Introduction
This reflection has two distinct phases: the first, an overwhelming sense of impersonal love, is derived directly from the environment, the second is an inconclusive product of lonely inner thought. The second only happens because of the first. In that sense, it is possible to think that the following inner reflection was only possible because of the quietening effect of the sensation of love which itself was born of the clamour of, and exposure to, the world of strangers. Strangers seem to have the propensity to ignite rushes of emotion. There is something about the impersonal or unknown which allows a freedom not always available within the context of those we know. Placing yourself in front of the world, allowing it to come to us is an important aspect of being free.
Reflection
I am sitting in the glass-sided café on the top floor of a large, city department store. I am drinking hot water, sitting alone. The café is busy. I watch the people around me: young women with small children, older couples, single people—using laptops, reading papers, drinking frothy coffee. I feel relaxed, there is no threat. I stare at some of the people. All look away. One barely suppresses a nervous half-smile. There are clattering noises of cutlery, plates, people eat—too much mostly. I think of a book I read many years ago, The Hungry Dwarves? The clatter gets less, people’s movements slow. I realise that these changes are my perception, not a true change of noise level or pace. It gets quieter. I sip my hot water. I feel happy. I realise I feel happier than I did a few minutes ago. What is happening? A great sense of peace comes over me. I am unprepared for this but it happens. I look around at the people again. Everything is clearer. There seems more space between objects. A young woman pushes behind me and says, ‘Sorry’. I say, ‘That’s OK’. A surge of feeling—a sort of undirected excitement—comes over me. I feel ‘connected’. I am sitting now with all around me. The clumsy push and mannered apology have broken my isolation. I realise how close we all are—me and the other objects of the world. How easy it is to be connected. How ridiculous our view of isolation. How false the appearance of isolation. Of course we are separate, but with a clumsy push and an apology I sense with ease that we can be together. Love surges through me and I realise that something permanent has happened. I know something I did not. The world has dropped its guard for a moment, and I have slipped in closer. In sensing this movement, I also sense that our movement is always towards that which is closer. If we are open, available, if there is space, then only ‘closer’ things can happen. I do not want to embrace everyone, or shout out loud what is happening, I feel content knowing how close I can be, how much potential is locked up in our apparent isolation. I sip my warm water and someone smiles at me. I stare back and drift behind their eyes. It is a moment of pure love. I am transformed.
I fall into an absorbing reverie. I take what I call the ‘Miss Marple’ view—looking toward the simple for signs of reality (that is, ‘beyond appearance’). The idea of God-given wisdom being passed down by divine-inspired writers is difficult for me. Why should that be so? I don’t see God as having a direct effect on our lives, I suppose. God, for me, is part of the meaning-of-life-in-itself which is not what, as an individual human, I am interested in—I am interested in my life.
I think of St Augustine’s Confessions, his first reading of Cicero’s Hortensius: ‘it altered my outlook on life. It changed my prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations. All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth. I began to climb out of the depths to which I had sunk, in order to return to you.’.
I think also of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, ‘And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier’. Whitman says that all the dead are alive and well somewhere, and that it is just as lucky to die as to be born. Or does he? I am not sure. I look at the poem, and study the lines, and I am confused, and some things become clearer, and they are a poet’s words, an expression of his own inspiration, and they go further than most, than me, and I strive to fix on the meaning, hoping that it can have the same meaning for me. But slowly, as I begin to see the meaning—though still some of it is obscure—I realise the ‘meaning’ is not truly conveyed, it can only be a meaning for one, the method is too mechanistic, there is truly no space in the words. Everything is too dense. There is no room for me. Nothing can come in from the side. Would I be lucky enough to realise exactly the same meaning in exactly the same way? Is that level of identity necessary? Is it not good enough to say: ‘I see what he means’, ‘I have never thought of it that way’, or ‘Never thought of that’, or ‘This is new to me’, or ‘This has opened up something that has never opened before’. Yes, it might, but all I am doing is appreciating—understanding. Understanding more, someone else, something I didn’t understand before, something which is new to me. ‘Understanding’ is not what I am searching for. True, it may ‘transform’ me (in a weak sense, I think), in that I was and then am, but this is not true, strong inner transformation. This I need to find within me. It must be more than understanding. It must be creative, rich, and it must be dynamic, alive, born of action, the world, another, the fabric of consciousness—it must be heroic, the outcome of struggle, the outcome of the silence within the chaos, the peace available within the noise of the maelstrom. It must be carried on the wave of love that passes between me and that of which I am conscious. It must stem from that certainty, that reality—without that, it has no basis, no sense, no appeal, no coherence. Without that, it is weak, not senseless but not with the sense which is truly available. We can know to the limits of what we can know, and it stems from, is drawn out of, bursts from within, the act of being. Calm-in-itself is a falsehood—we should not seek it. The calm seeks us because it is part of the nature of consciousness—but it is not its best part, or fundamental part. Calmness may precede enlightenment but it occurs, like the final piece of the dying man, amid the surge and terror of all that beholds us and which we behold.
Yearning? Do I yearn? Yes, I do, but for that which is unattainable. I yearn for permanence, permanent states, and they do not exist, and my life is unsettled because it is always in flux and I want something that endures. I make an advantage out of the dis-benefit, but it is always an apology. I yearn for endurance in a world of impermanence. Love is the only hope, contact, intimacy, looking behind the eyes, seeing who is there, being welcomed in, but it has inherent corruption—it will all fail.
Comments
Although I conclude that love is a hope, indeed ‘the only hope’, it does not in any way answer the hopeless straining desire for something permanent. As reflections use various keys which open doors to further progress, so too they leave behind them questions which remain as irritants until given the satisfaction of a further airing. The question of yearning for permanence is clearly unanswerable, but it raises serious further questions which cannot be abandoned.
