A Potpourri of Broodings

No amount of brooding will describe what life is in its entirety. Sometimes people like me will sit down, face a blinking computer screen and think of some desperate thought to put order in what one sees. Everyday is an opportunity that presents itself. Although the same everyday mentioned will be perceived as a monotonous flow of hours and seasons, one should at least look at it squarely. I guess it’s not really the lack of better words, but it’s the ever present now. At times I can be in a different sort of place like beside our window and look out into the vast expanse of the world. I sometimes see dreams and visions, and right at the same spot I could think of noble thoughts and wonderful things to write about, but when I put myself in such a place like this, one so artificial and so mindless I lose those thoughts and seem to forget what they were.

Language provides us with that still and limited frame to realize what our thoughts have been brooding about. Not that all brooding is bad, but it’s what people perceive as the depressing aspect of thinking and brooding, of suicide and themes of loneliness and isolation. Our world as I see it is filled with wonder, the world made by civilized man, and the world of nature, pure unadulterated and unravished beauty. But it is also different-in the sense that man has somehow feel estranged at its sense of being so repulsive.

How can we be so alienated by this sense of familiarity? We grew up in an age so digitally connected that we earn a brand of archaism if we fail to live up to the fast paced demands of technological conformity. Every single being is somehow compelled by a ferocious media advertisement to purchase and thus be globally connected. From titanium cell phones to palm pilots to lap tops, gadgetry has never known so much variety. Add to that the psychology of asking the populace to have their personal needs met by this revolution.

Not that technology has been a source of all this evil, it is not! Let me clear it up. Erich Fromm and other thinkers have spoken against the depersonalization of the human race. We seem to be possessed by this mania, swept into this amusing bandwidths of images and sound bytes, losing altogether the “ancient” values of individual interface with flesh and blood relatives, the crumbling of ancient values. Technology seems to increase our frustration and impatience level. And there seem to be a relentless pursuit of the novel brands coming out almost every other week in the market. I know some people who seem to be in this train. Well, they must be pretty affluent to do it, or pretty restless with their new ones. I guess it’s because the one they have don’t after all meet their needs, and when they find one that seems to meet what they want, they are again in the pursuit of acquiring some more.

What occupies my mind at the moment is the futility of it all, the ever increasing numb feeling of emptiness and endless non-sense. Such phenomenon forces a person to lose himself and obey the fads of a capitalistic society. The poor grow poorer and eagerly desire the rich man’s comforts. The pauper is usually caught up in the same passion as the rich man. He seems to be mesmerized by the glittering trappings of the rich man, hi ever ensuing desire to renounce his poverty and pursue the so-called good life. It is universally known that for such to become a reality the pauper must work hard, get an education, and afterwards pursue a trade through which he gains financial compensation.

Perhaps it’s the unwritten rule in life that every soul longs to find happiness and the common man wants to do it by patterning his lifestyle after the rich man.

To find one’s niche in life, we have to pursue what we truly desire and desire was given to us to empower us. But the problem is what we desire sometimes doesn’t necessarily bring us the food for our table. When a man settles down as a writer, he can’t provide for every whim and caprice of his offspring or cruelly sometimes he couldn’t provide for the basic necessities. The wife then has to join him in the hunt and as such should share in major decision-making. When we reach this point we see man as caught up in the role of a father. What about his eagerness to be an author, a philosopher, or even a painter? Well that depends on the society he has found himself in. Sometimes his role is prized or occasionally dismissed (as in the philosopher’s case) as irrelevant and impractical.

What makes us happy? We might as become like hobbits in our search for it. Making life simple and plain. Laugh aloud, cry sometimes and work to break our backs. Happiness as one ice cream advertisement says “comes from the heart”. Of course we would prefer it were that easy. As humans we are strongly conditioned by our society’s situations including our penchant for what makes us happy. As early as childhood, we have adopted habits and manners that makes us preferably at ease and pleasure with some things. One man’s burden maybe another’s joy. A corporate banker may love to work in corporate settings but a carpenter would find his joy in the shop. A poet may have his heart with words while a baker is in love with satisfying his gustatory pleasures. Thus to each his own.

In this vast expanse of over-arching desires and ambitions, man finds himself living in a world that is so big. Therefore, he must look for himself lest he gets lost in this jungle of complexities. There is no choice but to make a choice: abandoning oneself to indecision is a decision itself albeit not a volitional one. If man doesn’t make that conscious choice he becomes a mere tool in the grand machinery of things…an insect in a universe of meaninglessness. Even though a vast amount of literature has been written already on the subject of angst and search for meaning, man has a continuing need to find inspiration in how he lives his life and as to what meaning he attaches to it. Themes of purpose, hope and divine destiny are profusely discernible in personal literatures. By personal I mean those that are written from a diary entry-like perspective, like this one. There seems to be a rich deposit of hope in the human spirit. A constant refusal to the acknowledgment of the hopelessness of it all seems unworthy of human dignity. Its just ineptly absent in the human core. The enormity nor the apparent impossibility of a situation should not overwhelm man, it should never devour him totally.

When I think about things like this, I recall Auschwitz and the killing fields of Cambodia. How has Man survived such deprave altars of human brutality? How is it that in the most inhumane situations, there is a refusal to surrender? On a superficial analysis, one could simply attribute these men’s survival to their devotedness to their faith, or their dignity but is it? Or is there something more? When Adolf Eichmann was set to trial in Jerusalem for his war crimes, Hannah Arendt documented the proceedings. She observed that through the constant conditioning of man to evil and savage philosophies, he emerges with a sense of banality towards evil. Eleonore Stump, an American philosopher, also observed that this “mirror of evil” makes us repulse from within and look at it on a deeper perspective. Ravi Zacharias, a contemporary thinker has narrated in an anecdote why this is so. He relates a question raised by a man so disturbed by the presence of evil in the world that he decides to abandon his faith in God. But if the person is so affected, so goes Zacharias, why isn’t he disturbed by the evil within? Stirring and quite sharp. He makes excellent sense. We, humans, complain against God about injustices and blame Him on how He runs the universe. The recent comic movie “Bruce Almighty” hilariously captures this enigma. Whenever we ask for some inconsistency about how things are happening in our lives ( issues of fairness, just compensation, problems that we can’t bear, etc.), we end up asking God that we could have known better.
While of course we cannot help but ask, out of the stricken conditions of our lives, we end up saying the wrong thing. We are looking for answers and in this search for answers we raise issues that have profound philosophical meaning. We want practicality to rule our lives, we wish for relevance and a consistent flow of things as we want them to be.
What do we want? We want lots of things-freedom form sickness, pain, guilt and we want justice to happen to every one. On the other hand such soul-searching attempts to ground ourselves amidst the meaninglessness of our days, we often find ourselves amused by society. Filipinos have a very good sense of humor and at most times we use humor to lessen the pain of our day to day experiences. We hate those in power, rant at the high taxes the government take from our pay slips and hear news of millions of pesos taken by corrupt solons and public servants. This daily dosage of cynicism and skepticism about how things are happening often times drive us to lose hope in our fellow men. To simplify things, all we want is a fair life filled with basic needs. We wish to laugh aloud with friends, enjoy the fruits of our labor and use our times the way we want it. Though often times we are frustrated by the realities of it all. That this country will never have a fair share of equity and progress. No wonder hosts of Filipinos have opted to go abroad where the grass is greener and where corruption (though never totally eradicated) is minimal and the basic need of every man is met.

Acting Like Men

What does it take to be a Man? Answers to this question have been given by disciplines like psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, theology and even pop culture. Answers vary from one "expert" to another, giving a multiplicity of images and definitions.

Perhaps the most obvious is what is provided for by pop culture. The media with its images of men as strong, assertive, immobile to emotional turbulence, sports minded and logical are being redefined lately because of the resurgence of feminist movements. Usually these notions of manhood are being fed to the masses through purveyors of masculine values and identities. Those in turn who promote such ideas draw their concepts from life experiences and values that view men from the "classical" Western notions of man as provider, protector and procreator. Aside from these limited conceptions, men are viewed as assertive, driven and logically wired persons.

On the bad side, men are perceived by liberationist thinkers as oppressors of women, philanderers who can't hold their horses, and insecure that they find their masculinities given shape by alcohol, smoking and vices. While there is partial truth in such type cast images of abusive samples of Adam's sons, there are also attempts to thrash out this constricted view of what is a Man.

In reaction to feminist movements, men's groups sprouted in the States to redeem the fallen status of masculine identities. While not totally abandoning the traditional roles assigned to men, today's pop psychologists and their researchers are looking at "masculinities" in terms of adding up new roles, training men to get in touch with their "feminine" nurturing side. Some no longer view issues that bring about intimacy in men's circles as a threat to one's strong image but as part of one being a person.

A friend of mine, one of the wounded sons (like me) I know, spoke of a very apt dictum about manhood: One can be born male, but it takes courage to become a man. How true! Biology provides us with the equipment of being male, and the idea of being a man is a socially constructed concept. Our ideas of what it takes to be a man may come from varied sources, yet we need to evaluate them if they are truthful and in correspondence with what is.

A constipated understanding of one's role will of course produce limited and constipated perceptions of identities. Why limit your self to vaguely defined roles? why subscribe to an idea that maybe a bit archaic or sweeping? Men aren't always from Mars nor are they confined to Venus. Manhood is a task and a role that is a gift at the same time (in the same manner that womanhood and its roles is also a gift and a task to be fulfilled with joy). Perhaps we can affirm our traditional perceptions of it while at the same time doing away with the negatives brought about by the abuse done in the past or the failings they have engendered.

Being a man consists of toughness, courage, strength, wisdom and integrity. It maybe true that there are wrong role models around, but there are plenty of good ones also. Absence of excellent examples in one's immediate environment do not necessarily mean there are none around. While character formation and a mature mascuine identity is forged in such matrix of relationship (through bonding, interaction and mentoring), one cannot also ignore past excellent examples; hey maybe imperfect and yet they have served their best to act it tough and become our fathers, brothers, friends, teachers, masters, etc.

Lord of the Rings Tribute

This maybe a bit late or out of time. But I guess in my case I think I still need to give my toast to an author I really admire so much. One who has been widely read cannot ignore the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the few literary geniuses of our time. His prodigy comes from a variety of angles: his vision, his universe, his insight into the deeply spiritual aspect of our times and his passion for the genre he helped to popularize.

Tolkien created a literary universe filled with eponymous names and archetypal characters. These literary figments have been taken from his visions of a moral and deeply spiritual cosmos. I have in mind of course his Lord of the Rings and their affiliate literary books:The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Lays of Beleriand, Shaping of Middle Earth, Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, etc.
When one takes the time to read through all these works, one cannot ignore the vast and deep insight Tolkien has of human nature and its implications as it is lived through the modern eyes.
Tolkien not only translates this vision but he admirably weaves a wonderful tale that no willing listener by the fireplace wouldn't ignore. A parallel world set in a different place and time with preternatural beings endowed with certain fantastic traits fill his pages. Here, he engages his readers with a creative plot to present a moral universe filled with decisions to be made by larger than life characters.

The mystical and the magical fuse in Tolkien's literary fabric as he presents the reality and corrupting power of evil (Gollum, Sauron, Feanor, Bilbo), the decisions every perosn must make and its consequences ( Galadriel, sons of Feanor, Thingol, Frodo, Aragorn), the mythological backdraft in which he sets these tales (Middlearth, Valinor, Beleriand) in order to cast a magical element and a sense of remoteness of the storyline and his commitment to fully realize his themes through creating languages, geography and culture in his imaginary universe.

I have seriously followed his lead, dropped his books only when necessary (like going to work, darn!) and tried to understand his focus. Tolkien really rules! While indeed he makes use of an English that is a bit not akin to the language spoken by my age and even the young ones I encourage to read, it is indeed a rewarding task once one takes this attempt to join the adventure with him. Tolkien is a great read. I wish children these days would grab a copy of him and pore through the pages of this Englishman. He is a master storyteller and at the same time a moral visionary fit for the electronically plugged generation of this age.

Let Go

We always cleave to something-people, things, places, memories etc. The act of cleaving is part of the vital stability of the universe; forces like cohesion, electromagnetism, weak force, gravity and human bonds all point to the fact that it is a natural thing.

In the sphere of human relationships, we must cleave at times and let go at others. We can't forever (as kids) cry at a favorite puppy who died. We can't keep on dwelling on past amours and crushes; we can't live in a fantasy world of our own making.

Yet despite all these, humans cleave on to memories-good ones and bad ones; they seem to stick to our consciousness like glue. They seem to be us, they form part of us and yet they were not really US. Pain and suffering seem also hard to let go for some, joys immeasurable and fond memories of childhood still remain for some. They are almost forgotten treasuries of great things, found somewhere in that bend around the corner.

William Wordsworth, an English Romantic poet carefully expressed this sentiment in his poem on "Intimations". He spoke of his childhood as some sort of a past yet accessible to the present.
While it is true that "the child is father of the man", the man can also be the father of the child. He can be the guide to his own past; he can look back at it and consider those happy days. He cannot forever stare at the image in the spring and constantly ponder on it.

He must look forward and let go of the past. It may be hard, but it must be done. The man is still father of that child inside him. He can always tell himself that the pains of childhood or its glorious moments of fun and laughter can be seen side by side with the man he has now become.

Tsunami Terrors

Incidents like what happened in South Asia make us reflect on how such disaster could occur.
Philosophers, theologians, critics and others ask why questions, while philanthropists and socially inclined civilians enter the fray with missionary zeal to help.

What makes us look for answers and what makes us feel for incidents like this are indeed questions whose answers go deep in human nature. Why do we care in the first place? Why do we feel a sense of injustice? Where does this foreboding come from?

The answers to those concerns rise out of our selves as persons. We maybe terrified by natural catastrophes, horrified perhaps at the horror; and yet we also hope and pray, and crave and long for wholeness amidst destruction, we love amidst tragedy, we seek to heal amidst pain and we laugh at all the mirth life has to offer.

We are human beings and an intrinsic part of that is the ability to feel and think above such vicissitudes.