Living For Others

LIVING FOR OTHERS: THE FULCRUM OF THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

Exordium: The journey for the choice of the topic of today’s paper has been long, mind-boggling, tedious, onerous and demanding. This is largely because I was seeking for a topic that will be, at least, close to common for all. Ours (especially for seminarians) is a path that is marked by uncertainties of varied hue, by breathtaking surprises enmeshed with complexities. Ours is a journey embarked in the Spirit, a journey that can be captured well in Victor Frankl’s words: ‘The best of us did not return.’ Ours is a voyage in which most of us do continually entertain the thought that we should have joined the other ship sailing in the opposite direction. Furthermore, sometimes passengers of the one ship understand themselves to be more fortunate than the passengers of the other ship; sometimes, also, the latter see the former as lacking the requisite courage to make a bold step, to venture out. Both, most of the time, misconceive the ordeal involve in the different ships. The foregoings and more moved this writer to conclude that what matters most is not the particular ship in which the passenger sails but the state of the passenger, i.e. his self-fulfilment or regret. Therefore, self-fulfilment is understood as the hallmark of human life on earth. Anthropologically, moreover, human life is beset by inevitable and inescapable fundamental questions. The direction one follows in pursuit of these fundamental questions determines one’s self-fulfilment or regret in life. Here, living for others is proposed as the answer, crux, and fulcrum of the fundamental questions.

Fundamental Questions: Human life is a mystery that has surpassed its various reductions by biologists, evolutionists, psychologists and philosophers. In a word, the life of man is a spectacle, with numerous horizons. It is marked by varied hues of emotions, by successes and failures, by hopes and disappointments, etc. Of all that could be said of life, a fact is evident: Life is a continuum that starts from conception till death. Thus, man is left with one option of charting this inevitable continuum responsibly and actively. When man becomes reluctant to do this, certain events definitely force him to do so. Such events, for example, are the death of parents, siblings, or any of the significant other, unexpected abysmal failure or misfortune, protracted illness, incurable/inoperable diseases, etc. These traumatic events dispose man to raise, albeit in a rhetorical way, certain questions which are fundamental to his continuing existence: Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? Even before the advent of culture, history bears witness that man has ever reflected on these questions and has attempted answering them through various means. The poetry of Homer and the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles are historical instances of man’s attempts to answering these fundamental questions. The renowned Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius also falls within this circumference. In fact, all religions on earth are oriented towards these questions. However, a diagnostic analysis of these questions immediately reveals that they are all geared towards a terminus ad quem: the search for ultimate meaning in human existence.

The Fundamental of the Fundamental Questions: Nature abhors meaninglessness far more than it abhors vacuum. Thus, the life of man on earth cannot, at any level, be without a meaning. This brings to the fore the notable words of F. Nietzsche: “he who has a ‘why’ for living can exist with any ‘how.’’’ Thus, man can exist, no matter the condition, as long as life still holds a meaning for him. Consequently, it is not an overstatement

to say that life terminates where meaninglessness commences. Furthermore, in order to preserve his life, man has historically come up with a defence mechanism against this threat of impinging meaninglessness of life: to fabricate any available meaning, not minding its veracity or verisimilitude. These make-up meanings do not withstand the test of time. Thus, as soon as there are tossed around by the vicissitudes of life, they collapse and life tends towards meaninglessness again, until another meaning is manufactured in the interim, and so the cycle continues. The fact remains that man cannot authentically exist with these makeshift meanings, which he purposefully manufactures to soothe his immediate longings, and the various options that cross one’s life path cannot all be real and correct. Only one can be correct. Therefore, the urgent onus lies on man to discover the real and only meaning of his existence on earth, no matter how bitter and unacceptable this task and the meaning may present to be. The authenticity of man’s life does not lie in dwelling falsely with one’s own preferred meaning, rather, it lies largely in painstakingly discovering the real meaning of one’s life, no matter how challenging and unwanted it may seem, and meeting up with its supposedly hard expectations. The foregoing is built upon two assumptions: firstly, that man’s life compulsorily reserves a meaning and only a meaning, and secondly, that the latter is discoverable by man. This writer is very optimistic that man’s life does not consist in meaninglessness; that it is meaningful, though its actual meaning is not easily discovered. In this write-up, the meaning of man hopefully would be gleaned from the multi-faceted dimensions of man.

Living for Others: The particular meaning of man’s life has eluded every attempt at definition; it can only be described by some related terms, viz, self-fulfilment, happiness, self-contention, etc. Hence, man’s life becomes meaningful when one has attained self-fulfilment. It seems to be the litmus test for the degree of the meaningfulness of one’s life. It is at this juncture that the greatest caution should be exercised. When this self-fulfilment is idolized, when it is precariously made an end in itself, then a problem arises. It is a phenomenon which eludes one when one goes out-rightly to search for it. It can only be attained as a by-product of another phenomenon: when one lives for others. Unless we start living for our neighbours, for one another, all our hard-earned achievements in life will end in utter meaningless and sadness. Life has revealed itself enough for us to discover that it works in paradoxes and ironies. The admonitions of Christ are very vivid in this context: “Whoever saves his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” The attentive must by now be wondering why this writer chose ‘living for other’ as the fulcrum. Why not the love of God, or simply a pure ethical standard of living, etc?

The Necessity and the Urgency: Why “Living for Others” and not any other recipe? This option is necessary because of the ambience of our consideration – this present life. By no means, however, does this mean we are blind to the fact that life points outward beyond itself. Still, it is by loving and living for others that we manifest our love for God (cf. I Jn. 4:20). Furthermore, this writer believes that ‘Living for Others’ is a necessity because of the structure of human temporal experience. Firstly, time for man is a continuum; it flees as soon as it comes. That is why there is no real present because every present becomes the past as soon as it is present. Secondly, from history and from our own direct experiences, one vivid lesson is learnt – Tempus fugit irreparabile – ‘Time flies irretrievably.’ Once it is gone, it can never be repeated nor retrieved. Thirdly, we learn also from the lives of our deceased parents, siblings, and friends that man’s life is fragile and short. The psalmist has already grasped this phenomenon when he exclaimed: “Our life is cut short by your anger; it fades away

like a whisper. Seventy years is all we have – eighty years, if we are strong; yet all they bring us is trouble and sorrow; life is soon over and we are gone” (Ps. 90: 9-10). Putting together the foregoing considerations of our earthly time, it becomes immediately evident why living for others is a necessity. From all our efforts, labours and hard toils, nothing which we make can be said to be ours. We can hardly store any goods genuinely for ourselves. This is usually the main pain of old age: with hindsight we discover that many things, which we ought to save for ourselves, have eluded us. Thus, the more we seek for ourselves the less we get. Indeed, this is no longer the prerogative of old men, even the youths nowadays have lion share of this sickness. Therefore, meaninglessness is continually becoming the rule rather than the exception. V. E. Frankl termed this phenomenon “the existential vacuum”: A psychiatrist today is confronted more and more with a new type of patient, a new class of neurosis, a new sort of suffering, the most remarkable characteristic of which is the fact that it does not represent a disease in the proper sense of the term.... I have called this phenomenon, which the psychiatrist now has to deal with so frequently, “the existential vacuum.” What I mean thereby is the experience of a total lack, or loss, of an ultimate meaning to one’s existence that would make life worthwhile.1 As I have stated already, life works in paradox. Man’s life gains meaning only to the extent that he strives for the cause of others. Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Ghandi of India are cases in point here! This is why I will continue to recommend “Living for Others” as a lasting panacea to the growing meaninglessness of life. It is in living for others that we live fully for ourselves; it is in it that we gain all that we ought to have lost anyway. It is only when we openhandedly offer up our perishable goods will we be opportune to receive the imperishable one. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it does not bear much fruit. Finally, Frankl’s thoughts seem to be very close to ours here also: Man finds himself only to the extent to which he loses himself in the first place, be it for the sake of something or somebody, for the sake of a cause or a fellow man, or ‘for God’s sake.’ Man’s struggle for his self and his identity is doomed to failure unless it is enacted as dedication and devotion to something beyond his self, to something above his self.2 From the life of the Pelican bird, we observe that we store up the goods of our daily toils securely by living for others. It is only when we live helping others will we be able to look back to the past, perhaps in our old age or in our terminal sick bed, with smiles and gratitude; for, then, we would have gained all for eternity.

Conclusion: So far on our journey, we have tried to grasp the answer to the fundament of the reoccurring fundamental questions which arise continually in men’s hearts. We finally have arrived at “Living for Others” as our panacea. With it, we can be sure of conquering and dispelling the overhanging meaninglessness of our life. With it, even death has no more power over us; for we live on, even years after our death, when we live for and in others.

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V. E. Frankl, “Psychiatry and Man’s Quest for Meaning,” Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy. (Penguin Books Ltd: Harmondsworth, 1967), 73. Frankl,