I had for many years been grateful never to have been placed in that terrifying position of choosing to take my life rather than have it taken from me. The fear of such a choice developed into a mild strain of pyrophobia. I did all I could to avoid elevators and refused to reside anywhere higher than the second floor. I abstained from owning candles, spurned fireplaces, and went so far as to avoid barbecue pits. In effect, I had taken all due care to fireproof my surroundings. I neglected to anticipate the inherent combustibility of human affairs.
Life is a process of investing onself into oneself, other people, and/or projects. We exchange our resources, time and energy, for the chance to have our aspirations met. I will accelerate my story by stating that I had heavily invested myself in a losing venture.
For as far back as I can remember, I have thought of myself as a good man. I would not so far as to use the word 'great'. That would be overstating the case. My talents and the fervor of my devotion never allowed me to presume greatness. Still, I considered myself beyond all reasonable reproach because I had a good heart. Never had I thought to myself, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyway," or "I know that will ruin someone else, but I'll opt to benefit myself regardless." I did not indulge in the popular forms of debauchery and was sure to keep my rap sheet empty.
By frequently recalling my clean conscience, I lionized myself. On a theoretical level, I could do no evil. Everyone makes mistakes, true enough, but is the attribution of blame appropriate? In my case, at least, it seemed improper. Evil is such a strong word. If one never concedes the possibility of being guilty, one becomes practically blameless. I had inoculated myself against contrition. So it was that I incinerated my life, not by striking a match but failing to turn the gas off.
"There must be something more to a good man than thinking he is without fault. What else makes a man a good man?" you wonder. Yes, I did not hang my hat solely on self-approbation. I did more than that. I was resolutely committed to self-improvement. To become smarter, wiser, more skilled, more artful, more loving--all are ways towards that goal. With all those avenues, opportunities for improvement are abundant. Yet here as elsewhere, too many options disorients people. We lose focus and disintegrate.
I was no different. Along the way, I developed a nasty habit of switching between avenues whenever the one I was following became trying. When I was stumped, I told myself there is wisdom in knowing one's limitations. When I was faced with an insuperable ethical quandary, I would abandon it altogether and delve into a project. When I ran into a demanding task--something beyond my current capabilities--I would go watch an art house movie or listen to music. When I was confronted by a confounding image, I would leave it and spend time with my girlfriend. Whenever my girlfriend annoyed me, I would compute, read, build, or sketch--anything but love. I created a system of escapes. In taking flight from this, that, and the other, I separated myself from everything. All the while, I told myself I was a good man and I was making something of myself. Who needs anything more than self-approbation?
I realized how poor my position was in a college history course. We were learning about mid-twentieth century oppression when my professor played a clip to illustrate. The grainy black and white footage contained a man in a delicate robe sitting cross-legged on pavement. With precise motions, he poured gasoline on himself. He struck a match and dropped it into his lap. He sat motionless while being incinerated until life left him. Then his body toppled over, no longer being held in balance. Fire danced along his charred corpse. The lights in the classroom went up. After collective wonder at the feat of self-control and a discussion of the monk’s political efficacy, I wondered again about the act of stepping forward to meet death. What is more unconscionable: to passively be consumed or to actively disperse yourself? Those dangling moments I recalled from my youth were the embodiment of our condition. Could it be that there is a need for death? This monk's self-immolation was the enactment of one man's answer.
How was this man's act other than suicide? Suicide is both active and passive. It is active insofar as it stops what would otherwise have continued. Without taking one's life, one sees a future restrained by the shackles of depression, anxiety, and despair. One accordingly cuts the future off at the pass of the present. Suicide is passive insofar as the act of stopping is initiated by a prior overwhelming circumstance. One who commits suicide concedes he has already been overcome; the act is tacit recognition of powerlessness. This monk, however, died to defeat something else. He gathered himself up to hurl himself at a momunment to human cruelty. It was a sacrifice rather than a suicide. Sacrifice seeks to motivate another; suicide seeks to mollify the self.
How endicting was that brave man! What was I doing with my life? I was dying, but what was I dying for? Here I was, exerting all of this energy, but in a spray rather than a stream. I was living intensely, but with mild purpose. I could not bear to unify my will and opted instead to retreat whenever challenged beyond a comfortable level. I was convicted by that monk whose death made me question my innocence and retreated to my dormroom to reflect.
***
Life for us is not as simple as life for oblivious creatures. While bacteria and plants can only die in one sense, we can die in at least two. We are at once animal and rational, body and soul, physical and mental, material and immaterial, corporeal and ethereal—and it is on account of this truth divided by a blurry border that we die more than once. Each side of the line has its own demise. In the obvious way, that monk died. What of the hidden way?
As we age, we devlop the ability to watch ourselves. First, the child becomes physically discerning in front of a mirror. One has control over a region of the visual field--the region which corresponds to our body--in a way unlike the rest of it. What is seen on the surface of the looking glass is related to what one is, but is not identical to it.
With age, we watch ourselves in new ways. The initiation into the second, hidden life is involuntary. One accumulates more control as bodily urges are tamed to make them amenable to human schedules and environmental possibilities. The youth becomes aware of her power over her self. She is still excited by what excited her prior to her self-observations, but the stimulation become less overwhelimg.
The reflective life is the second life. In self-consciousness, we distance ourself from stimuli and look upon the inside world. One recognizes inclinations may be opposed. In this power of assessment dwells freedom, the unique trait of the second life. The situation of maturity is like the man who wakes up in a taxi. He is already en route. He would arrive at some previously determined destination without further instruction. Not wanting to be delivered where he has not choosen to be, he asks the driver to pull over and let him out. He is not so independent and powerful that he does not require help to be freed, yet he is not so dependent and weak that he cannot stop the progress of circumstance and momentum.
As one can be more or less healthy in body, so too can one's reflective life be more or less vital. I was sick with ignorance. I lacked concentration and thereby lacked self-knowledge. I lost myself in the moment so regularly that I become lost in the entire sequence. In my disorientation, I was dying.
The death of the animal is well known. It was assumed after those memorable victims dropped out of the frame of that high-rise shot. We have ceremonies to mark our bodily departure. What is it, though, for the other side to die? What is it to die this second death?
The second death is a drastic alteration of the person. When this alteration is involuntary, it is suicide. When this alteration is wilfull, it is sacrifice. Unlike suicide, which aims to end consciousness, sacrifice aims to end what is diseased within consciousness.
***
I subsequently learned the observation we can die in various ways has old origins. The ancient Greeks thought the philosophical life was an exercise in dying. This death was the dying to all interior disorder. It sought the proper configuration of human life, placing the rational capacity at the top, above the passions, senses, and the appetites. Religion also calls its adherents to die. Christ said, "whoever wants to save his life, will lose it.” Thus a certain sort of death is necessary and salvational. This death was to universal disorder. It sought the proper orientation of human life, placing the Creator above the creature.
In both sorts of sacrificial death, one is called to restructure one's priorities. To prioritize: is there a more simple task for the living? The abundance of options warrants organization prior to choosing among them. The most weighty, complex, elaborate, and strenuous fields of reflective life strive to arrange the various priorities within all people.
The philosophical and religious deaths are similar. Both involve a great emphasis on self-control that comes after admission of the need to be controled. There is in both deaths explicit acceptance of the proposition that the natural bend of our psyches does not produce beneficial results. In this way, we automatically malfunction: we want peace and are prone to war. If uncontrolled, we war with self, war with others, and war with the world. Philosophy and religion enter to disarm the factions and to instantiate a just order.
On the surface, philosophy and religion speak differently and often about different subjects. Interiorly, they both console. There is no greater consolation than the truth because there is no other consolation. Lies, errors, and falsehoods anesthetize; the truth pacifies. What else is wisdom but the understanding of those truths that pacify most? What else is worship but the adoration of the truth?
***
So it was that I began to feel remorse, not by doing something wrong but seeing someone else do something right. I saw my own significance and how my lack of focus contributed to it. My motivations were impure. I was pursuing some hazy end that amounted to self-righteousness. I took great pleasure in myself. I was not giving and did not live by a pure will. That monk showed me how indebted I was. I was making something of myself, but something insignificant. I thereafter sought to consolidate my purpose and apologized for my covert cowardice.
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