Our Moments with “the Other” Color Our Monotonous Life and Humdrum Existence

After, listening for hours to my students’ graded recitation of Viktor Frankl’s profound book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”, my rumination tonight revolves on Frankl’s adage: “Whatever you have experienced, all of them, no power on earth can take from you—therefore use them to encounter your Meaning… That which does not kill you, only makes you stronger” (in Man’s Search for Meaning, pp.103-104.)… Experiences—whether good or bad/happy or sad—make up the sum total of our life. Our human existence in this earthly dimension is not eternal: simply stated, our earthly life is not forever. If life is forever, then we would take our moments in this life for granted, meaning; if life is forever, it would not be precious and valuable in our estimation since we may take things, peoples, events and moments in trivial manner. In the words of the existentialist Indian sage, Shree Rajneesh Osho: “The beauty of our vulnerable life is like the beauty of a flickering candle—anytime it will be snuffed out” (in The Essential Osho, p.68.).

Let us sincerely reflect on this thought: If we have “forever” as our time on earth, then we will not have the sense of urgency to name or define our meaning and significance! We will continue dilly-dallying or procrastinating with our life’s priorities and our conscience will not be put to task for wasting our life! The temporariness of our earthly existence is a limit or situated-context of our being human; it is this finiteness of existence (in our death) that puts limit to our existence so that this very limitation will prod us and force us towards the urgency of finding our life’s meaning. It is the awareness of our earthly impermanence that accentuates the color of our life. The uncertainty of the time of our death causes us to live in the present moment.

Yes, our earthly life is not forever—that is why it is extremely precious: every moment counts towards searching and finding our “significance in the Greater-Scheme of Things”, to borrow the oft-quoted phrase from Dag Hammarskjold. Life is made-up of precious, yet ephemeral and fleeting moments. Life is about meetings and goodbyes, of homecomings and partings, of hellos and farewells. That is why we should not take people and events for granted. For in the words of the postmodern ethicist, Emmanuel Levinas: “To see each and every person in their pure, irreplaceable and unrepeatable uniqueness, we must love them unconditionally—just as they are. Failing to do so, they may not reveal themselves to us; and we will forever miss experiencing the unfolding of their unique selves to us—regretfully, that would be our great loss for all eternity.”(From the book, The Infinity of the Unique-Other, p.67.).

With our limited time, we can never completely know a person; we can only know parts and aspects of the person’s life and character. Therefore it would be totally unjust to judge a person by saying things like: “S/he is beyond redemption!”, “S/he can never do right!”, “S/he is always bad and always in the wrong side of the fence!” The person is a continuous and continuing “self-project” that goes on and on up till eternity and therefore one could never completely and absolutely “know” the person. In the phrase of Jean Paul Sartre, the person is the only being that can unceasingly “invent and re-invent himself in the midst of be-ing and becoming by his constant exercise of existential freedom” (in Donald Palmer’s, Does the Center Hold?, pp.280-281). This is the reason why existentialists always belabor and re-emphasize their point that each of us is a “mysteriously unique other” and the “surplus-of-who-we-really-are” exceeds what can be apparently known about us.

Lastly, the ephemeral nature of our earthly time and life must bring us to the realization that we should not take for granted the comings (and also goings) of each unique persons in our life. People and events in their temporal and fleeting visitations in our life, in effect give color, significance and meaning to our bland existence which is characterized by loneliness, ennui, languidness, ordinariness, monotony and boredom. Each person who comes into our life is a “visitation” that carries the promise of us encountering our significance “in”, “with” and “together” with the “unique other” who comes to and enter into our lives. (Levinas in Ethics and Infinity, p.39). We cannot afford to ignore any person who comes our way, for they are like unique crayons or paints that will color our bleak, dull and lonesome existence—but they can color our lonely world if and only if we allow them to… only if we allow our hearts to open and welcome the coming of the “other” into our lives. We therefore need to be grateful to the presence of each and every person who comes to us, touching our lives with the gift of their irreplaceable presence; for they are God’s instruments in molding us into persons God desires us to be.