Life is an abstract thing, a concept. On the other hand, it is always radically concrete: such a person, animal, thing, time... and above all, it can only be lived in the present, in dynamic "the here and the now".
We walk very often escaping from the present,
from our present, without realizing that we have no other and that is where we
are only alive. We are fleeing our reality, longing for the past or
projecting the future. That is why "modern man lives in a state of
mediocre vitality.... knows little about what it's like to live in a truly
creative way..., he's become a distressed automaton.... poker face,
boring, distracted or irritated, deft to talk about their evils and bad to
face them, he spends long hours trying to recover the past or shaping the
future..., his activities of the present moment are nothing more than tasks
that have to be fulfilled...sometimes he does not even realize his actions at
the moment".
It is true that our present, social and
personal, becomes difficult and often incomprehensible. In our time, every
20 years are like a century earlier in knowledge, techniques,
resources. The figures - so packed with statistics - no longer tell us
anything, but our psychology suffers from this overflowing
acceleration. In the last 50 years there has been a technological
revolution that seems to have only just begun. Our ability to enjoy life,
however, has not gone at the same speed. We miss the present moment.
The past is past; only the present is
open, alive, if he is not awake in it. Many flee from present reality by
saying, 'If I could know where I come from, then I could.' it's an
escape... Most people are like young children, they don't wonder where
they come from or where they're going; they just worry about walking,
eating, living experiences. Some individuals reach the threshold of
thought and begin to pose problems. Some find religion, others find
teachers who give them answers. You cannot live in the past, nor in the
future, but in the present. Use every moment. Use what's
there. Most people never see that. They spend their lives always
looking for something different, they go through the persuaded existence that
their goal is much further away, when around them is everything they need to
achieve their goal... Wise men, those who know how to help people see
themselves, do not let themselves be implicating themselves for what they have
been. They care no more than the present moment. You can see the
future and the past, but they don't get carried away by each other."
To choose life is to choose "to be
oneself"
Trying to be the concrete person we are,
unique and at the same time equal to others, is the adventure of life. To
choose one's life is to live with oneself, not with the image, let alone with
the social role we play, but with one's own reality. Feeling like a man, a
woman, just as deep in others.
We always work with images, with perceptions
and representations of reality. Without wanting to go into controversy of
psychological schools about fantasy, image, reality, we can plot contractions,
taking them to extremes to find more clarity. Certainly there are people
who cease to be themselves because they live or, better, are lived by their
image, personally rewarding and socially captative, who end up eating
them. We were brought up, at least in a certain type of education, to be
as perfect "images" as possible of someone or
something. Perfection, the end, was so important that almost everything
was worth it. Unfortunately, the description would also be
worth, with its own nuances, for the present ...). Even the one that was
being forgotten the most fundamental and human needs. How many current
crises of self-esteem; impossibility of expressing the most human, the
feelings; to recommend the healthy aggression and confrontation, without
which we die helpless and landed, torn apart by the inner and outer
wolves...! .
To experience that we are like others, of
flesh and blood, of sex and affection, of death and life. How many easy
and docile psychological constructions based on inherited logical norms,
morality without possible exceptions, in roles, social roles felt as necessary
to maintain the effectiveness and stereotypical gear of institutions...! and
how many slow, painful, reconstructions to feel the most natural again, such as
the human heart, lanecessity of recognition and the experience of simple and
important utility! To be oneself is to try to be free, and freedom is a
conquest made of sometimes painful and exclusionary options.
It is logical that at the end, or in the
middle of the route, one is very tired inside; as if he were running the
career of life with "a sn sle in his stomach" or "a strange
backpack behind his back." The healthy thing, once again returning to
humanist psychology, is "updating". What I feel deep and in the
epidermis of my body and spirit, of my spiritual body, I will let it feel, I
will allow it to emerge as my own, I will be aware of it and try to make it a
reality in the way and measure I can. I'm going to be myself.
"The meaning of life is that it must be
lived and should not be changed and conceptualized within a system
scheme. We are realizing that management and control are not the ultimate
happiness of life... It is to become true, to learn to take an option, to
define oneself, to develop the center of oneself... Achieve the ability to
fend for yourself as a human being."
Choosing life is being aware and meeting
needs
Man and woman are beings of need. Being
in touch with them, let them feel, knowing how to express them in authenticity,
will be a path of psychological growth. One of the problems of human needs
is that they are authentically human.
In the study on the psychological evolution
of human growth, basic needs and superiors (physiological needs - security,
peace, order - belonging, affection - esteem, prestige, success - and
self-realization). We can rank our needs by virtue of the hierarchy of
values that operates within us. Maturity, in one of its traits, implies
the fluidity of this process, which asks to organize the behavior according to
a hierarchy of needs and the ability to concentrate operationally and
successively on its execution. Man is "the most helpless of
animals" and depends on others at birth. The animal is happy if its
physiological needs are met. In the case of man, meeting his instinctive
needs is not enough to make him happy. He wants to feel love and
freedom. Without love you can't choose life.
A life without love is not life. St Paul
is blunt as a sword: "without love I am nothing" (1 Cor 13). But
not only the Christian tradition, but all deeply human traditions and cultures
go down this line: "Be not without love, because it means death. Live
in love so that you are alive" (Tallaludim Rumi). "the soul is
alive, for it lives from love. A man who loves nothing but skin and
bones" (Hindu author of the 2nd century).
To
choose life is to live "day and night"
No one can escape from day and night. This
one, dark and often in solitude, costs more. It is not easy to adapt to the low slope, to
the weakly illuminated path where the parts of the unwanted person itself are
being rewrapped, repressed parts that need to be integrated into a new identity
more authentic and real. Those feelings of passivity, dependence,
weakness, fragility, inevitable frustration...
In this society, as hypocritical possibly as
that of any other era, and in the representation of the theater of this world,
the weak are misseen. Society pushes for "character"; a
solid character that makes us effective and predictable. But true human
wealth does not go down the line of character that grabs and
mechanized. We tend to relate to others from our safety, qualities, money,
talent, culture, hiding our weaknesses and limitations, without realizing that
they are also human and that it is through them that others can feel the
same. Then they may not admire us, but they will love us; and this is
what really saves us.
In this society you have to be very mature to
relate to yourself and others from one's own weakness and poverty. And
even more so to be able to share it without feeling superior to anyone, but the
same, and letting yourself be accompanied. This
vital journey of day and night goes through crisis, at a time when the
questions and the crucial situations are greater than the vital answers
available to us, thus destabilizing our psychology, which begins to emit
signals.
Choosing life is accepting death
As we've seen, choosing life has a lot to do with dying. That's how paradoxical life is. To die of schemes, structures, needs, even people we considered vital, irreplaceable, eternal. Sooner or later we stumbled upon death as a reality of life, although today, in the society of the well-being and pleasure of the first world, it is taboo, as in another time were sexuality or politics. But there it is, for example, in our great fear of old age. There is talk of the "culture of death" because, in a trivial way, it is part of our daily landscape, especially television. How many violent, horrible, trivial, even funny deaths per minute? And at the same time, as if it didn't exist, it's hidden from daily life.
....................
References
J. GARCIA FORCADA SAL-TERRAE/94/04. Pages 265-275
FRITZ PERIS, Dream and existence, Ed. Cuatro Vientos, Santiago de Chile 1974.
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