We Look But Do Not See
He said, “Go and tell this people: Keep on listening but do not see. Keep on looking but do not understand.” Isaiah (6: 9)
Dear August -
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I listened to a few of your video clips and feel compelled to add my two cents.
We live in a world where people look but do not see. When one sees, one feels. When one feels, one acts or reacts. But this is not our state of affairs. Many individuals spend hours in a virtual world where they do not see and do not hear, they text in code which is void of emotions. This is the world that children, teens, and young adults live in. A world in which they are deprived of experiencing life, their senses. What happens to our state of awareness when we are deprived of the basic senses – sight, hearing, smell and touch? (Taste doesn’t really matter in this case)
They live in a world of sound bites, are consumed by what they themselves and their 1000s of Facebook friends are doing, wearing, texting – they are totally absorbed with the superficial. In such a world, where is there understanding or compassion?
Maria
Dear Maria,
Thanks for your comments and question. Nothing is more appreciated than seeing our work elicit thoughtful responses. I love your play off the difference between “looking” and “seeing.” It reminds me of the book of Isaiah where God admonishes his people for looking and not seeing. I think what you mean by looking vs. seeing is the same as what seems vs. what is. All too often we content ourselves with the surface of life and mistake the surface for what is REAL.
Michael Downey is an oblate at the Trappist monastery of Mepkin. He is also the theologian for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. One day he took me off guard by saying, “What is your definition of spirituality?” Without thinking I said, “To see through life.” He rubbed his chin and said. “I think that is a very good definition.”
I think you are saying much the same thing. We are so damn busy with all the mind numbing surface noise of life that we never stop and take the time to really LIVE through authentic intimacy with the world and each other. You are also correct in pointing out that by inventing a virtual world we are often merely adding another level of buffering. Like a movie inside a movie we are one more step removed from what is REAL.
Your comment also reminds me of Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town. In the third act the main character, Emily, has died in child birth and finds herself in the cemetery with all the other dead people of Grover’s Corners “waiting for something important and great” to happen when they get “weaned away from earth.” As a new arrival, Emily realizes that she can return to life if she wants, and despite the advice against it by the others she decides to relive her 12th birthday The stage manager tells her that the problem is that this time “You not only live it; but you watch yourself living it.”
At first she is happy but little by little she realizes that her family doesn’t see each other the way they should. She realizes that they are taking everything for granted and just going through the motions.. Ordinary life is just everyone talking past one another so she pleads with her mother,
“But just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at each other.”
But her mother cannot hear this plea and Emily says, “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”
She breaks down sobbing and says, “I didn’t realize. So that was going on and we never noticed.”
Then she asks to be taken back to her grave, but before she goes she makes a wonderful speech of farewell lamenting that no one really knows life and its beauty while they live it. Then she asks the stage manager,
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every, minute?” He responds, “The Saints and poets maybe, they do some.”
Emily’s tragedy is the tragedy I sense you are referring to. What Emily is lamenting is the reason why so much literature from all religious traditions refers to “spiritual work” as the process of WAKING UP. Your lament arises from that deep part of you that realizes that we are all so fast asleep that we fail to appreciate the gift that life and each other really are.
My whole philosophy of transformation might be rephrased as the process we go through to wake up. I said in my lecture at Duke that when a thirsty man drinks water he has transformed his condition. When a poor man hits the lottery he transforms his circumstance. And when Mr. Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning an utterly new man he has experienced a transformation of being. Mr. Scrooge has permanently awakened to what is real and important from the nightmare of what only seemed important.
My essay Brother John which won the Templeton Prize is all about this transformation and in it I also quote Thorton Wilder. You can read it if you like at http://www.augustturak.com/writings/brother-john.html.
The theme of Brother John and our mission here at AugustTurak.com is to show that a transformation of being from selfishness to selflessness is the real purpose of every human life. All the tangible benefits like peace and love we crave are simply the by–product of such a transformation. And as Emily tells us, this transformation starts with noticing.
Since I was 20 my goal has been a community of people who want to live life more truly, intimately, and completely. A community that takes what Wilder had to say through Emily to heart through a “change of heart.” A community of people who are awake, trying to awake, or helping each other stay awake. Whether we ever meet or not, I consider you a member of this community, and I urge you to keep the faith. Everything depends on people like you refusing to fall back asleep. Thanks again. The value of your “two cents” is, quite literally, infinite.
August Turak
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