The Master and His Emissary

“The left hemisphere, with its rational system-building, makes possible the will to action; it believes it is the one that makes things happen, even makes things live. But nothing in us, actively or positively, make things live – all we can do is permit, or not permit, life, which already exists.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

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Dear Kate,

"I walked my dog."

If someone is to ask me what I have done this morning, the line above is what I would give.  It is a convenient shorthand, assuming the person knows the four words separately and lined up in that particular order collectively.  The line should conjure up a common mental picture between the two of us to settle the matter.

But I didn't really "walk my dog."

That wouldn't be the way I'd put it if I am to give an account of my life this morning, to myself, to life itself to honor the way it has put me, and, most of all, to the Giver of life that is the foundational assumption on and to which all the shorthands of life, linguistic or otherwise, are built and given as signpost.

Here's another shorthand: "Jesus saves."  From what?  To what?  Why even?  If we are to live with only shorthands, then we must reduce: "Jesus saves us from hell, so that we can go to heaven when we die."  Why am I on earth (that often feels like hell) then?  And what on earth are we going to do to life in hell as it happens?  Shorthand suppresses questions and ends the quest.

Iain McGilchrist's insight about our "divided brain" is a key one with immense and inexhaustible implications.  The book is a "must read" for anyone who wants to be read.

I know a man who used to be, I heard, a rather competent physicist, now reduced by a "brain disorder" (which, I know, is a shorthand way to put it) to--how do I say it?--a bit of a slumber.  He keeps himself awake staring at screens, news and shows, narratives that kind of "connect the dots" for him, unpacking a little the shorthands he has gathered in life (as he knew it from before), curating the faint signposts to see how they might fit into the "big picture" (not that, I believe, he actually trusts in the providence of one at all).

But you know what really wakes him up?  When people talk about money.  Gaining and losing.  Who charged whom what and shortchanged another when.  A sweet deal.  A good price.  A bad investment.  The kind of price for a kind of fish during his kind of time.  Laments and advises, all in a pecuniary framework.  What could have been, should have been, never a word about who he be now--a slumber, a shadow, a set of skeletons that happen to move for yet another day.

"Let's catch up."  "Let's check in with each other."  What do we mean by these expressions?  What do we do "checking in"?  We talk about what we have done.  Point A to Point B.  Little soldiers, "emissaries" giving their fragmented report to a disintegrated reality.  "I walked my dog."

My friend, the physicist, does have a Master, as we all do.  To him, it's the Market, the "Invisible Hand" that gives everything value and, for that, controls the story line.  So his life will always be about doing and being done to, every payoff and payout measured in strictly monetary terms.  Survival of the fittest.  Money and money only makes or breaks a Man.

Who's your Master?  Some calls herself a slave to her cats, her dogs, and you wonder why.  Some serves in church, in community, his family, keeps looking for the next thing to fix, the next project to initiate, the next milestone for him to be remembered for, elements for his story, tasks for the emissaries, too busy and inattentive to slow down.  FOMO.  All of us one time or another (and some almost always) see intimate relationship as some sort of destiny, the one legendary tale to tell about ourselves, and for that, are at the command of the most capricious, ruthless master.

Our life speaks about our Master.  When we are left with no emissary to send to the front-line (like many during COVID) to put on a facade of a show, what will we be reduced to?

Yours, Alex