LIFE AS A WHOLE

Dear Humanist,


If we ask someone to describe their life, sometimes what we hear is that their life is actually their job. They describe their job and their routine to us. Or, if someone has kids, we hear that a big part of their life is their kids, etc. It’s not very often that we perceive our lives as a whole, as a structure in which not just the things that we are doing now count, but also our whole past and our aspirations for the future. Our experiences as a child count as does our experience of the present, and perhaps most important of all is our experience of the future. If we see time as a linear development, like in a calendar, where the past becomes the present and the present turns into the future, then our future has not yet arrived. But, perhaps time is not as linear as we assume. Perhaps if we see our present as a fundamental part of our future, we may realize that it is in what we construct today that we will live in tomorrow...
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Reading from Letters to my Friends, Letter 4, six

6. Image, Belief, Look, and Landscape

Let us suppose that one day I go into my room, and I see the window. I recognize it, it is familiar to me. I have not only a fresh perception of it, but also acting in me are my previous perceptions of it which, converted into images, have been retained within me. Suddenly, I notice a crack in one corner of the windowpane. “That wasn’t there,” I say to myself, on comparing the new perception with what I retain from my previous perceptions. And I also feel a sense of surprise.

The window of previous acts of perception has been retained in me, but not passively as in a photograph, rather actively, in the way that images function. What has been retained in me operates in the present with respect to what I perceive, even though the formation of those retentions pertains to the past. In this way the past is always present, always being updated.

Before entering my room I took it for granted, it was a given, that the window would be there in good condition. It was not that I was thinking about it, but simply that I was counting on it. The window itself was not explicitly present in my thoughts at that moment, rather it was co-present. It was within the horizon of objects contained in my room.

It is due to what is co-present, to this retention that is updated and superimposed on the perception, that the consciousness infers more than it perceives. And it is in this phenomenon that it is possible to see the most elemental functioning of belief. In this example I would say to myself: “I believed the window was in good condition.”

If upon entering my room I had seen phenomena proper to a different field of objects, for example a motorboat or a camel, this surrealistic situation would have seemed unbelievable, not because those objects do not exist but simply because their location in my room would be outside the field of my co-presence, outside the landscape I have formed that acts within me, superimposing itself on every single thing that I perceive.

Now then, in any present instant of my consciousness I can observe the inter-crossing of what has been retained and what is being futurized in me as they act co-presently and in structure. In my consciousness, the present instant is constituted as an active temporal field of three different times. Here things take place very differently from the way they occur in calendar time, where today is separate and distinct from yesterday or tomorrow. On the calendar and on the clock, now is different from no longer and from not yet, and events are ordered one after the other in a linear succession that I cannot claim to be a structure, but is rather a subgroup within a complete series that I call a calendar. I will return to these ideas again when we consider the themes of historicity and temporality later on.

For now, let us continue with the previous notion that the consciousness infers more than it perceives, through its use of what comes from the past as retentions, superimposed on present perception. In each look or act of looking that I direct toward an object, what I see is distorted. This is not meant in the same sense that modern physics explains our inability to see the atom or wavelengths that lie above or below our thresholds of perception. What I am referring to is the distortion related to the superposition of the images of retentions and futurizations on perceptions in the present.

Thus, when I contemplate a beautiful sunset in the countryside, the natural landscape that I observe is not determined by and in itself. Rather, I determine it, I constitute it through the aesthetic ideal that I hold. And the special peace that I feel gives me the illusion that I contemplate passively, when in reality I am actively superimposing numerous of my own internal contents on the natural object itself. This phenomenon holds not only for the present example, but for all looks that I direct toward reality.
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So we see that in every moment the past and future are influencing my look towards things and other people. The past is not “behind me” and the future is not simply “not here yet” because they both affect me, working through my beliefs, through images in my head, through a direction in my life. They influence my present and how I understand and integrate the things that are happening to me now. If, for example, I believe that everything that happens to me has the ability to teach me something about myself, if I have this direction in my life, then I will deal with difficulties very differently than would someone who had another direction in life.

Very rarely do we perceive our life as a whole structure: past, present and future. The direction of our life is given by the future and not by the past or present and in order to understand this whole structure, it’s useful to work a little on this theme of the future.

Guided Experience -- Repetitions.

REPETITIONS


It is night time. I am walking along a poorly lit street. It's quite narrow like an alley. I cannot see anyone. Through the haze I can see a distant light. My footsteps resound with an ominous echo. I walk faster because I want to reach the next streetlight quickly.

When I reach that streetlight, I observe a human silhouette. The figure is about ten feet away. It is an old woman whose face is half-covered. Suddenly, in a broken voice, she asks me what time it is. I look at my watch and say, "It is three in the morning."

I walk away quickly, and again enter the haze and the darkness, wishing to arrive at the next streetlight which I can make out in the distance. When I reach it, again I see the same woman. I look at my watch which shows that it is 2:30. I begin to run towards the next streetlight, looking back over my shoulder. I can see that the silhouette just stands there as I get further away. I reach the next streetlight still running. The silhouette is waiting for me. I look at my watch. It is 2:00.

I begin to run faster, completely out of control, passing streetlights and old women until, exhausted, I stop in the middle of the street. I look at my watch, and see the face of the old woman reflected in the glass. I understand that the end has come...

In spite of all this, I try to understand the situation, and I ask myself over and over, "What am I running away from... What am I running away from?" The old woman's voice answers me, "I am behind you and I am in front of you. What has been will be. But you are very fortunate, because you have been able to stop and think for a moment. If you can resolve this, you will be able to get out of your own trap." (*)

I feel confused and tired. Nevertheless, I still feel there must be some way out. Something makes me remember many situations of failure in my life. I begin to remember the first failures of my childhood. (*)
Then, I remember the failures of my youth. (*)
Then, I remember my more recent failures. (*)
I realise that in the future, failure after failure will continue to be repeated. (*)

All of my defeats have had something similar about them, and it is that the things I
wished to do were not orderly. They were confused desires which ended up opposing
each other. (*)

Even now, I discover that many things that I desire to achieve in the future are contradictory. (*)

I don't know what to do with my life, and nevertheless I want many things in a confused way. Yes, I am afraid of the future, and I do not want to repeat my past failures.

My life is paralysed in this narrow, foggy alley, stuck between the pale glow of streetlights.
Suddenly, a light goes on in a window, and someone shouts to me, "Do you need anything?"
"Yes!" I answer. "I need to get out of here!"
"Oh, no... You cannot get out alone."
"Then tell me how to do it!"
"I can't, and if we keep shouting we are going to wake up all the neighbours, and one doesn't play games with the neighbours' sleep! Good night."

The light goes out. Then the strongest desire arises from within me: I must get out of this situation. I realise that my life will change only if I find an exit. The alley, apparently, has a meaning, but in reality it is nothing but a series of repetitions from birth to death. It is a false meaning, running from streetlight to streetlight, until at some moment my strength is finished forever.

Now I notice to my left a signpost with arrows and letters. The arrow for this alley indicates: "Repetitions in Life." Another indicates: "Denial of Life." The third is "Construction of Life." I remain in reflection for a few moments. (*)

I take the direction indicated by the third arrow. As I leave the alley and go out onto a wide and brightly lit avenue, I experience the sensation that I am about to discover something decisive.(*)