From Ernesto’s diary…
January 29th
I haven’t written anything in my diary for more than a week, but from what I’m about to tell, I think my absence will be justified. Until now, the only thing that had kept me more or less afloat in the midst of my drifting life, has been precisely writing these pages, so my absence could only be a sign of my total salvation, or of my fatal capsizing. Yet, it is neither one nor the other that has prevented me from writing, but something in between, which, nevertheless, seems to carry me away from the final shipwreck…
About two weeks ago I had a conversation with my partner Carl. On that occasion Carl told me many things about himself, and I did the same; that hour-long lunch brought us closer together than we’d been during all those years at work. I told him about all my regrets and that feeling of emptiness that affects me every day (although I did not tell him, of course, about this diary, which I consider the only thing authentically intimate and precious that I have in my days). He, on his side, told me about his “rebellious youth”, how he had dedicated himself to traveling all over the country without any guarantees, and how he spent two years at a university studying philosophy. So, when he heard me talk about my soulless life, he wanted to show off his studies of his “rebellious years” and brought up the “existentialists”. He even promised to bring me the following day some photocopies of a book he had been assigned to read at University, explaining that I seemed to be going through “existential dilemmas” and it would surely do me some good to read about it. The next day he brought me the copies of the book that kept me away from this diary … Although Carl did not have much idea of what existentialism is (beyond the cliché that it deals with “existential dilemmas”), the text that he lent me is a real treasure. It is an essay by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, entitled “Testimony and Existentialism”; here is what I found:
Marcel distinguishes between two attitudes towards life, that of the “observer” and that of the “witness”. But they are not only a matter of different behaviors, but above all about “metaphysical attitudes”, that is, they imply a whole way of conceiving and positioning yourself in the world. The attitude of the “observer” is objective: when I am an observer, I place myself before the world as before an external, alien object, and that is why I don’t really get involved, nor does the world move me, nor do I manage to touch it. Marcel says: “(…) my observation does not change the thing I have observed. Moreover, the ‘I’ who observes it is very impersonal: the same observation could have been made equally well by anyone in my place”.
Isn’t that just how I feel in my daily routine? Day after day, despite my many merits, I’m an easily replaceable worker: anyone else could be in my place. I am a passenger like so many others in the bus to work; a consumer of entertainment products who is equal to millions of other consumers; even my relationships with other people are nothing but cold contacts where I care mostly about what I can earn. My life is like a movie on the screen, which I do not recognize as mine, a movie that I do not direct, that I do not enjoy and, above all, that I do not understand — and yet I live, and do and “achieve” things…
In contrast, the other attitude, that of the “witness”, demands my self and my self-involvement so that there is no one else who can replace me: “It is never, and cannot ever be SOMEBODY who bears it. It is always and necessarily ‘I’ – and if not I myself then somebody else who is another ‘I’. It is always an individual self, with his individual identity”.
One way to understand this, says Marcel, is through those people whose lives are a “testimony”, since they show us a devotion worthy of admiration: “(…) the value of such testimony is connected with some form of faithfulness which is embodied in such kind of life”. We admire those who in one way or another stand above the common people, not because we think they are better than most, but because they embody what they think and feel, to which they are faithful, and that is why they are irreplaceable.
But of course, haven’t I been faithful to social expectations, to my professional goals, to the objectives of my company? Yes, but this is a degraded form of fidelity that amounts to passive submission or as a mere habit without meaning, it is the submission of the “observer”; an authentic fidelity, for Marcel, is that of the “witness”, which is only valuable “when we follow faithfully, through darkness, a light which has guided us, and which is no longer visible to us directly. Indeed, it can be said that testimony is possible because there is a darkness, an eclipse”.
As I read this, I realized that I have been living in darkness for so long, resigning myself to the more or less gloomy areas of daily life, but I’ve never really followed a light, although there have been some glints that have appeared sporadically.
Moreover, according to Marcel, if the testimony is faithfulness to a light, this consists in receiving something (receiving that light), but this receiving is never passive. It is not enough for the light to appear to dispel the darkness; receiving is an act, an art, and requires my full and active collaboration, “like a host who brings out the best part of his guest, and creates sincere communication and exchange“. With this I understood that despite having those glimpses of luminosity in my life, in the middle of the darkest nights, I’ve never reached any dawn, because I have not been faithful to that light. I simply let it happen, and sometimes even secretly waited for clarity to miraculously change my life. I have been an “observer”, and now I could see that I’ve not recognized or appreciated that what appeared before me on different occasions was a “gift”. It was a gift which could make me a witness, but only if I acknowledged it as a gift, only “if it is recognized as existing in this way. In this sense, it is like an appeal which demands a certain response”.
To be honest, reading this text wasn’t easy, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it made me see myself and the world in an unusual way… It made me realize that I have been taking much of my life for granted, and I live it mechanically, without really getting involved in it. And even though I apparently lack nothing, I am lacking the most important thing: a purpose, a meaning, a light that would drive me and guide me. But this text has also been liberating, because after realizing the montage that is my life, something inside me seems to have awakened, and now it encourages me, with soft voices, to jump into life itself, and whispers to me that there is a hidden light in darkness…
Perhaps these are the words of Marcel that touched me the most: “Aren’t there ungrateful people who are unable to respond to life, just as there are others who are unable to trust, and who are therefore unable to recognize that life is a gift and that all things are given to them?” Ungrateful and distrustful, I have missed my life, but now I see it as a wonderful gift, one that impels me to act, to create, to discover and witness that flickering light that lies behind the darkness…