We do not stop to question what is real. We interact with the world, the physical reality around us, and never question its authenticity. We interact with people, and ourselves, and never question that they – and us – are real. And yet we don’t really know. It’s fascinating that humans will delve into intricate layers of minutia in all aspects of their lives, but not fundamental and obvious questions like: Do I exist? What is reality? Are parts of me finite, and other parts infinite? These get little focus, effort or engagement, while the details of our lives get overwhelming attention (note: the term ‘gluten’ surpassed the term ‘reality’ on Google Trends in mid-2014).
Perhaps we are not meant to answer these questions; or perhaps the questions are so large and intimidating that we don’t even try (note: take global warming; I mean seriously, how can my garbage habits impact the cleaving ice shelves of Greenland?). Or perhaps only truly remarkable minds should try. Take Rene Descartes: a mathematician by training, and therefore steeped in the world of proofs – of what can be unassailably claimed or not claimed – famously tackled these questions in “Meditations on First Philosophy”. Annoyed by a lack of clarity on basic philosophical questions (“ . . . cultivated for many centuries by the most excellent minds” yet leaving “ . . . nothing that was not disputed and hence doubtful”), he decides to remove himself from everyday distractions and address the challenge head-on (note: I’m so envious of his 17th century environment: sitting alone in a stone house in Holland, fire crackling in the background, hands resting on a thick wooden table, silhouettes of white birch outside the window, with no distractions – no loud or unpredictable noises, no interruptions, machines or electronics; no mobile phones, no social networking) (note again: I’m sitting at a café in 21st century Southern California, on a small stool in front of a slim metal counter facing a large open window onto a major thoroughfare in my hometown – cars, motorcycles, bikes, dogs, skateboards barreling by the window, music in the background, escaping the frustrated cars, pulsing from speakers on the testosteronic Harley Davidson; dogs pulled and held, coddled and scolded outside the café and in, by denizens emblazoned with all manner of tattoo – skull, heart, dragon, butterfly, knife, cross and a curious profusion of Mandarin characters by people that clearly don’t know a word of Mandarin).
Back to Rene: He first rejects everything he can’t prove – the sky, air, earth, colors, shapes, sounds, all external things – even imagining that a malicious demon has cajoled him into believing everything is real, when in fact it is not. But of course this omniscient and evil demon is concocted by Descartes; the thought of the demon comes from him. So even if nothing is real, the fact that he thought of this evil force that created the fiction implies a source. And so he lands on his famous proof: ” . . . I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.” A proof so simple and yet virtually impossible to challenge.
And yet this isn’t enough for most of us. Too abstract, too emotionless, flat. So let’s move from famous philosophers and try an approach we all experience, everyday. Namely, that what seems most real in our lives is often lived in the seams of the everyday – betwixt and between our obligations, public projections or familial performances. The glimpse we get of people when they are not projecting an image onto the world, when they are alone with themselves and their surroundings: The exhausted mother, depleted, holding her child and looking above the playground at the browning hills, birds above dry oaks, clouds drifting by; the man staring out the airplane window, alone, not earning, fixing or projecting strength to family, friends or employees – unmoored, free, but somehow uneasy; the child looking at the grass, rubbing it between her fingers, wondering at the crawling ant, feeling the dirt, the texture of nature; the couple lying next to each other, darkened bedroom windows blocking sounds from the street below, enjoying each other’s company, no need to talk or explain or act. Again, we are most real in these liminal states, when we are between preparing or presenting, just alone with ourselves and our basic humanness (note: I stood on my second-floor balcony, leaning on the moist wooden railing, and saw the Moon project its light onto the calming Pacific Ocean, a pastel shaft brushed across the water from the star to me, and I was stunned by its beauty and mute to its cause. How could something so alien and still and enormous just hang in the air, creating a light that no man-made device could ever conjure? How can this be, and why don’t we have an answer?) And maybe this is when we are most pure and closest to something spiritual and transcendent – maybe not betwixt and between, but above and beyond (note: if I see something perfect, or think of something perfect – my almost religious moment at the altar of lunar beauty – then it follows that the thing or thought must at least embody the perfection, or as Descartes put it: “ . . . what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect”. This world, and my thoughts about it, must come from something even more perfect, which is precisely why many great minds ultimately arrive, sometimes exhausted, at the same conclusion: there must be a God).
So reality is our ability to think, plus the lives we live between ‘this’ and ‘that’. Like dreams: entire lives lived out between our waking hours. Nobody controls your dream; you are not presenting the dream the way you would like it to be nor constructing an image that will get you noticed; you are not looking for hits or friends or likes. It is your inner self, your real self that is acting out its essence. Dreams just happen and are likely closer to reality and the real us than we think (and perhaps this is why we feel refreshed after active dreaming – it is our soul getting a chance to live unencumbered by act or artifice). Another example: we are only in our bodies for a while, and they are constantly changing as anybody maturing from their 20s to 30s to 40s to 50s can attest – the body simply changes, ignoring our dedicated attempts to slow its inexorable decline (note: doesn’t matter what angle you painstakingly create for your selfies, the body, especially the face and hands, doesn’t look the same as it did last year and the year before). However, this obvious decay of the body does not imply the parallel decay of the mind. Many of us have that strange sensation of seeing our older body – our ‘outside’ – in a window, mirror, or picture, but feeling absolutely the same – our ‘inside’. Again, we don’t feel different or older or substantially changed, but clearly we have. Venus Williams, the elder stateswoman of American tennis, recently put it this way: “I don’t think anyone feels older. You have this infinity inside you that feels like it could go on forever.” Indeed, there is a permanence to our self, our soul, which is totally unrelated to our bodies; again Descartes: ” . . . and it follows from this that while the body can very easily perish, the mind is immortal by its very nature.” This feels true. This feels right.
So we are real in our thinking, and in our liminal states. But if true, then reality would require ample time to think and just be. Which begs the question: are we giving ourselves this time, or slowly losing it? The more the world worries about and curates an external persona, and values that created persona, the less we necessarily spend knowing and cultivating our real selves. Perhaps this will become the ultimate challenge of the future – not overpopulation, global warming or religious intolerance, but a growing unreality, a loss of connection with ourselves and our nature.
– by MJB