Vital Signs: Conclusion

Ease and Effort

We have run many tests. Our findings are generally discouraging. Being full of dismay and despair or being empty of concern all make entertainment appealing. Entertainment takes your time and money and gives you rest. There are a great many things of which to be conscious. Entertainment often pushes out the more demanding, more unpleasant (and yet ultimately beneficial) possibilities. It is easier to be bored than to be imaginative. It is easier to be distracted than to be anxious. It is easier to be despairing than to be hopeful. It is easier to be tired than to be active. Entertainment subsidizes these weaknesses.

Giving in to our desire for ease is not always good for us! At times, we undermine our own interests this way. A person suffering from the onset of hypothermia supposes he will warm up if only he would lie down. He curls up in the snow and first feels relieved (Yes, this is better. The wind cannot chap me here.), then numb (I do not feel cold; I must be comfortable.), then nothing at all. In this instance, listening to our desires has a deadly consequence. The outcome of our love of entertainment is not deadly, but it is certainly dire.

I anticipate as we draw our examination to a close, you may be tempted to seek a second opinion. You may disagree with my approach and may be critical of my findings. It seems I have a bias towards personal expenditure. The imagination takes effort. Self-reflection takes effort. Preservation requires effort. Surrender is effortless and I belittled it. It would seem I am generally prescribing a regime of exercise.

"What is laudable about effort?" you wonder. "Is not effortlessness the sign of grace? Peace and repose, to be unsettled--are these not goals in everyone's heart? You make it seem despicable to rest. But where you see an idler, I see a victor—one who has earned repose through winning the daily battle of endurance."

My critic, you make a good point. Peace and rest are our homes, where we long to return to after embarking into the world. You make a good point about needing rest, but has your victor earned absolute rest? To be contented with a full stomach and empty head: is this the peace you seek? I ask you: is the daily battle of endurance people wage with the world the only battle they are involved in? Does not belligerence describe a great many of the relationships a person has, not on a specific day to day basis, but viewed minute by minute and year by year? Opposition is everywhere. We war with our world, our peers, and ourselves. Life contains struggles for more than bodily continuance. There are other conflicts in which we are engaged. Why, after winning the battle for bodily sustenance, do you refuse to fight for the rest of today?

Toiling is essential to life. It defines our adult day-to-day existence. Work is a process of emptying ourselves in order to be filled again--filled with food, clothing, and shelter. But is that all we are working for? Are those the only cavities created by living? Does not this frustrating world, these frustrating contemporaries, and our frustrating selves leech us daily of more than just our blood and sweat? Do not intangible substances seep out of us as well? Do we not drip hopes and dreams, ideals and aspirations? What are we putting in their place? Is the trade a fair one? Are we getting something in return worth as much as our limited time and lessening bodies?

I grant exertion appears unseemly. Many long for the white rather than the blue collar. "Labor is so beastly. Oxen must push and plod. Are we to lower ourselves to the level of oxen? No. If we can earn the fruits of toil without struggling, then we will. If we can consume the fruits of toil in leisure and repose, then we will. Life will be devoid of strife altogether and will, therefore, be completely noble," the critic observes.

My critic makes another good point. Clean fingers present nicely. I must inquire though: is a drain noble? I know it sounds absurd, but I am not jesting. You look at the ox and find offense. Must you not look at the drain and find inspiration? It takes and takes and takes without any effort at all. It is more automatic than automatic. There are no moving parts. It need only be still and wait for others to pour into it. It does its job by doing nothing. It does nothing, tries nothing, and wills nothing--it only receives. Is this object not your idol? Is this not the god of your freedom, that which does nothing but exists to be served, to having everything done to it?

Please consider this: if we know our lives here are coming to an end, should not we want to make the best of them? Can we honestly tell ourselves on our last day we have made the best of our lives when we spent them one third in rest, one third in doing something we must to live the next day, and one third in doing nothing at all--in having something done to you by entertainers and their bankrollers? Is this the reward you seek for your labor: the liberty to be amused? Your individuality is born out of the distinct uniqueness of your experience. In freedom, you seek experience and shape yourself. Judging from what you seek, you want to make yourself nothing more than a vessel for the tepid pleasure of being entertained. How does that sit with you? Does it churn your stomach as it does mine?

I submit to you that we desperately need to imagine! I submit to you that we desperately need to act for ourselves and know what and who we are! Do these duties for yourself in a way that does not neglect others. Do these duties for others in a way that does not neglect yourself. Thereby, you will guarantee your commitment to communion with them. To give to yourself without concern for others is a subtle suicide. To give to others without concern for yourself is a misguided martyrdom. One can only rightly empty oneself, to will to become nothing, for that which is everything. No human or grouping of humans can ever be everything for another human. At most, he, she, or they can only be everything worthwhile for another, not what can be of utmost worth for all. The distance between the two cannot be traversed.

Wealth and entertainment are to be consumed. In a culture that primarily defines its constituents as consumers, is it surprising there is so little to be said in favor of giving and creating? Could there be a better treatment for this disease around us than to try to construct something that neither seeks profits nor keeps others from acting? Construction is difficult, but it is fulfilling.

I have no issue with a movement towards the external. I am not suggesting the self is a bottomless wellspring of originality and purpose. To look outside of oneself is at times needful, at times delusional, and at times salvational. The problem is with the intention behind this outward-seeking. Boredom, lethargy, and anxiety are organic consequences of being human. Entertainment seeks to relieve us from kinds of suffering, but suffering is often needed. It is dangerous for people to be numb. Without pain, they do not understand the consequences of their actions and the truth of their being. Pain is a communication about bodily conditions that are more worthwhile than the cessation of pain is. The same is true of interior suffering. If it is educational, it can be empowering. Suffering can inspire a person to become more human, to be more of what she is and identify less with what she is not.

My questions are harsh, but perhaps they do not apply to you. I do not intend to be cruel or unsympathetic. I do not deny for a moment that all people who dare to exert themselves need to rest—even regularly. Rest is earned. But you who have not tried to exert yourself, why do I always find you napping? "I am exhausted," you say. You do not know the half of it! Lack of activity can make one tired just as activity will. A paraplegic, if he miraculously could feel his legs again, would know them to be tired. Is it not the same with you? Is not your exhaustion from inactivity rather than activity? Does not atrophy describe your condition? When have you last taken your death seriously and, as a result, truly tried to live for something serious or die to something worthless? Day after day you are closer to the end. Would it frighten you more if I told you that you are daily closer to being forgotten by the world? Still, you who have not worked are taking a vacation. What a perilous existence!

One does not treat cancer, but treats the cancer patient. I do not feign to have a regime for us all. But you, my reader and my patient, I cannot see inside you. You must examine yourself in light of these findings. I leave you with a final question: are you sick?