A mad man and the world around

A very disturbing thought peeped through my mind with its concern to human response to human. In other words, pertaining to human relationship.

Viktor Frankl observed the problems that we face today. He classifies three kinds of people;

Some people fall into the category of the planless day. This is because frankl says was the effect of the World Wars. In the World Wars Especially within the concentration camps, the weariness of the routine way of life made the people passive and irresponsible. They were acted upon and had no freedom of choice. In this category, people shirk the responsibility of planning ahead and making life meaningful.

The second set of people, Frankl speaks about belongs to the collectivistic mentality. People lose their individuality, when they identify themselves with the group. In the concentration camps, people were given a number and counted as one among the crowd. Today too, we can see many people having lost their individuality for having identified themselves with the crowd.

The third set of people belongs to the fanaticism. These people do not have an identity without their group; neither do they recognize the individuality of other persons.

Connecting the above, what immediately comes to my mind is the phrase from a novel ‘farewell to arms’ in which sweet heart of the hero says, “I feel lonely in the crowd”. Do we really feel lonely in the crowd? Yes, of course. That is the reason I titled this article as ‘a mad man and the world around’. Just suppose a man, living in a community of good persons. The relationship among them may be very superficial, in a way just few words of ‘hai’, ‘how are you?’ etc. Do you find any genuine relationship in superficiality and senseless words? In no way. Take for example an instance in which a normal person makes an expression more than usual. The other people might turn him down as a mad man/ gone out of his head. Hence, his expression of normalcy becomes an expression of Madness. I have had an experience similar to this fashion. I was not understood as a madman, but rather a boy who really went out of his head started behavig strangely. And his friends around him did not know what to do about his situation. Did he make his life on his own? Or was he influenced by the traits that he inherited? WE cannot ignore that fact of being influenced, but what we can do is the stand we take towards it.

What have we to do with regard to human relationship in the face of indifference, coldness and senseless words? WE can bring about changes only in the attitudinal level and accept the unalterable situations. Find the meaning of every moment as and when it unfolds itself. Act responsible while being aware of our responsibleness and our innermost ability to find meaning (the will to meaning).

Some Stray dogs in mind!!

It is no wonder why the Lord said, “Man does not live by Bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This tells me that words are internally constitutive of the human person. And language game is the centre stage of the world field; where in words seem to have manifold meanings. Now eating is not the only activity of the human person; while he eats, he does many other simultaneous functions – the hand movements are directed by the commands that brain gives, he thinks (as 60,000 thoughts emerges in the mind of a normal person), even there are different ways of eating too – chewing, relishing, swallowing, etc.

The other day I received a reply to my mail from Fr. Ivo. I had asked his opinions about what to do about the missed issues of certain journals. Straight away he told me – “forget about the missing issues and cancel the subscription”

This reminds me that we often try to get back what we missed in life or often speak about what we lacked or achieved in life. Just forget about the missed issues of life and heed to the missed call of conscience and resurrect to a life full of meanings to fulfill. We are just here to glimpse a little of the reality that we are here to understand a little about what we understood is the understanding of others who have gone by. We only peep through the ignited thoughts of others or rather the givenness of our contingent existence.

Climbing a mountain is yet another symbolic reality that we are endowed with a higher plane of existence – the spiritual realm. The farther you go, the more the distance from the infinite sky and you. Yet when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Hence, the going and the steps forward is necessitated to bring in the element of freedom, faith and choice. Teilhard de Chardin rightly points to our reality – we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Every day words seem a functional reality. We can make use of this reality also a fictional reality extending to them an imaginary existence. Yet the whole of my perceptions and the way of looking at things create in me metaphors, symbols and convictions. These in turn encircle the constitution of the personal being-in-the-world. The lebenswelt (the world) is further constituted by the range of our understanding of our being-with-others (manners, social upbringing, dealings, getting to know the dynamics of a crowd or a family or even the dynamics of survival), being-with-oneself (reflection, evaluation, execution, experiences and their influences, etc.), and a being-with-the beyond human comprehension (the element of the cardinal virtues- faith, hope and love.). This being-with-the-beyond-human-comprehension necessitates the search for meaning a joint venture. This dimension demonstrates the point of towards-which we are moving while taking a stand towards all that manifests itself/ themselves (Aletheia - self-manifestation or unconcealment).