Monday, January 31, 2022
3:05 a.m. I feel like yesterday’s was only part one of something. Of all the things I listed, you addressed the issue of life talking only of the film directors and, really, centering on It’s a Wonderful Life as a parable. So if you wish to discuss the other items – the books, say – or add “The Resistance Banker,” seen again last night – well, it’s all yours.
We were discussing how an incomplete perspective could arise and how it could discourage anyone holding it. Trust us, it is not uncommon. Life in 3D can be confusing, and it is raucous at best. You have to live it as it comes at you, in fragments (even if usually the fragments seem to flow seamlessly, one to the next), and of course you have to gradually figure yourself out as you go along.
A little more on that.
You begin by taking yourself for granted, naturally. It is only with time that you begin to examine who it is that you are. Some begin early and never cease. Some never do begin, but take themselves as given, all their life long. And most are in the middle of the bell curve, as usual.
I get that this is what Carl Jung is talking about, saying that the first half of life is aimed outward and the second half inward.
That is not precisely what he said, of course, but yes, that is what he noticed: With the coming of a certain maturity, the individual ceases to take his own being for granted. Now in the specific case of Frank DeMarco in his old age, we were looking at how he spends his time, and how the things he concentrates on color his life.
You were?
We were getting to it, and we will pursue it now. And as usual, we generalize from your life (which you can actively collaborate on) to life in general. Anything one person experiences, others are likely to experience in some form or another, to one degree or another. You are all different; you are all similar.
So in your case, you were reading of the Carter presidency and then the Eisenhower presidency, as part of your unending quest to know what went on. It isn’t as if you had any practical intent in reading these books, it was out of interest.
History and biography have fascinated me since I was in seventh grade, which would have been age 13 or so.
But wanting to know what went on could be broadly generalized, and as you recognize, that is what we are about to do. In your thirties, you began reading mystery novels in quantity, beginning with John D. MacDonald and broadening out. And – you know the answer to this – what did reading such novels have in common with reading history?
I wanted to know what the world was like, and they seemed to offer a window. God knows I didn’t have much insight into the lives I saw being led around me.
And this remains true, does it not? A good history, a good novel, a good film, may provide a true window into 3D life as seen by others.
Yes. How else am I to get a window into other times, other places, other states of mind, other motivations?
And all of this has one insuperable problem.
Oh yes! And “insuperable” is the word for it. The problem is, where do these accounts join in with my own experience? If you read a novel, you understand people’s motivations. If you read history or biography, you get a sense of the forces that were in play. In either case, the biases of the author can be taken into account and dealt with. I mean by that, you can learn more than he says, because you naturally associate what you’re reading with what else you’ve read. Same with movies, to a degree. You won’t accept just anything from a movie: it has to match up somewhere with your experience of the world, or at least with other portraits from other films. Fiction may become fantasy but –
Hmm. Okay, take it from there.
It is only a sideline, and we won’t take it far, but you see, as you pursued that thought you realized that telling fiction from fantasy is a major problem in your time. This is why your political life is fragmenting (one reason why): People aren’t sure what is fact and what is not, and so there isn’t a common pool of accepted reality. That also has positive side-effects, but the negative ones are more obvious.
Now, it is a long step, from wanting to learn of life from accounts of it (fictional or non-fictional; which it is makes less difference than you might suppose) to learning of life by living it. But this is more complex than might appear at first glance.
What is it to live life? Can you actually avoid doing it? You can avoid living life according to some one definition of living, but of course you live moment by moment just as anyone else.
Yet there is a sense of life going on around me, I not noticing.
How else could it be? Do you know how life proceeds in Norway at the moment, or in Nebraska? These are somewhat foreign worlds to you, as is the specialized world of the engineer, or the housewife, or the banker, or anything. Almost all of life is second-hand knowledge to you, necessarily. What do you know, what can you experience, but what you yourself live, internally and externally?
What we are saying is, as usual, pretty simple, only perhaps in a new context:
- Your own life is all you know, all you can know.
- But that life includes all you know second-hand, from observation, from people’s stories told in person or in books or in film.
- Remembering what we said yesterday, your life is you and your decisions and your interactions. Disregarding any of these will distort your understanding.
Carl Jung sat in his study in Switzerland, as far from the rest of the world as any of you, and for the same reason: You can only be in one place, one time, until your life moves to perhaps another place, another time. Still you will process the moments one at a time. Most of what is going on will be foreign news to you, always. But Carl Jung read Latin and German and English and French, and what he read became part of his world. He treated thousands of suffering individuals, and their suffering, and sometimes their cures, became part of his world. What he studied changed how he thought, what he deduced from what he observed. You see the point we are getting at here? The same would be true for one and all, only he is known and most are not.
Yes, I see your point, of course. And as usual, nobody can know more than a little bit of anyone else’s world, as so much of it is invisible in 3D.
But remember that our goal here is to be helpful. So what are we offering?
I got that you are saying, maybe our lives are not comparable partly because some people get their resources from one thing and others from other things. A busy life in the world may not be any more or any less insightful and satisfying than a life spent reading, or gardening.
That is true, but not all. Add this: “The grass is greener” is an optical illusion. Nobody drew the short straw in life.
Emerson’s conclusion, expressed as Compensation. Badly misused by Spencer and the social Darwinists to justify a few people hogging the profits from the industrial revolution.
You see? That will serve as an example. We say something that suggests Emerson to you, then your own constructed map of history leads you to associate Emerson’s effect with an undesirable social side-effect. Could this have happened without your extensive reading and pondering? But it goes on regardless of whether you find expression for it. Most of what people know is never expressed, and so what?
Nothing is wasted, I guess you mean.
That’s what we mean. And that would do as a title for today’s little chat. Nothing is wasted. Your lives are not side-shows of some more important show; your activities – physical, mental, emotional even – are not wasted, nor trivial. No, you are not the center of the show (to the extent that the show even has a center), but not one detail can be spared, as we have said.
I wish I had been able to put this together in the form I wanted to, as So You Think Your Life Was Wasted.
You aren’t dead yet, so it could still be attempted. But the world won’t falter in its course if you do or don’t.
No, I know that. Did you round out what you wanted to say?
There’s always more to say, but this will do.
Well, you have our thanks for your sane and wholesome outlook, as always.