Fear

We have a poster in our house, a copy of a painting my parents sent to me 30 years ago. They had seen this painting during a gallery visit near Hamburg, felt intrigued by it and sent it to me.

It's a quite strange image: A man seemingly holding, if not swinging a cow over his head. The caption in translation runs something like "Death can no longer harass me." 

What does this mean? 

I have been aware of my fears ever since I was a small child. I was afraid that my parents would die, I was afraid of war (of the nuclear kind), I was afraid to cross busy streets, I was afraid of having no money. Most of the stunts my peers were capable of (and often performed) were things I would not do. I attribute to fear the fact that I have never used drugs or have had unprotected sex. The opportunities for both were there. In one case I asked my friend Tom, a regular cannabis user, if he and I could smoke together. He gave me a long look and then said : Martin, you're not the type. One could almost believe I haven't lived much without taking any of these or similar risks. But I am content and sure I'm not missing out. 

Recently, I had an opportunity to think about fear. Fear has interested me for a while as I believe it is one of the two roots of anger (the other being sadness). Both fear and sadness at their most intense level probably cause an escape reflex, anger. Anger is a last-ditch attempt to get away from what scares us so and/or from what makes us so sad. Anger protects us from the vulnerability of fear and sadness. 

It is obvious that fear and sadness are not feelings we could permanently protect ourselves from. They will make appearances in our life many times. So, what can it possibly mean to say that the ultimate fear/sadness--death--can no longer harass me? And if this ultimate fear can no longer harass me, what about the many other fears that come up daily? Are those fears even related to the ultimate fear? 

This all has me wonder what fear is really about. The fear a child has to speak to his parents, the fear an employee has to speak to her boss, the fear a professor has before an important lecture, the fear we have of natural catastrophe, of war . . . What, if anything, do these fears have in common? 

Primally fear seems to come down to survival. Fear protects us and does its part in insuring our survival. it protects us from needless risk-taking, it makes us aware of enemies. Fear helps us live longer before, ultimately, we will be diminished, reduced to nothing but cells and molecules that will become part of another organism. 

In human beings fear is no longer simply about physical survival. Our complex mental systems have adopted fear also to protect us from shame, dishonor, guilt, another's anger, etc. All of these are, metaphorically speaking, forms of death. They diminish us, make us small and, often, makes us want to vanish. 

To say that death can no longer harass me is another way of saying I have conquered fear. Fear of all sorts. It is also saying "I have found courage." Death can no longer diminish me. 

But what is courage? What does it mean to be brave? 

The Lion King's Mufasa comes to mind. His son, Simba, says to him "Dad, I want to be brave like you!" Mufasa responds "Simba, I'm only brave when I have to be." Mufasa's words seem to suggest that courage is is hardly the heroic, voluntary act we often think it is. Rather it is a forced act, coming perhaps from another fear. Mufasa is saying he is overcoming fear out of fear (viz. the fear that his son will be killed by the hyenas). Courage is fear. Therefore, it is probably wrong to think that not being harassed by death is about a kind of courage. 

It turns out that fearlessness is an impossible state to achieve. No longer being harassed by death, however, is. While the former poses the absence of fear, the latter simply states that while fear is present it no longer has the power to harass. Fear cannot diminish me. My fear of being diminished is greater than a fear that could diminish me. It can not force me into silence, shame, guilt, etc. It cannot force me into death-like mental states. Not because I won't die, but rather because I know that I will. 

There are so many things I would like to write about; so many things that are going through my mind. Some keep bobbing up, resurfacing with some insistence, as if to say "start writing us down, Martin." we're not going to wait forever. I keep expecting that the flow of my days will bring me to it. But it seems that without a bit of force, a bit of determination, the writing will not come on its own. Perhaps it's the reasons that I used to have to write that are no longer convincing. Writing was for me a kind of reflection on something that I didn't have an opportunity to dialogue about with another person. When I say "opportunity" I mean an immediate way to express and move deeply into whatever the subject matter is. In the last four and a half years such opportunities have been arising with daily steadiness between my wife and I. The deep pleasure and intimacy of conversations bring us together and sustains us as a couple and in our individual endeavors.

Conversation is a deeply meaningful way of communing with others. It is simultaneously stating of opinion(s), listening, convergence, conversion . . . conversation reveals inversion, not just conversions, it  clarifies aversions  and controversies . . . but more than anything it reveals the infinitely deep layers/versions of ourselves. And as conversation reaches for the other it also brings us close tot he transverse effects that our social brains long for so much.

A good conversation is never a mapped out trip. It is a journey that occurs in the moment and can last for an unspecified amount of time. Having a "topic, "  a "time-frame," a "list of goals" or "talking-points" often stops the conversation before it could really begin. This is why conversations mostly happen when people are present to each other. And this is also why many conversations never occur because many of us don't spend enough time with each other. When that is the case our potential for conversation turns into mere communication; its goal is nothing but the passing on of information.

The British psychoanalyst Neville Symmington points out that our thinking remains "inchoate" unless and until it is expressed to another. That is, it remains in its incipient, embryonic, germination form without ever further unfolding. How many thoughts do you have that remain "inchoate?" One would think the naturally inchoate state would lead us into many conversations. One would think that along with such natural state might come a natural urge to explore in us what lies dormant. But it seems that such urge does not exist or at least can get lost. Instead of having and pursuing conversations many of us seem content communicating messages to the world. These could come via text, e-mail, Facebook, but they also include logos and themes on our t-shirts, mugs, bumper-stickers, etc. Or, rather than being the cause, might these just be symptomatic of our decreasing likelihood to have and seek out conversations?

We are increasingly bound to letting the "written" take over the "spoken." This also means that we are, mostly likely, not present to the exchange we're having. Rather we're in a different country, room or other space, away from the person we're talking to. More and more communications are mediated by "absence" not presence. This, it seems to me, is the biggest blow to conversation. The lack of physical presence in so many of our daily interactions. Our incarnate, bodily presence increases our chances of having a conversation with another person even if those two people are not speaking but writing to each other on a note-pad, computer or phone.

What's strange to me is that many of us, I include myself, experience this move from present to absent, from conversation to communication, as a relief. We seem to experience presence as a burden, something we'd rather avoid, if possible. And so, in spite of our socially wired brains, we tend to choose non-present ways of communicating over conversations. Or, again, is this simply a symptom of something else that's going on with us?

I wonder if the demands of our industrial/post-industrial world have isolated us from each other so much that all that all we're left with to satisfy our social urges is to e-mail, text, Skype, FaceTime. Work as it is, the work that most of us have to do for the vast majority of years we're alive--from pre-school to retirement--is isolating. Even when it is "group-work" most of us will ultimately not see the group but the individuals in the group and their roles/contributions.

Here is another way to look at it: When we say "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" we do mean that there is a qualitative difference between those two states. Simply adding up the parts will not help us understand the Whole. John, Paul, George and Ringo are not the same as The Beatles. That is to say the equation John + Paul + George + Ringo = The Beatles is indeed qualitatively false while quantitatively correct. I remember tripping over this problem in fifth grade when we were introduced to the ideas of Set Theory. "Commutative property," "associative property," "symmetry," "distributive property," "transitive property," . . .  I kept misunderstanding the underlying assumptions of "Mengenlehre" (lit. Science of Quantities) this new math-curriculum at the time: These equations had nothing to do with qualities, only quantities. So, in that world it didn't matter whether you  said (Martin + Stephan) + Calle or Martin + (Stephan + Calle). And yet, in the world of friendships, conversations, closeness, trust those parentheses as well as the position of the names made a huge difference (and over the time of my friendship with these two boys the position of the parentheses changed several times).

The example of the Beatles is not meant to distract us toward wondering about outward success. Rather it is meant to help us get closer to the main-trait of being (a) Whole: work that feels intrinsically playful and therefore gives us happiness, even when it's hard. This, interestingly, seems to be the main reason of why video-gamers can become so deeply immersed in their play. Gaming is hard work, often frustrating, but it also remains playful. Conversations are such wholesome, wholistic, whole-based work. They can be frustrating yet revealing, playful yet serious. Conversations are never just shallow (though they may use "shallowness" to reveal depth). They're never boring (though they may purposely induce "boredom" as a way of inducing curiosity).

I often shy away from using the term "work." It is used far too often to emphasize to our children, ourselves, our friends how important it is to accept the "down-side" of life: we all have to work.  It also is a way of saying "I'm good" because good people work, hard. Still, here I would like to suggest a different understanding of "work" one that gets at the potential for wholesomeness in work. In English and German this word can describe the tedium  and monotony of our daily/school/professional lives, but it can also, as a noun, be used to describe our creative and artistic efforts. It is in this latter sense that I favor the word "work." And it is that understanding of "work" I also apply to what I believe a conversation is about: a conversation is work; it is a work of art. But, different from a written work of art--a poem, novel or short-story--this work is an installation, i.e., a temporary work of art only briefly visible or audible before it re-immerses itself in the maelstrom of thought and feeling, of life.

So, what is it that I want to write about? I don't know. What I do know is that I am blessed to be part of many conversations every day. Every conversation triggers more ideas and reflections. Like hungry baby birds in their nest, these ideas are begging for food (i.e., a conversation). They themselves will re-produce and beget more conversations.

And what about quiet times?

Confusions

One of the most difficult developments about fathering from the beginning is the threat that it may pose to your marriage. I have found this to be true in my own relationship which has, off an on, gone through dark times in which either I or my spouse felt we were being undermined, competed with or the object of jealousy by the other. I have to continually remind myself that this is not so, that the purpose of father involvment is not and will never be to put a mother out of her job. It is pretty clear from the available research, about the mental health of our off-spring, that growing up healthy means that both mother and father stay involved throughout their children's growing up period.