For the Sake of One Individual

“You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle or integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.” 

            –Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Jane Austen says DON’T.

For the sake of one individual, she says, we should not waver in what we believe in: that what we hold true for one person, we should hold true for everyone.

I’ve been trying to figure out why the absoluteness of her saying no doesn't sit well with me.

Why is she absolute about advising against making an exception? 

Why do I feel that it is a rational expectation that we should have the ability to make an exception, if necessary, for people we love?

It is true that principles, essentially, should be unshakable. They should be applied to everybody, in all circumstances. What good, of course, are whimsical “moral rules”? I even agree that a few of those we are especially passionate about need not be explained or apologized for.

These said, I still believe that rigid principles are anti-human. It scares me to think about an inability to compromise, even for the sake of one individual. As people, we assign more value on unbending principles and less value on those that allow room for negotiation, for compromise, for exception. This is great, for all the right reasons. But when we equate compromise with weakness and with unreliability, I disagree. I think the ability to compromise reveals a strength rather than a weakness in one's character.

This said, I can imagine the vast uncertain gray area. When do we bend our own moral rules? For whom should we allow ourselves to do it? And for what reasons?

Who knows, really?

What I know is that I believe in the simple logic of making an exception for people who matter in our lives. Whether this means staying up later than our usual bedtime, or letting pass errant punctuation marks, or allowing this person to see us in our most vulnerable states--if our person so requires, our making an exception for him communicates a valuing that words will fail to encapsulate.
   

Sure, it is laudable that someone should die for a principle, but I find it more impressive when, in this same state of passion for what he believes in, he could make an exception.

I think our ability to do this is precious. I would always choose to be someone who will make an exception, than be someone who would not.

For the sake of one individual, why not? yes. 

The Broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah is not a praising song, although it might as well be. 

It is a sigh, really—one that grays the space between surrender and defeat. 

It is the cry which one utters when he is exhausted from a fight he has been very passionate about, but then he discovers a truth he has not seen, and this changes how he feels about the fight, except now, he is spent, and he could not be anything more. The fight in him has left, and so has everything else.  

I saw your flag on the marble arch

But love is not a victory march

It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

The songwriter Leonard Cohen clearly alludes to the Bible, but he flits from one allusion to another, until the “you” he addresses in the song becomes unclear. At one point it refers to David, at another to Samson, and then to God, and finally, to some absent lover. A vagueness like this may start out to be appealing, but after a while, the lack of clarity becomes frustrating.

In the end, though, what I fail to understand does not matter as much as those that I do understand. A hallelujah is usually an exclamation of faith, a declaration of love--a single word for all of the words we cannot say. Praise You, God, for every thing.

I first heard the song's refrain in an episode of The West Wing. The refrain seemed to jump out of the scene, haunting and stubborn, demanding to be experienced on its own. And as I did, I was gripped by a surreal recognition: this is not the hallelujah that people know. 

This is my hallelujah.

It seems to me that this is how exhaustion would sound, if it had to be personified. And I know that there are those of us who wish that we didn't recognize it. In a song. Like an anthem of our soul.

The song alludes to how David's faith had been challenged by the bathing Bathsheba under the moonlight. David was a dutiful king during a very difficult time, but although his faith was strong, [God] needed proof. It baffled David, this test of his faith despite all the good that he did and all the struggle for it. It is understandable how, when he failed--in the song at least--he utters a cold and a broken hallelujah.

Perhaps I, too, like the "baffled king", think this "test" is cruel.

Too many of us are already doing the best that we can about what we are thrown in life, and when we have to struggle further because we are being "tested", in order to prove our worth for love, or in order to prove our faith...why, hallelujah.

None of it would make sense, to David, and to me, and I could imagine that no argument could ever come close to explaining the abandonment and betrayal that are afforded even to especially to the best of us.

Perhaps, like Cohen’s David, I, too, understand too well the privacy of this hallelujah. It is the resentment of a good man, undeserving of the Test of Faith he was bound to fail in. A resentment that is quieted now. I recognize the rebellion in the refrain, and the loathsome yearning to be rescued, and the resignation. And ultimately, the exhaustion for what never arrived. 

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But You don't really care for music, do you?

In the end, who's to say that a cold and a broken hallelujah is valued less than its holier counterpart? Who's to say that confusion, or anger, or brokenness, cannot be a place for an exclamation of faith? Or who's to say that we risk heavenly favor if we question, quietly, what the suffering is for?

And about those of us who have been spent in the fight, who’s to say that we are not fighting still, here, with our very surrender?

Daunt/Less

I am putting to rest one persistent thought tonight.

Paton wonders in his book, Cry, the Beloved Country, “What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?”

And what about when he decides to take his own life? Does something break in him, as well?

Is the breaking unhurried, and unrelenting, and agonizing? Or is it a shattering--sudden and ravaging?

Or perhaps it is a birthing, rather than a breaking? A creation rather than a destruction? A filling up of the void which had been the very reason for the giving up; except that in the final moments, what fills the void is a dauntlessness that is unusable but for a singular purpose--ending one's life.   

Dauntlessness. It is neither courage nor a lack of it. It is only the absence of fear. In fact, it is only an absence--an absence of reasons to continue, rather than having reasons to stop.

And I believe if one pauses long enough, he will find in himself a fearsome capacity to empathize— the tabooed recognition of the human tendency to give up and stop.

Instead of hope.

Limpid Dewdrops

Mono no aware. The pathos of things. The poignancy of the awareness of the impermanence of every thing in the world.

The mono no aware is the Japanese aesthetic perspective that the sadness of transience is beautiful.

Scholars exemplify this with iconic examples: the last sliver of the waning moon; the last burst of summer; a flower in its fullest bloom. Zen examples make more sense: a dewdrop on a leaf, a rose and a horse by the roadside, a snowflake on an open palm, the stillness of an old pond. These images evoke a sensitivity towards a criterion of beauty—what makes something beautiful is not what already is; what makes something beautiful is the awareness that it doesn’t last.

Thus, in this perspective, the snowflake, the dewdrop and the still pond are beautiful because of their fleeting existence. A rose in full bloom is beautiful only because it wilts after that period of beauty. A dewdrop is a marvelous thing to behold only because it could roll to the ground without warning and disappear in an instant. The beauty of the stillness of the pond lies in the apprehension of it being disturbed, perhaps, by Basho’s wayward frog.

Transience. Sadness. Beauty.

I see it in the excited chatter of students, sudden and wonder-ful, when an idea—irrelevant until then—suddenly becomes the most important discovery of the day.

It is there, and everywhere else—

In the awareness of a pride that cannot be contained by the world for a class one mentors;

In the smile that steals into the eyes of a parent who has been tired for too long;

In the ridiculous affairs of a younger brother, or in the fierce passion of a younger sister’s dreaming;

In the lighting up of a child’s eyes at the arrival of an adult friend, making the latter wonder if it isn’t undeserved;

In the carefree laughter shared only among true friends, the rolling kind that renders one breathless;

It is there, especially in the silence that sits between two memories—the previous memory for which the laughter was, and the next one, still being sifted through for, in the minds of old friends who sit together, just for reminiscing. It is there in the quiet that lingers when they say goodbye, before they send each other off with silly jokes that speak what they do not say.

It never gets old. Each time I am confronted by the aware, I am struck by the same sense of discovery that washed over me nine years ago, as I sat in my AsianLit class, and a haiku suddenly made sense, opening to me a worldview that was as powerful as it is honest and beautiful.

Oh white, limpid dew

With what poor judgment you choose

The place where you lie.

Limpid dewdrops, we might all be. And are we not all placed in the midst of great uncertainty, at times rolling to the ground before we are ready, and at times, lingering long enough to catch a ray of light, and lending a tiny burst of colors to the world around us?

Mono no aware. It is the uncertainty—the gray—that makes that tiny burst of colors, and everything else, precious.

Sing Us a Song, Piano Man

I look forward to workdays that close with a walk to a coffee place near the school. During the walk, the day dwindles into a soft conclusion, and even my thoughts quieten a little bit in recognition of this ceremony. This afternoon, I had Billy Joel’s Piano Man on repeat on my music player, and by the time I reached the coffee place, I had listened to the song four and a half times, and my heart was weighed down twice over.

I think, in this world, I would never hear a lonelier song refrain. This one belies the jazzy piano solo—and then the famous harmonica instrumental—at the beginning of the song. The rhythm almost readies us for a love song, but it goes on, first, like a beautiful irony for the story it tells, and then later, like the melody that was meant to echo the words in the first place. Each time, I allow myself to experience this shift, and I imagine an impish playmate, who could convince me that the idea he put in my head had always been mine, never his.

The song doesn’t rush. It takes its time in introducing the regular Saturday crowd in one bar, who “shuffles in” to “forget about life for a while”. We are brought to the place by the Piano Man, and through his eyes we see tired people nursing their drinks only as much they are nursing their broken spirits. Through his music, we, too, “share [in the] drink they call loneliness”.

On the bar, we see an old man “making love to his tonic and gin” who calls out to the Piano Man, “Son, can you play us a memory/ I’m not very sure how it goes/ But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete/ When I wore a younger man’s clothes.” It is not difficult to imagine this old man’s sadness, as that which Shakespeare describes is for the memory of things past. 

I wonder what stories this old man has. What things must he have seen? How much of himself has he poured out into the world? How much remains?

On the other side of the bar, is the Piano Man’s friend, John, the jovial bartender, who confesses that he would have made it big somewhere else, if only he “could get out of this place”. I keep thinking about the “smile that ran away from his face”, and about how lonely a thing that must be to witness. Elsewhere in the room, there is Paul, a novelist who “never had time for a wife”; Davy, who will, for the rest of his life, be a navy man; a waitress “practicing politics”, and businessmen who are slowly getting stoned.

Sing us a song, you’re the Piano Man! Sing us a song tonight!

To this, the Piano Man sings his sad refrain, Oh la la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da...

Wordless, the refrain is a resignation, an answer that is really a non-answer, like every resignation is. Like an answer, it offers comfort and an assurance; but unlike an answer, it calms the soul only until it wonders again.

I used to equate resignation with cowardice, but I have long since learned how horribly wrong I was. I now know that the courage necessary to decide to let go/give up pales in comparison to the courage necessary to renew that decision, every time the heart second-guesses itself.

I have a special empathy for people who have had to reshape their dreams and who hold on to whatever shape remains, in order to be where the people they love need them to be. Isn’t this reshaping a resignation? And isn’t this resignation admirable? Do we not do this because we had to step up too soon, or perhaps because we had to make right that we did not do so soon enough?

Later in the song, the crowd, who comes to the little bar mostly for the Piano Man, asks him, “Man, what are you doing here?”, to which he replies his sad refrain, Oh, la, la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da…

Too often, like the Piano Man, we become painfully aware of how much more we could be, if we were less constrained. And when we think of this, we find ourselves embarrassed by such selfish thoughts. For later, when we think about the people who need us where we are, we are reminded that our pain is also our privilege, and that if only so they may hold on to their dreams whole, we would quietly lay ours down.

Oh, la, la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da…

Right Opinions

Written on February 9, 2011, when everybody had an opinion about Angelo Reyes’s suicide

It disgusts me— the way we always have something to say to explain other people’s actions or inactions; the way we encapsulate a lifetime into a sentence; the way we reduce a person into a Right Opinion.

Today, I do not care about Right Opinions.

I am saddened by Angelo Reyes’s suicide. I do not care if he was guilty or not. I do not care about the politics that backdrops his death. All I care about is that he belonged to someone. All I care to imagine is the pain that his death is causing the people to whom he belonged. Damn everything else.

I remember a similar feeling I had almost six months ago with Rolando Mendoza, the hostage-taker in the infamous bus hostage crisis. I still remember how the media cornered his poor father and how they feasted on his reactions. Damn those insensitive bastards.

I cried for Mendoza’s father that night. His reaction to his son’s terrible death was unforgivingly captured by the media that brought the news. That moment was in the midst of so many things to be said, of so many facts that would happily back up opinions, of so many justifiable opportunities to reduce, to trivialize, to mock.

However, that moment should not have been like all the rest. It should have been a moment for pause, for feeling. And because it was so delicate a moment, it needed to be seized—to be felt—right then. At that fleeting moment, all we should have cared about was the poor old man in his flimsy shirt, wailing like a heart-broken child, for the son who belonged to him. Damn everything else.

In the next morning, that moment will have drowned in a sea of Right Opinions. In the next morning, it will not have been a Right Opinion to feel sad for Mendoza or for his father.

Sometimes I fear that we couldn't stop long enough to second-guess ourselves. We are all so proud—and so right—all the time. Couldn't we just sit down and feel? For a while? Couldn't we allow ourselves to just be sad, for a moment, because something is sad?

I do not care so much about Right Opinions today. I only care that my heart is in the Right Place. Damn everything else.

The Murakami Experience

I remember how I struggled with Murakami the first time I picked up "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". I complained about the unresolved conflicts, the denouements that never came and the non-concluding conclusions. He has a way of building up his plot until he reaches a certain height and then he stops. All of a sudden, I was reading the conclusion. Before I realized I was there, I had missed the ending.

There has always been something I felt I was missing when I read him—something that kept me from making sense of the stories he told. It was easy to feel like an outsider from Murakami’s world. I felt unwelcome and as a result, I was always lost.

Strangely, though, the stories manage to make me feel comfortable with my confusion. At some point after I put the book down, the frustration and the confusion will have left, and what lingers, surprisingly, is the impression of an experience. What remains are memories of the loneliness of spaghetti, of chocolates melting in the sun, of a moving kidney-shaped stone, of a sole firefly against the vastness of a black sky. I remember them, and the emotions they carry, as if they were my own memories.

As for Murakami, I could only attempt to make sense of him in the single way that I know how. I became aware that I was—and still am—constrained by a Way of Seeing that requires me to label, to consult, to anticipate. Because of this, I necessarily live in a world that refuses to perceive what it does not recognize.

And still, in a peculiar Murakami-esque way, it is only when I give up trying to comprehend the Strange Things, that I begin to appreciate what I could not understand. Just as in magic, there are things we see only when we don't.



This un-seeing, I have come to realize, is a Way of Seeing.