeper com­ple­tion and ful­fill­ment. Com­mit­ment is a rela­tion­ship of Truth—in it you find the iden­ti­cal and the non-identical; the clear and the unclear; the hid­den and the revealed. Com­mit­ment then becomes the best thing you put on the table when you deal with the Other.

But com­mit­ment is always a choice. It is a choice because when you think about it, you do not really need anOther as you would food to eat or water to drink. You can­not live with­out food or drink for long. But you could just as eas­ily cut your­self off from other people—lock your­self in a room, or be placed in soli­tary confinement—and still survive.

Of course, we can posit that a life away from peo­ple, away from the Other can­not be called life at all, but that would be another story. The fact is, why man makes the choice at all to com­mit is one of life’s mys­ter­ies (spe­cially post-modern man’s!). Let me haz­ard my own guess on the mat­ter: to com­mit to someone—or some­thing (a cause or an ide­ol­ogy perhaps)—is to say that there are more impor­tant things than life itself, than Self itself. This real­iza­tion you get only when allow your­self to “go deep”—deeper than the usual ebb and flow of the world and open your­self to vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Only then can you say that there are more impor­tant things in life than life itself. And only then can you com­mit to anOther.

Click here for Part 4