If We Only Choose to be Ourselves...
We would face life, and death, triumphant.
"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life--and only then will I be free to become myself." Martin Heidegger.
Having introduced that quote, and before I delve into my post today, I wish to share what I believe to be a profound insight into human nature, specifically, the unconquerable spirit of the human soul:
During World War II, when the Nazis—in their sick, twisted and warped, evil inebriated minds—attempted to annihilate an entire people, the Jews showed the world what the human soul—against all conceivable odds—can endure, overcome, and triumph over.
I dare not claim to know what those haplessly unprepared and unfortunate souls went though, I cannot speak to what horrors they had to endure, but I can speak to their inspirational and superhuman desire to survive, and survive, hundreds of them did.
That was the triumph, while the tragedy was and still is, that millions more, had to die needless deaths.
I wish to pay tribute to those who died, and those who survived the Holocaust, for to them is owed—by humanity— a magnificent, irrefutable debt of having shown us, that nothing is impossible to the soul that comes face-to-face with its imminent mortality, and yet still finds meaning and purpose in that inevitability.
My point for this, is that the Jewish people have shown humanity that it is possible to face evil and not be defeated by it, to endure unbelievable hardship and not be warped by it, to find meaning in the meaningless, hope in the hopeless, that though there seemingly appears nothing to live for, yet to find the strength within, to say, “So be it, I will still live.”
I believe that that spirit, is in all of us, and because I believe that, that belief gives me tremendous hope that as a species, humanity can and will survive these evils of our times—just as the Jews survived the evils of their time—and to come out imbued, and infused with the dignity of the triumphant soul, that never gave up.
We too must not give up on our humanity.
The Holocaust survivors “freed themselves from ‘the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life,’ and discovered their power to stand as themselves, and the fortitude to face unconscionable evil.”
Having said all that:
So many of us, refuse to confront the finitude of our lives, hoping, in vain, to dodge and evade it.
A fallacy, and a lie.
A great many of us spend our entire lives, hiding behind our masks, the false ones we present to the world.
An incongruence, a shame, and a farce.
By doing that, living like that, we make petty our very lives, for then, we do not, cannot know, who we truly are, and can be.
This—knowing ourselves and what we can be—is not about fame and fortune. It is about being human. The greatest gifts we possess is that, together with the lives we live. And, so, facing the fact that we, one day, will die, frees us to recognise ourselves and to then have the courage to BE ourselves, and live who we ARE.
There is no pretense, no hiding, no need to prove a point to an indifferent world, and yet we continue to strive to be who we are not, to impress, while our inner self pleads and struggles to be seen and to live—to be let out.
And so, we MUST seek to be ourselves. To let ourselves out.
There can be NO greater freedom than that, for it is then, we are freed from the falseness of our pretended lives.
NO GREATER FREEDOM.
Am talking about the "art" of being human and being alive. The 2 greatest gifts we possess. For out of these 2, arise EVERYTHING we hold dear and close to our hearts—I truly believe this.
We go through life seeking to impress the world, yet we neglect what matters most—ourselves—as we wither and shrink within ourselves, from the “indifference of self-neglect.”
As I have tried to live my life, I have begun to get in touch with my humanity, to realise that we all are connected, somehow. And if that thesis is correct—which I hold to be self-evidently true—then what is going on around the world makes no sense—the atrocities, the mayhem, the wars, and the hate.
How can one human, rejoice in the horrors of another? It is insanity!
We diminish ourselves by seeking to diminish, belittle, hurt, and negate others.
This is not about pedigree, about education or authoritative credentials, possessions and accolades, nor about which Supernatural Being we subscribe to, or not. This is about being able to look at another human being and seeing “Ourselves” in them, our beloved, our own species.
Why do we have to be better than others? Or, maybe, a better framing of the question would be, “Why does anyone have to be beneath us, inferior to us, for us to feel worthy, to accept ourselves?”
How hard can it be, to look at another person, and see beyond the colour of their skin, beyond their religious inclinations, beyond their ethnicity and creed, beyond their “station” in life, and simply see another human being, a person?
This is not a self-indulgent, facetious, naive hypothetical question, I am being serious.
What would it take from us?
We never take the time to sit ourselves down, and interrogate our worldview, our beliefs, our biases, opinions and inclinations. We simply take it as, "It is who I am." But it never IS that simple, is it? Because the question, "Why?" Simply, never crosses our hearts and minds.
There have been times I have met someone for the first time and been prejudiced, against them, and—my justification when I have cared to seek for reasons—has always been, “…because there was something about that person that put me off." Never, for one moment, thinking, maybe the problem is ME.
Now I seek to begin the process of questioning myself, "Why?" Because the emotions we feel and entertain, they come from within, so, If "blame" is to be apportioned, then it must first lie with me. We MUST constantly ask ourselves, "Why did I behave or think like that? Why do I feel this way? What is it?"
Because it matters.
Because, if we concede that other people can determine how we think, feel, and act, then we concede too much of our own power. We freely give up the agency to superintendent over the affairs of our lives.
I refuse. I totally REFUSE, to die without knowing myself and being myself. I will not take that risk, nor carry that regret, to my grave.
I refuse to live like an inmate in the prison of my own life—of my own sentencing— pandering to the whims of a shallow; petty world, tiptoeing around people so as not to give offense, being apologetic for being alive, and lacking the courage to speak my mind. Why "live" if we only pretend to live? If we never ask ourselves these hard questions, what does that say about us? Why do we hide behind our perceived superiority, needing others to be inferior, peering from behind our fake masks? What is it, we think, sets us apart from the average human that we should stand above them?
Our weakness lies in our fear of facing Ourselves, and so we lash out, to hide our own inadequacies. To obfuscate and deflect from ourselves the attention we feel will reveal our inner weaknesses and fears. For we feel and believe that what the world thinks of us, matters more than what we think of, and feel about ourselves. That, is surely, a shame.
Surely our mission here in this life, is more than playing to the gallery, trying to fit in, being common when we are called to the uncommon? Haven’t we been told, and believed, that we are unique, bringing a uniqueness, that, once squandered, makes the world weep at, and for, an unimaginable loss?
How can we live like that? Why would we want to live like that? Knowing what we know?
To close:
I—wholeheartedly—believe, that what is going on in Sudan; in Palestine; in Lebanon; in Ukraine; and in all the other human atrocities being fostered, created, encouraged, and applauded, and even those we never get to hear about, is a travesty, a blight on our collective humanity, a shameful blot on our claim to be compassionate, loving, and sentient beings. Especially when we have the capacity to act, or to speak up, and yet still, we elect to do neither.
But I tell you this, we shall all stand accused and guilty, of having looked away and stayed silent and did nothing, while—our political leadership—committed abominations in our names.
One would have thought humanity had learnt its lessons in human relations well.