The Search For Self

March 1992
Brooksville

In a shopping mall once, I heard an older woman say to a young woman, “Have fun while you’re young.” The inference was that if you didn’t have fun while you were young, there would be little chance for it in the older years. I almost intruded to quote George Bernard Shaw, who wrote, “Youth is too precious to be wasted on young people.” I didn’t, but that overheard exchange fortified my wish to think on this matter of the Self (and if you want to think about it as “soul”, I have no objection. )

First of all, I want to make a disclaimer. Not being a psychiatrist or psychologist, I am not going to speculate on the many theories about the origins of our wishes, fears, repressions, hangups and rationalizations. It may be that these feelings originate in the Oedipus complex, or are programmed by our parents, or are all elaborations of a denial of death because early on we sense our creature-liness and know that we will die. We are told that we construct elaborate symbols and myths to deny such fears. I am slightly acquainted with some of the literature, but not even a summary would serve the purpose today.

I do not slight the extent of mental disorder problems. A while back I read a report on findings of the N.I.H., suggesting that almost one American in five has some mental disorder, either currently or within a prior six-month period. Obviously, the need for professionals is great. Perhaps, in too light a vein, I remembered a quip by Ann Landers, (I think), who wrote on this one in five ratio, “take a look at your four closest relatives or friends – if they seem O.K., you’re the one.”

What I do assert is that we each have a Self, irrespective of various theories of its origins; a Self that can grow in wisdom and understanding, or can remain static; or can regress. Furthermore, whatever our chronological age may be, we have the opportunity to grow, most of us, if we are reasonably free from physically-caused brain deterioration. Then, too, in continuously developing a Self to live with, there is an assumption that the more comprehensive our knowledge of Self – what it is and what it can be – the more spontaneous and less coerced will be our movement to from knowledge to action. As we come to understand ourselves better, the more readily we will feel free to act according to our better impulses and higher values. Also, the more I understand my Self, the less likely I am to judge others.

But the continuous growth of the independent Self gets sidetracked, blocked, stalled by our fears, our griefs, and disasters. But consider also the Self-health that can come from acceptance, from confidence in our capacity to grow. Then I will suggest that there is a big difference between being a thermometer and a thermostat.

Our fears have been strong influences in our lives, have they not? The Sufi story of the thirsty dog is a parable. The dog’s thirst was over-ridden by fear of its own reflection in the water. When courage or need overcame that fear, then the thirst was quenched – the phantom disappeared.

Many of our childhood fears have been repressed, but some of us still remember being afraid of the bully on the corner, the fear of the ghost in the night, or the fear that parents won’t return home after an evening out. If [you were], like I was, part of the Great Depression, 1929 and following, thereafter, remember how we feared that we would lose our jobs, or if we had no job were afraid that we never would never get one? Thousands today feel those same fears. There have been and are, many fears that beset us.

A better way is to ask honestly, how real is the fear? Cervantes’ classic, DON QUIXOTE, has an incident that bears repeating, even though it is familiar. Sancho Panza hangs from a window ledge all the dark night long, desperately fearful of a fall from a great height. Daylight reveals he is only six inches from the ground. Knowledge lessens fear. What knowledge can we shine on our fears? Shakespeare has MacBeth say, (Act 1 Sc. 3), “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

Sometimes we fear we have made a wrong decision and brood on it, even when there’s no going back. A story I have kept the notes a long time because of its insight into our human condition. The story-teller noted that a few years ago, Roberta Flack recorded a song, “Let Pharaoh Go.” (Everyone knows the classic spiritual “Let My People Go,” but Let Pharaoh Go?) In the Hebrew Scripture of Exodus, when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egyptian slavery into the wilderness, the people grumbled about hardship and the difficult conditions, and wished they were back in Egypt. “Let Pharaoh Go” – what a switch! “We thought the action in Exodus had to do with God forcing Pharaoh to let the people go. But that was nothing. It didn't require much from God. A few dirty tricks and some magic and the Hebrews were sprung. But what a time God had in the Wilderness. The Hebrews couldn’t let Pharaoh go. Some of them said, ‘There’s not even a McDonalds out here and we can't even use our Visa cards.’”

That’s a parable of the growing self, too. Once you overcome an old fear and move ahead even to a temporary wilderness, there is no growth in nostalgia for old fears which have been left behind. Knowledge is painful, frequently, but the light it throws on old phantoms contributes to a self that grows. As the dog in the Sufi story discovered and as Shakespeare told us, “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

Next, how many of us have ever been free of the stunning blows that disaster and grief create? Not many. Who among us has not been struck with hammer-blows of dire misfortune. Death, grave illness, catastrophe, disappointment, disillusion – sooner or later these come to us all. Our inner self is bruised, downcast, shocked. Someone printed a T shirt, “Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.”

It may sound Pollyannish, even shallow, to pronounce that one must go on with life when such heavy blows are struck. But, what would you?

Philip Slater, best known for his fine book, THE PURSUIT OF LONELINESS, and has a new book which I have not yet read, wrote elsewhere, “When artificial lights are turned off in a windowed room at night, it takes a little time to become aware that that darkness is not total, and the longer we are bedazzled by the after-image of that artificial light, the longer it takes to perceive the subtle textures of light and shadow-to realize that we can in fact, see.” If you haven’t known that in your own experience, try it some night. “The Dark is Light Enough,” Christopher Fry entitled one of his plays; and it is a clue to self -growth even amidst sorrow and misfortune.

The experience of fear and grief point to another requirement for a self that grows – acceptance of what has been and cannot be changed. That was the meaning of the story of the two Buddhist monks. One monk disregarded the rule not to touch a woman and did her the service of carrying her across the mud. All the rest of the journey his companion remained silent but fretful and sullen about this trespass of rules. When they reached the monastery, the first monk replies to the complaining one, “What! Are you still carrying her? I left her back at the crossing.”

Everyone has quoted the exchange between Margaret Fuller, the 19th century writer, poet and Feminist, and Thomas Carlyle, the grumpy Scots writer. Miss Fuller proclaimed eloquently, “Universe, I accept you!” Carlyle rejoined, “She damn well better had.” (If that’s an anti-feminist remark, Carlyle said it, I didn’t.)

If you are at all like I am, there are times when you look back and squirm inwardly at some stupid thing done or said. “I could kick myself for that?” Right? We look backward, even years back and still feel embarrassed at something that was gauche, awkward, inappropriate, bull-headed or just plain wrong. But these events happened and I can’t turn the clock back. So, I accept. (I well better had.) But the curious and helpful nature of such painful experience is that I learned more about being a better self from those mistakes than from many scholarly writings on ethics and behavior or from Emily Post. Shakespeare has Marianna remark in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, “They say best men are molded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad.”

So, I have forgiven myself. To me that that is the vital nature of the act we call forgiveness. I’m a little wary of the cliche about forgiving others. There’s some atmosphere of condescension and judgment about forgiving others. The positive value of forgiving another is only when it helps the other to forgive himself or herself.

All of which leads me to the observation that our self-growth and self-understanding has to be our own way, not anyone else’s. That I believe was the point of the story of the Baal Shem and the Katinka cape. The way for the first woman was not the way for the second woman.

For it is our own way that builds self-confidence. Think of that hyphenated word: Confidence is an inner quality that equips us to trust our own feelings; that strengthens self-trust. To accept someone else’s way to a growing self is half-hearted unless we have found it true in our in our own experience. I found an example of self and confidence in one of the magazines for older persons,

“‘You look like my third husband,’
She said with no ado.
‘How many have you had?’ he asked.
She quickly answered, ‘two.’”

Frivolous? Maybe. But I think the lady had a sense of self and self-trust.

In the story of the student, the teacher and the jade, did not the wise instructor use a method, that the student, in spite of his complaints, learned the difference between true jade and bogus jade? The way to a growing self is your own road. Shakespeare has the Dauphin say to his timid, irresolute father, the King of France,

“Self-love my liege,
is not so vile a sin
As self-loathing.” (Act 2, sc. 4)

One last belief I have about a self that can grow deeper and wider is really a question – am I a thermometer or a thermostat? (Can’t recall the source of this metaphor). A thermometer registers the temperature, whatever it is, 45° or 95°. A thermostat can be set to go on or off at the degree I select. A thermometer does not protest, it just rises or falls with the prevailing climate. A thermostat I can control if I don’t like the prevailing climate. Isn’t that something like the Self? My agreements or disagreements can go up or down. If I’m a thermometer, my beliefs, convictions, go up or down at somebody else’s suggestion or at the propaganda that may surround me. A thermostat I set. Another difference is that the thermostat needs power from an inner source – power from an inner Self.

Saul Bellow in one of his short stories (“A Silver Dish”), has a line about a character (Woody Sebst), “He was too busy to attend to his own feelings.” Has that ever been your experience? It has in mine – too busy to attend to my own feelings. Once in a while, at the end of the day, ask yourself, “What have I done for me today?”

Another new frame for an old idea is “mental-jogging”. Some research has indicated a connection between mental alertness and a longer life. A quote from the report, “Those who lead intellectually inactive lives not only reduce their mental capacities, they are more often sick, dissatisfied, grumbling, unjust and aggressive. Unlike a machine which wears down in time, the human mind is kept sharp through constant use. All that is needed to keep the intellect fit is ten minutes of brain jogging a day.” I recommend more than ten minutes at activities that keep the brain cells busy. (crosswords, bridge, poetry...)

Such mental jogging can be an anti-biotic for the overload of viral stuff coming at us – the tube, the radio, gossip, the blather of candidates in the primaries. If, as Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living,” we need mental jogging as another trailblazer in the search for Self.

Now it may have occurred to some of you that in this talk, there has been a concentration on Self – Is this not self-centeredness and therefore showing a lack of concern for others? Are there not aspects of narcissism in what I have been addressing? Sort of Me, Myself and I?

On the contrary, in my view, the person who has met and recognized his/her fears, who deals with the cruel blows of living with courage and hope, who accepts the circumstances of the Earth, the Universe and herself/himself and other persons, who seeks his/her own way; and with the power of of mind and knowledge resists the fallacies and fanaticisms, is the person who is most likely to be a caring person, caring for others, knowing that others have a Self growing, too.

A one-time official of the British ministry once defined an “educated man.” I would paraphrase and substitute Self – A person growing in Self is is one who can entertain a new idea, another person, and herself/himself.