The Suffering Self and The Desires of Our Hearts : What It Takes to Give Ourselves Up and Getting It Back

 “What makes you, you?” That’s the question I come across tonight, in the eve of the New Year’s Eve. Considering the passing year have been passionately instilling wisdom in us, I find the above question relevant. I vividly remember at the start of 2020, “This is our year,” we all said. To have it taken away from our sights must be in a way shaping us to be the way we are today, tonight, in the eve of the New Year’s Eve. The more I think about the posed question, the more it makes me wonder. Is it the accumulation of our fulfilled wants and needs, that made us who we are? Or is it our heart’s desire we gave up along the way, the ones we learn. It is either we win or we learn, right?

Or, if we’re able to be completely frank to ourselves, this could be the year we suffer the most. The way economy slows down, striking number of failing businesses, companies laid off their employees, so on and so forth. Again, putting asides the positives 2020 has brought in, don’t we all just want to scream and shout and swear and cuss? Alright, you done? 

This year, due to the pandemic and the WFH scheme imposed, I got myself more time to read things I never thought myself reading, like Philosophy, for instance. With the help of Crash Course Philosophy on YouTube, I enrolled myself into lectures and features, and even took up further reading of the references. One of the things that captivated my mind was the Philosophy of God. It wasn’t the argument of existence that bothered me, it’s the problem of Evil. To put it simply, the arguments revolved mostly on why God allow evil to exist if God is truly good (Omni-God)? My wandering mind didn’t just stop there, I started looking up on references and more counterarguments, then I found out about theodicies.

What is a theodicy? It’s an attempt to show that the existence of Evil doesn’t rule out the existence of God. One of the most important theodicies in history must be Aquinas’, he proposed that all goodness in the world must exist perfectly in God, and that, existing perfectly, God must be perfectly good. He concluded that there is no Evil in God. Now, the more I read the more I dug my own hole in misery. The question that blew me is this, “If God knows what’s best, why would you want to change His mind?” Here I was thinking about prayers. Why should we bother ourselves to pray, when God already knows the past, present, and the future?

Eleonore Stump is a Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University specialized in the school of Thomism; the school of thought arose as a legacy to Thomas Aquinas. In one of her books, Prof. Stump describes the meaning of suffering. There are two major causes of suffering, one is being kept from flourishing, and the other is losing one heart’s desire. For right now, let’s just focus on the second cause, the losing of heart’s desire. Without being too referential, I try to define the desires as hopes, wants, and aspirations. In what way, losing the desires of our heart be our problem when God already know what’s best? Doesn’t God answer prayers?

The most common way out of the problem is to give up our wants altogether. Try not wanting things. And at first, I was allured to think that way, because that’s the way it is in other religion. Anatta, along with Dukkha and Anicca, makes up the three marks of existence in Buddhism. The concept of non-self and not desiring things to avoid pain, suffering, and anguish. Again, it’s consistent with the mind-blowing question. Let God decide what’s best, who are we to change His mind? For months I battled myself on that thought. It will save us from trouble, by letting God making decisions, letting Him decide for us, and for some time I thought that’s the only way to align my will to His.

Just last week, I was faced to another mind-boggling question from my reading, “Is having no-self enabling us to align my will to His, or am I just saving myself from heartbreak when I find out that His will is the one that be done?” Phew. The question itself brought me down to my knees, even without knowing the answer. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus said to take up our cross daily and deny ourselves. Then, how do we do that when we have no-self at all? Whose cross we take up? When I thought by having no-self is the way, the Word itself hit me up. Then I set myself on further exploration on the concept of heart’s desire.

If it helps visually, let’s try to see a desire as an interweaving of craves and aspirations forming a web. Some are peripheral desires, and some are life-changing central to each one of us. When the peripheries are ignored, we still hold on true to the essential ones. What if, the ones we hold dearly are the ones taken away? Will the web still hold? I think that’s the case of how losing the heart’s desire can do to afflict us. Then, what if we relieve ourselves from having desires, knowing that having our web crushed before us offers no help at all?

Theodicies offer some explanation on the fulfillment of desires. While Aquinas’ theodicy focuses on relativizing suffering to the small period of our earthly life to the hope for a redeeming benefit in the afterlife. For us Christians, believing in faith on what the afterlife has to offer redeems all earthly suffering. While it’s considered faithful to give up our earthly desires to make way for the redemption, there are some addition to it. It’s from Prof. Stump.

There are two ways, she proposed, on the fulfillment of heart’s desire. First, she proposed that desires are subjective, and we should construct a scale of their subjective values, and difference in subjective value will have impact on the fulfillment of desires. It’s based on the idea that if, the original form of desire is unfulfilled, it will be in an altered form. A reshaped form can be higher in subjective value than the original form. So, the grief over the loss of the original form of desire will be redeemed fully, by the satisfaction of the more valuable form. As much as it brings hope, that what our wants will eventually fulfilled, somehow in the form of ‘what we need’, there’s still giving up involved. Heartbreaks are still intact; no matter how tidy we wrap it up.

So, what’s the second part that doesn’t involve giving up? I want to know! In the second point, she begins with Augustinian view that there’s a connection between other desires of the heart and the innate deepest heart’s desire for God and shared union with God. If we can use this point to rephrase the first one, it will be like this, “So, the grief over the loss of the original form of desire will be redeemed fully, by having what we most deeply want (union with God) or the ability to wait in faith.” In this point, we shift our focus from wondering about the fulfillment of our heart’s desire to what we hold the most dearly, the ultimate desire. Now it seems a less more important to have attained desire, as long as we have the deepest heart’s desire close. When the shared union with God is the first and foremost, all the other heart’s desire will be considered as gifts. Heartbreaks escaped.

We have reached an understanding on whether we should have desires or not, and what kind of them we should have. Let’s wrap this up before it gets too spiraling off-track. I think that having desires is unavoidable, however hard we try to abstain ourselves from it. To have the wills of our own, we open ourselves to grief and frustration when there’s a mighty risk of dissatisfaction. But, to be vulnerable itself is a quality. Because, when we hold our heart’s desire while keeping our eyes on the innate deepest desire of the union with God, we open ourselves to vulnerability. Jesus opens himself to be vulnerable several times, He is God and is human as well. In Luke 22:42, when Jesus was praying on the mount of Olives, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” He wasn’t on the position of no-self, he asked to be redeemed, yet He opens Himself up to be vulnerable, still putting the Father’s will first.

Recognizing God’s will is not through apathy, but a constant readiness to always prefer God’s will when it’s not compatible with ours. The key isn’t in having no-self, but to have yourselves with the readiness to deny it every now and then. That’s how we take up our cross daily, by denying ourselves.

Happy New Year 2021.

Small Victories: On Bitter Endings and Sweet Beginnings

 Christmas.

It’s the day of the year where Christians all around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The up-and-coming savior who would then die on the cross to save humanity from evil. We celebrate the coming with joy, with the careful expectations that the going will soon follow, the Passover. Starts and ends. If only we were careful enough to notice, the pattern repeats everywhere, and there’s something about it that really stirred my mind.

It is in our nature that we love the beginning, and resent the ending. As newborns bring joy with unfulfilled potentials they carry into the world, we grieve for the death of loved ones, for unfulfilled potentials they failed to capitalize. In every beginning, hopes are shooting high and even the smallest token of promising gestures are somehow overstated. The notion of ‘what could’ve been’ have permeated in our judging minds, both for ourselves and for others. I could’ve been better but I wasn’t. He should’ve been more respectful to others, but he wasn’t. It’s the discrepancies between what we thought was achievable and what we actually realized in the end.

As I have noticed in the past years, nearing the end of the year, my mind shifted to a more reflective setting, weighing in achievements and transgressions of mine during the year. And if I am honest, hopelessness has been a familiar friend I invited over for Christmas for quite some years now. The idea of ‘finishing on a high’ I planned on every new year celebrations started to grow further apart. 

Now what was I missing here?

Should I set a bar lower than I used to?

Not necessarily. I realized something along the way. Set your goals as high as shooting stars, dream higher than you are after those countless shots of tequila, but at the same time, be mindful of the steps you take. Dissect your goals to a purpose, for fulfilling purposes are more satisfying than reaching the stars, and learn to celebrate even the smallest victories. Check your rearview mirror sometimes, to remind how far you’ve gone. Gratefulness is the way to go.

Now as we’re coming closer to the end of unprecedented 2020, the year like no years before. There may be some unfinished businesses, some unfulfilled potentials, or even some lost things. I know by heart that it’s easier said than done, but let’s try to reflect on what 2020 has allowed to happen, aside from what 2020 could’ve been. 

An Epicurean definition of a happy life is the one where we abstain from unnecessary desires and achieve inner tranquility by being content with simple things.

Let’s celebrate small victories, and let Him have His way.

Luke 1:38

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered.

“May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Then the angel left her.

The Lessons about Lessening Yourself

Should the condition of less inhibit us from doing more?

Should the more we have mean the less we feel?

Yet, less is more

Imagine how convincing the world will be,

as if we're hiking the mountain, going straight up,

where the more means more,

and in the less, means less.

But, what if the mountain we hike is circular,

in a way, we couldn't make sense,

for instance, how the hell is a mountain circular?

Us, trapped in endless motions of reaching,

achieving, accomplishing, succeeding,

failing, declining, lacking, in vain,

forever, doesn't sound right, eh?

Isn't it crazy,

how people in the condition of more, wanting less

so they can learn how to do more with less?

Where people with less dreaming about having more,

only to be dumbfounded that they can't do more,

I think,

they are wise.

COVID-19 Stir-ups, and How We Best Digest the Chaos: Nietzsche's Account on Truth and Our Need to Believe

The world is currently navigating through unfamiliar seas heading to nowhere lands. It’s been many years since we were faced with a stir-up this size (namely a pandemic), and no matter how resourceful and well-off our country is, we are never prepared. We are now facing unprecedented procedures in anything. Knowing that the coronavirus spread through the droplets of our mouth and nose, this affects how we conduct our social activities. Of all the effects this coronavirus had on the world, I assume the social effect is the most fatal. It questions our identity as a social animal, disrupting our habit of socializing, regardless of your social status or level. We always thought we were born ready, but just not for this one.

We were always safely connected and, in some way, heavily guarded when it comes to our social life. We can always go visit our friends and relatives whenever we feel like it, get involved physically with people, visit our favorite cafés or bars, or go shopping or for just the window. Our perception of socializing has been shaped, tried, and tested for years, that we could well-handedly deal with rejection, light loneliness, or even be content being with ourselves. Just as every break-in wreck the current form and leave some areas unwatched, imagine how a break-in this caliber is capable of doing to our conception of social life.

All chaos must be brought to order. That’s the simplest way to explain how to resolve every issue possible. Picture it this way, our messy bedroom is full of chaos, and organized one is an order. Chaos promotes problems, and order resolves one. Stirred-up life is chaos, and a well-ordered one is all we want. Then we wonder, what could shut up chaos, and what would speak for the order?

We would think, the invention of vaccines is the only answer. Some might think, and some already said that the answer lies in our ability to live ‘in peace’ with the coronavirus. New normal, they said. I noticed that there must be more than just those two competing arguments there, while the rational aim for taming the raging waves, the others create their own waves with their own arguments. See how a void can transform into a black hole in just months? Now, it’s all ours to discern them one by one, to pick which ones we would believe, because all we needed is something to believe in, eh?

Nietzsche has thought about these issues hundreds of years ago. Not that he has predicted the emergence of this virus (No, he didn’t know who makes this virus for a lethal purpose like you have heard somewhere), nor has the answers to these issues. What he has known for a long time is, how we, as a human being, are in dire need of something to believe. He knows, that our will (or being) is always in chaos, and need something to bring it to order. As in one of the paragraphs of his collection of aphorisms The Gay Science (GS), he said;

“The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range of our consciousness - at least a part of them - is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man’s destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood - and for all this he needed "consciousness" first of all: he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how he felt, and to "know" what he thought.” (GS 354)

What he accounts as ‘consciousness’ is basically our knowledge, of things, of ourselves, or of whatever helps us communicate our needs to others, or as he writes ‘to make himself understood.’ And in my personal opinion, he’s not only talking about something grandeur but also about something peripheral to our daily lives. Consciousness/knowledge is something to be carefully maintained and regularly updated, think it to be like something we deeply loved, our vehicle maybe, that needs to be washed and polished regularly to maintain its shine. In that way, we need to maintain the sharpness and finesses or our consciousness, or knowledge, up-to-date.

Now that we’ve understood the concept of consciousness/knowledge as a basis to integrate ourselves (keep ourselves from chaos,) let’s talk about the source of them. Inside or outside. In this essay, let’s turn our focus on only the outside source. We normally gain knowledge from the process of consuming and digesting information. Let’s imagine this case by going to the shopping centers (hypothetically, we’re still physical distancing), where we could find numerous stores offering different things. Now, go back to the last point where Nietzsche said that consciousness/knowledge always comes from necessity. What do you need from shopping centers?

Let’s refer back to our discussion about the coronavirus which has created a stir-up so enormous we couldn’t see clearly any more what it is we exactly need, and we scaled down our need to whatever comforts our mind. And it is what we need! In general, we need to be comforted, be secured with our lives and the future, don’t we? This is what Nietzsche opposes, as he called it the ‘sabbath of the sabbath’, or if freely translated, ‘the final truth.’ Of course, we’re not talking about anything final here, but you see his point here, don’t you? We need the kind of consciousness/knowledge that comforts us. In what way? I guess everyone’s different.

Even before this pandemic, there is already a gap between ‘what we know’ and ‘what we want to know,’ that creates a tension that we manage daily with ‘managing expectations’ strategy. We’re used to this term and adapting to it. We have limits, and what the pandemic does, it expands those limits until we’re helpless and succumbs in desperation. That creates the perfect window for the bombardments of information to sneak in and err us. What we need is strategies, different ones from merely managing expectations, because sadly, now it’s too blurred to expect. What are those strategies, and how we could finely tune ourselves into it?

Of course, these strategies are nowhere near practical, because learning to face reality with practical things never works. Instead, we’re going to see how we should approach various types of ‘consciousness/knowledge’ the world has to offer. As Nietzsche puts it;

“No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of truth : we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that... We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything.” (GS 4)

There are three degrees – according to Nietzsche – to knowledge, as commented by A. Setyo Wibowo in his book Gaya Filsafat Nietzsche, the first one is ‘veiled-truth,’ a deception, which leads us into the second phase, the dissatisfaction of what we already know, the realization of a veil covering the truth, encouraging us to try to uncover it, which we never will, or even if we will, it won’t be the truth anymore.

Nietzsche thinks that the truth will never be uncovered because it’s too chaotic, and when it’s finally uncovered, it’s not the truth anymore, Idee fixe (fixed idea, an idea that dominates one’s mind especially for a prolonged period: obsession.) The revelation of the truth is a two-edged sword for Nietzsche, one brings light to one side, the other disguises the other. How then, and what then, should we do to REALLY uncover the truth? Nietzsche’s philosophy is never about finding the truth, instead, he offers ways to stand face-to-face with the truth, and how we shall conduct ourselves before the truth. Further, he puts it;

“’Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?’ asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent": a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons?” (GS 4)

What he offers us to do is to show some reverence to it, ‘perhaps the truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons.’ For Nietzsche, to be able to talk properly about the truth, we must first acknowledge the contradicting nature of the truth itself, the chaotic side of the truth, and never arrive to a shallow conclusion. Nietzsche believes that we, as a human being, will never arrive at the ‘final truth,’ and realizing that, for him, is already a quality.

Wrapping up, in an unprecedented period as these, it’s hard for us both economically, socially, and philosophically. As what we already know is going under a huge test, it’s normal that we feel uneasy, stressed out, or even losing our way. I guess, what Nietzsche is saying in the excerpts above, specifically about reverence, is to take every information with a grain of salt and always position ourselves in the questioning side before believing. In the end, all we needed is something to believe in, eh?