Monday, September 7, 2009

My Art of Living I


CONVERSION TO ONESELF (6)

My first thoughts regarding the ancient epistrophe eis heauton were skeptical. Wasn't this 'technology of self' mere ethical egoism, making your own self-reform the chief object of concern, rather than concern for the world? Wasn't it a sophisticated kind of ethical narcissism?

I studied more, experimented; gained respect. My second thoughts were also skeptical, but in a different mode: was it not too much to aim at, this transformation from within?

To distinguish what is in our control (the will) from everything else (the world) and relinquish entirely the latter as "indifferent" seemed to go too hard against my nature, which had its roots in the world that drew me to it -- a world of persons to touch and kiss, of roles and powers to enlarge my being, a 'self' I thought to make in it through acts with lasting outcomes, a world of knowledge, proofs, science, literature, creations of my own for good or evil, a world redone without the wounds of poverty or racism or war.

Was it possible to let all that go and recognize instead the boundary of myself as all that I could 'control'? To put in my focus the process/art with which I did as I did, to give myself entirely to the momentary act, with occasional humbling flights to the "view from above"? To accept, deeply, the limits and contingency of my wanting/being, to realize the limits and particularly of my feeling/understanding? So that even in my interactions, I would know the other as my Heraclitean opposite, clasped together in the fleeting time, the uncertain exchange of our inter-course with one another?

Were then the moments of courage, self-restraint, the just fit to the person and context, dialectical insight the daimones of our being-together in a world-game where the rules themselves could change? I had first regarded the conversion as an ascent to autonomous reason, the means whereby to separate the real world (mundus intelligibilis) from the fake; I was later drawn into a different kind of division, as if I had discovered the point of sailing was in just that and not in getting to the port (for we all would perish at sea).

My epistrophe eis heauton made me liberal and conservative, rationalist and existential, self-sufficient and accepting my dependencies, skeptical still, yet moved by simple faith. I gave up my nakedness for a patchwork shirt, made fit to each occasion. I am returned onto myself, in-dwelling, home. I cherish my cups and walls and indeed, I am a cup myself, for I have been broken and reglued, only to discover I was made of pieces all along. I am one, though ever-dissolving.

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