Friday, May 25, 2012

Not Something to be Grasped

So, I finally got around to reading Leisure, the Basis of Culture.  It didn't quite have the content I would have guessed, but nevertheless it helped me pull together some things I had been reflecting on.  The question, my friends, is one of outlook.  How are we to approach the world around us?  Last summer and indeed last fall, I struggled with a certain restlessness.  It's hard to describe, but is this not in any way the 'good' kind of restlessness I associate with the sublime, with that yearning for still something more found at the very heights of human experience.  No, this was something more akin to boredom, probably having its proximate cause in not having enough to do.  I had all this time to do what I wanted, and yet I wasn't happy.  In the worst moments, I didn't really even want to do anything.  It took a visit to Carmel, a nudge from St. Thérèse, and a blast of autumn air to draw me out of it, although I don't think my recovery was completed until recently (assuming full recovery is even possible, "inquietum est cor nostrum" etc.).  What Joe Pieper's book did was help me to understand that experience.  You see idleness and its fruit restlessness are so far removed from the leisure and true rest, they are its very opposite.  Idleness is marked by countless diversions, designed simply to kill time.  The only point to them, if there is one, is to distract from work and to take a break from being 'productive.'  The person who is idle doesn't really have a goal in mind, except perhaps to snatch little bits of pleasure while he can.  I suppose what such a person is really going after is happiness, but there is a certain aimlessness to idleness that makes this pursuit impossible.  So there I was, filling my free time with countless diversions.  At the same time, I was concerned with gathering up all the pleasant experiences I could.  I was grasping after good things.  And this attitude of grasping is directly opposed to true leisure.  This is related to the difficulties I've always had with trying to hoard into my mind good ideas or good memories/experiences.  This very act of mental possessiveness often prevents me from enjoying the things in the first place.  An analogous thing happens when you put a camera into my hand so that I can document experiences, which often leads to an obsession of getting photos of good things, rather than enjoying them in the moment.

The very opposite of this attitude or grasping is one of opening up or of letting go.  Consider how restlessness and sleeplessness are related.  To fall asleep you must let yourself go.  The same is true with true rest or leisure.  You must let yourself go.  It is this posture of receptivity, or openness that allows for one to enjoy good things, to receive them as a gift or a blessing.  Just as, in the words of the psalmist, God gives good things to His beloved while they sleep, in the same way, as Pieper writes, "greatest, most blessed insights, the kind that could never be tracked down, come to us above all in the time of leisure."  Truth, goodness, and beauty cannot be seized.  They are more to be passively received, just as one passively perceives things with the senses.  And where does this receptivity, which allows for good things to be enjoyed, come from?  It comes, first of all, from a sense of wonder.  Philosophy, poetry, art, and love all begin in wonder.  It is this sense of wonder that goes beyond scientific rationality, the empirically verifiable, what can be 'proven.'  Wonder transcends this, and breaks in with the intrusive question "why is there anything rather than nothing?"  To wonder is to see the world through the eyes of innocence, the eyes of a child.  To wonder is to be amazed that things exist at all, to see all things as new, and to delight in each as it comes into view.  To wonder, above all, is to recognize everything as a gift.  We could also say then that wonder is the beginning of morality.  It is by looking at humanity with wonder and looking with at nature with wonder that we lose all desire to misuse these good things, to grasp at them, to bend them to our own will, to make them means for our selfish ends.  This sense of wonder is the essence of fairy-tale morality.  This is why Chesterton said "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”  This, my friends, is why mooreeffoc is so valuable.  Mooreeffoc is all about reclaiming this gaze of innocence, which allows us to receive things as gift.

This, then, is the way to enjoy life and to head towards that ever elusive goal of happiness.  It is to experience the present moment as a sacrament, as a gift.  It is to reclaim that sense of wonder so that you can to stand with a posture of receptivity to the world.  It is to let yourself go, to give yourself over to the good things you experience, without trying take hold of them.  To put an image to this, life is to be approached not with a fist tightly closed as if to hold on to something, but with arms wide open as if ready to receive an embrace.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Best is Yet to Come

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”  
- Madeleine L'Engle

For a student, Spring presents a paradox of sorts.  Just as nature is teeming with new life and promise, the year (the one that matters most to us students, the academic) comes to an end.  Granted, this is usually a much anticipated end, and certainly one which comes in the fullness of its time.  This end also marks new beginnings.  Always it marks the beginning of summer, and for those graduating, the beginning of an entirely new phase of life.   It is just the way of the world that "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." (Words which apparently belong to Seneca, as much as to Semisonic.)  But no matter how exciting these beginnings are, there is a  certain sadness that still comes with the ending.  I have to say goodbye to seniors I know who are graduating, and I don't know when I will see them next.  Moreover, this is all a reminder that I have just one short year left myself.  At the end of that time, I will have to say many goodbyes, and to part ways with many people.  We were travellers together for awhile, and now we are to be no longer.  Our paths may cross again; they likely will, but it won't every really be the same.  Time gradually takes is toll, leveling out emotions, weakening our bonds.  Close friendships fade.  Weeks become months become years.  The tragedy is not the parting; it's that eventually the parting no longer seems tragic.

Yet, if there is one thing I have learned over the past few months, it's that life is constantly going to surprise you.  It's hard to describe, but I didn't have the Spring semester I expected to have and if I had planned it out beforehand, it wouldn't have looked anything like it did.  But the semester was better than I ever could have imagined.  I was surprised by the friendships that blossomed, the moments I shared with others, and the things I learned.  God showers his blessings in ways which are so unexpected.  I can honestly say that it just keeps getting better and better.  Each year I live seems better than the last.  I remember when I was fourteen, thinking that that was the perfect age to be.  Then, I felt that way about age fifteen, and then about age sixteen, and so on and so forth.  At every stage, it's hard to imaging life getting any better but I am always surprised.  So now, more than being sad that the year is over, I am excited to see what the next year has in store.  The key, I think, is not to grasp to what you have or to what you think you want, but to let the gifts of the year come to you.  After I graduate, as sad as it will be to leave certain places and people behind, I take comfort in knowing that there will be new people that God will put into my life, ones that I can't even imagine now, but who will become as much a part of my life as people I am closest to now.  As I grow, I will continue to learn more things, about life, about myself, about my faith.  I can't even imagine now what that will be like.  I think this is what L'Engle is getting at with the quote above.  Each year adds to the richness of the one before it.  I don't lose the friends, the experiences, the lessons I learned before.  They all have become a part of me, made me who I am, and continue with me as I become who I am to be.

Yes, the end of the year is sad.  That's the way of life.  Even our most joyful moments are tinged with sadness, that sadness which knows that all things on this earth are passing away.  But if we approach life with arms wide open, ready to receive blessing, I am convinced that the best in life is yet to come.