I Deal with It

“The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fullness of life which each man seeks.”

― Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: Study in Ethics and Politics

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Dear Kate,

The world is not big enough for one person.  In the beginning, God created two.

Two human beings, that is, God's first mistake, and, yes, you could say He created two worlds too, heavens and earth, seemed to know the mistake He was making, blessed human beings with earth but only glimpses of heavens, hedging against the annihilation, a thorough nullification of His good creation that He must knew would soon follow.

2021 is a year that Man was (again, no surprise) squarely stuck on earth, and still more squarely stuck on the idea of possibly unsticking ourselves.  By the end of the year, there will be 17 missions with non-professional astronauts launched by private companies to space, to create space, because, as it was in the beginning, the world is not enough.

To hope is to say it ain't so, that "we are in this (world) together" and there is a possibility to flourish in it, all of us, each and every, one and all.  That we don't need to escape from it or from each other.  That we can cross paths without butting heads.  That we can light a fire without burning something or someone else at stake.

Hope is a tragic ideal.

"Community: Reflections on a Tragic Ideal" is the title of a book by Glenn Tinder, one of my great teachers.  I am not going to talk about the book.  (In fact, you will never find me talking about a book at length.  There is no more "at length" conversation in modern human discourse, let alone about a book, not the modernity in which I discourse.)  I want to reflect on the title, the two words, maybe three: A Tragic Ideal.

A glimpse of heaven, that is.

You can say all ideals are necessarily tragic.  Say, fatherhood, I have no idea what it is.  I know it is meant to be something, something better, something insisting on bettering the life of the little treasures entrusted to me, but I am having ever less ideas about what I am supposed to be.  The world I stuck in knows the Nos (which is really no more than cancelling the Yeses from before) and how to pull the rug from under my feet, but there is no vision of human flourishing, despite lies we must tell ourselves to stay hopeful.

Many lies, but one template.  It goes like this: "We all know the solution to xxx, it is just a matter of doing it."

Pick your cause.  Pick the popular ones if you aren't creative.  How about world hunger?  We all know how to solve it.  We can end it today if we want to.  The numbers are there.  How about health care crisis?  Housing crisis?  And war?--the fight would stop if we choose to stop now.  Turn around, repent, change: all doable.

Yet none possible.

To make life possible for one Self, the world has to be somehow impossible as a whole.  The world is not big enough for one person, as long as there are two.  The world is burning; burning it less we will not.  Can't drive less.  Can't live worse.  Can't handle the cold shoulders, mine and yours.  Nothing is possible if it is impossible for Me.  You might think this applies to big issues only, but the tragedy comes in all sizes, even too trivial to call a travail.

My daughter went for a movie this past weekend.  The weekend before I asked her, Have you seen "West Side Story" in school, the 60s classic?  She answered, Nah, which means she didn't and she won't.  And the conversation ended there.  No need to go any further.  I wanted to speak to her about the new Spielberg remake, maybe even suggest to take her to it, but found it unnecessary, even a little tragic to feel sorry for myself for feeling necessary to impose.  She is old enough to have her own ideas; who am I to speak to her about ideals?

She watched Spiderman with the rest of the world this past weekend.  I asked if she enjoyed it; she said she went with friends.  And that's all there is to this matter between us.

Yours, Alex