“Das Ding an sich” and personal thoughts

No real epiphanies here, just some thoughts to capture before they disappear. A confession if you will…

Often I think that one of my struggles is not to come up with some new amazing never-before-thought-of idea, but rather to see things in a new light. The most insightful moments of learning for me are those in which something, an idea, set of facts, etc, that has been before my eyes and mind for a very long time are suddenly “seen” anew; I become aware of a pattern, having always existed, but now seen clearly and with a precision that was lacking before. Something starts to make sense in a way that it didn’t before, regardless of how often I had scanned over, read, or played around with it in my mind. A pre-existent truth finds its way home with a stickiness that it didn’t have before.

Thus wise, I have been pondering certain dispositions of mine, personal feelings and intuitions. The saying of Kant’s, “Das Ding an sich,” kept returning to me; “The thing in itself,” as it is known only to itself and to no other observer. I wonder how that applies to my personal feelings and sensitivities.

So often, I become convinced of the reality of my perceptions of other things and people. That is, I am convinced that my perception of them is actually how they are in themselves. I am convinced that there is no discrepancy between my thoughts and the reality of the other thing. It occurred to me that so often, this is the breeding ground for the un-pleasantries in life. Hurt, pain, anger, sadness, and all other sorts of ill-feelings that are all based on my believing my understanding to be the reality of the situation. How often does this misconception, this wholesale buying of personal interpretations lead directly to sorrow and personal torment? How often does it shape my subsequent actions for the worse?

There is something else here, something pleading to be dug up, to be examined but I don’t as yet know exactly what it is or how to excavate it. Some way of seeing the same old things with a new vision that has slipped away for the present. Maybe it is simply an inner longing to see the old things in a new way, a request for a new vision? I don’t know. Does anyone really understand that, the internal struggle for dealing with the same old trials in a new way? It is a longing to escape for a moment the inner thoughts and voices that seem to struggle against each other, realizing that I have heard all these same thoughts before, played around with them in the same old ways, and have grown tired of their endless banter, their same tired conclusions producing the same tired actions and results.

Reverie in Being

Last evening I felt for the first time our child move. My wife had called me to her as she had felt something different. With my hand on my wife's belly I began talking and almost immediately I felt a kick. This went on for several minutes. The feeling associated with it is one that can only be known by those who have experienced it for themselves (so go out right now, find a pregnant woman and put your hand on her belly!). This morning as I reflected on the experience I thought to myself how so many other expectant parents and relatives had undergone the same sensation. I wondered, strangely, if that cheapened it any. That is, did the fact that this same experience has been shared by so many diminish its significance?

The quick answer I arrived at was no, of course not. I have never existed before. My child has never existed before. Thus this event has never occurred in the same way, place, time, etc., as have all other similar occurrences. I think though for many people this argument doesn't work. At times it seems that much of what we hear and see through various media encourage the need for us to feel different. It is the bloody flag of individualism - that unless we are somehow extremely unique then our worth is severely diminished. I suppose that the advertising community has a great stake in creating and sustaining this feeling within us as consumers. Yet I think we are capable of providing this same sense of diminished value in the experience of the common. We dismiss feelings and their understandings as “cliché.” What a terribly horrible argument. How weak, and yet so possibly devastating. I believe that many times the insult is more a sign of the timidity of the one who hurls it. Does it remind us of our own loss of the ability to find treasure and beauty in the common and ordinary?

There exists what I like to jokingly call the Hamlet Effect. It can often be observed for example among high school students who have read Hamlet for the first time. For them, a deep dive into, say, the "To be or not to be" soliloquy can be intensely moving, a moment of creative discovery. And for those of us who are older, who have already experienced that same moment, the reminder of those feelings couple with a jealous despair over the seeming lack of those moments now.

William C. Dowling, a professor of English at Rutgers, has commented that these battles to find meaning in and marvel at the common and ordinary is a struggle for "creative consciousness." This is "a power to see the world anew amidst the clutter of habit and the mindlessness of purely ordinary existence" (see "Ripple": A Minor Excursus at http://arts.ucsc.edu/Gdead/AGDL/dowling.html). In my own words this is to find reverie in being. And this morning as I pondered over these thoughts, I returned to the simple joy of feeling my child kick for the first time and let that joy spread and move as it would.