The Art of Being Your Own Lover

A Postscript

"Learning to love yourself," a strong and counterintuitive song from way back tells us, "is the greatest love of all." I never really thought about those words when I first heard them when I was young, in the same way that I did not give riding roller coasters or eating fish balls a thought back then, only to find out much later (sadly and with a sigh) that the first is now too difficult for my mind to grasp, and the other, as they say, is really bad for you.


It is perhaps when we earn years and gain mileage that what had gone unnoticed or unthought becomes not only foregrounded but made problematic. That is why children are carefree, and we live in daily anxiety. But I'm already digressing.


Why say such a thing?--that loving yourself is the highest form of love.


From the definition of the words themselves self-love becomes a contradiction: if to love is in a wide sense to desire (eros), to sacrifice one's self unconditionally for the other (agape), and to be generous (caritas)--then the self could be a rather odd object of love. If I desire myself, I am vain. If I always think of my welfare above anything else, I am selfish. If I give myself wrapped presents, I am insane.


So how can or why should the self--above beloved, neighbor, God--be the object of the highest love? Or to avoid using lofty words: why is it important to love yourself?


In everyday talk, we here about the importance of loving one's self when a relationship gets taxing or difficult. When I say "I need time for my self," now referred to as "me-time," "a break,"or "space" or some "breathing room," what I am saying is that I need some rest from the everyday gestures and formalities of loving someone. And this does not indicate a shortcoming or weakness on the lover's part. It's not that I do not love him any longer, on the contrary, resting from loving only prepares one's self to give again, to even love more, and it possibly indicates how much you love: you never get tired when you do not work hard or give your all.


When the lover rests she is then only re-gathering herself, re-grouping, or re-treating--something in between a spiritual retreat or a military retreat, both still aiming to go back to everyday life or to war. What usually follows from the lover's rest is recovery: you love again and forget or lose your self in love's progress.


But there is also another possibility: you do not recover, you do not go back, and you leave what you had loved the most.



. . .

A Goodbye Kiss

Girlfriend
Julia Fordham


Don't tell me to stop crying please just hold me while I do
Soothe me with your silence and just cradle me to you
Don't push me for my reasons or expect me to explain
How can I in five minutes shift a lifetime's hidden pain?


Don't tell your girlfriend about me 'cos your girlfriend
won't like girls like me
Don't tell your girlfriend about me
If you just hold me, hold me, hold me....


I went to see a psychic and I paid for good advice
He said "Forget a romance 'til you've sorted out your life.
Be your own mother and your father and your sister and brother,
And even try to crack the art of being your own lover."


Don't tell your girlfriend about me 'cos your girlfriend
won't like girls like me
Don't tell your girlfriend about me
If you just hold me, hold me, hold me....


In my darkest hour you'd be mine, these wildest dreams
are no crime, or are they? Girlfriend
Coming from a place of need, not one of abundance,
You see he told me. Girlfriend


Don't tell me to stop crying, please just hold me while I do
Soothe me with your silence and just cradle me to you
Don't push me for my reasons or expect me to explain
How come I say I'm happy to be on my own again...?


Don't tell your girlfriend about me 'cos your girlfriend
won't like girls like me
Don't tell your girlfriend about me 'cos your girlfriend
won't like girls like me
You don't have to tell your girlfriend about me
If you just hold me, hold me, hold me....


***


What happens when the object of your affection is already the object of someone else's affection?


Can I still say and mean it that I really love him? Is his being-already-loved-by-someone-else and his, perhaps above all, loving-someone-else, does this disqualify my love? Am I then forbidden to love him who is already called Beloved by someone else?


Initially and for the most part, we think finding a lover is like finding a smooth pebble on the beach or discovering a hidden treasure: it happens to lie there free for the taking and by all means, because of its simplicity or beauty, its preciousness no one else has noticed or its possible value in the future, I then take it and make it "mine." The ways we refer to possible lovers confirm this everyday: one is either already "taken" or still "available"--the first already possessed, the other up for grabs. To say that lovers then can be framed as commodities, property or goods is already to state the obvious. A look at the history of cultures (wives bought and exchanged, prearranged marriages, etc.) redoubles this.


I am therefore prohibited to love another's beloved by a host of valid reasons; and to become the mistress, the "other" woman, to be in an affair is "evil" because it means to wreck a marriage and to ruin a love.


Yet what if in my heart of hearts I know with certainty that he is the one I truly love?--he who is already loved and who already loves another. Do I walk away from my one true shot at happiness? Or do I fight for it as a conqueror fights for what he believes is his? Do I let the ethical and the moral rule over my heart and my dreams of love? I have not heard of a brokenhearted woman stop crying after reading Kantian ethics. How do I understand my situation then and what really happens to me who loves someone who loves another? Can I still love? And if so--what kind of love can this ever be?


Let us see.


Let us rule out the obvious quickly. I do not love him who already loves somebody else as I would love a friend, a brother, a stranger, or as any man. Altruism, that benevolent love of others as they are and without any regard for myself--to what I can advance or gain or heighten--sounds fine, indeed; yet when I am talking about him whom I truly love, I by no mistake love him and not as this or that: my beloved is always singled out and individualized by my love. No general label can therefore be applied to him: he cannot all of a sudden turn into "just a friend" in a moment or an "acquaintance" much later on. How can I in five minutes shift a lifetime's hidden pain?


For if I am in fact able to "switch off" my love for him at any time he tells me that he cannot love me back (anymore or at the first) because he is already in a "commitment"--if I can pretend to be wise and say "I understand" or "It wasn't meant to be," or miss the point and say "We'll still be friends, anyway"--then, I must admit it, I really do not or did not love him. I was just wasting my time with him (he could have been anyone) as he was wasting his time with me (I could have been anyone). And if the supposed beloved can easily be substituted for another possible love, I then do not love him particularly but only somebody (replaceable, contingent, unnecessary). But what I call my one love can never be just anyone or no one. I therefore insist to stay, as lover and not as friend, because if anything true is always worth fighting for--what more if love?


Unable to see how we can simply be friends from now on, and knowing with certainty that I shall not retreat, how do I, however, fight for my love when, again, he has already surrendered his life to an other who happens to be not me? Will I not be staging a losing battle, holding an absurd war where no one wins and everyone loses? I also have to be realistic--and above all, true to my love: for if I wreak havoc on their love, do I not ultimately end up hurting him whom I say I love? To be sure, I shall only be inverting my now forbidden love by storming their gates armed with a love in the form of wrath, anger and hate: I shall then destroy a relationship I cannot have.


Yet I still know that however much I love him and dream that he be mine, I cannot hurt him and what he loves because love, when real and directed to the beloved, can never destroy; like the Good, love can only build, strengthen--and let be. But love him by letting him be? Why on earth should I do that--when letting him be entails giving up my happiness and losing him forever to the one he loves? Can there not be any other way?

There is and can be no other way than letting him be if other ways remain within the horizon of my taking action and willing my self and my own happiness. For if I "break up" their relationship by pressing myself, or undermine it by continuing the "affair" as a love shrouded in secret and shadow, I am only finally willing not our supposed love for each other, but only my (self-) love: I only want him to love me and only me because I love my self being loved.


If I can only resort to willing my love, I then only treat the beloved as an object to be claimed, an object of my will; and his innocent beloved (for what has she done but love and be loved?) will consequently only be my opponent, my adversary, the final aim of my will to power. What I love in him, again, or what I really want from him is only his singular devotion and attention, that is, what he precisely cannot give to me because he has already given and promised it to the other. Initially and for the most part we will to have what we do not and cannot or should not have. And if I only love him because I do not experience him loving me and me alone, alas, I have said it already, I would only love being loved singularly--and I would therefore miss the wholeness of him that I love and only love what he does not have (to give me).


If to love is to love the wholeness of the other, and not just an aspect or a part that he has or invertedly lacks; if to love is to love the other as what he is right now and not for his past and never for what he can be for me; if to love is never to require anything from him as love comes not from a place of need but one of abundance--then how can I say even in my darkest hour or in my wildest dreams that I love him and at the same time ask him to give up what he loves so that he may give it to me? How can I say that I will be happy when he finally leaves her, what he dearly loves, for me? How can I still dare say that I love him if I can only love him that way?


If I nonetheless say and mean that I still love him, then I must admit with tears and trembling that there is only one thing left to do: I must leave him.


It seems to most that when we leave something, we abandon it, steal away or escape from it, evade it--making it look like that what is left has no importance or of little value to me. But on the contrary, leaving something can be a higher manifestation of how much one values it: I leave it because it has to be on its own way, has to be alone again, has to be what it truly is--has to be let be (Gelassenheit).


We usually take for ourselves things that are not ours; and that is the very definition of a thing: an object is that which stands before me. And what can stand before me can only be something that is not me and thus never mine to begin with and to the end.


The comedy and tragedy begin when we desire to possess what is not or can never be ours; that things are there for the taking is an optical illusion which can only bring about a life of melancholy--and tragic loss. The great Stoics already warned about this: they told us that it is through apatheia or a kind of detachment from things external to us that we can arrive at what they also called ataraxia or a tranquility of the mind. Or simpler: it is by learning how to leave things as they are to themselves that we can have peace. It is only in letting things be that we can finally be happy.


In the same manner, and perhaps more importantly: in leaving things to become as they are, we give unto them, much like a parting gift or a goodbye kiss, the freedom they deserve and the possibility of finding their own happiness.

for my anonymous friend

Love Envy

I sometimes see young happy lovers at the mall or in a restaurant or even in a movie and admit at times being envious of their happiness. Well at least they seem happy; and if they walk happy, talk happy, smile happy, then, allow me the hasty inference, they are therefore happy. It's too tiring to pretend happy after all.


I am thus always guilty of taking the reflexive turn, and its logic goes: Given that other people are happy in love, I ask why am I not? If other people--and they seem no better than me or I than them--can be happily in love; if others seem to easily have found love without lifting a finger or having deserved it; if they love even without knowing why they do or what love is; if that man has a trophy girl or that lady a man who will remain faithful to him--I ask, childishly, why not me? How simple it would be if I can only say I'll have what he's having.

You tell me that envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and that Thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Yet if to covet something were to be sinful, then all of us are sinners whenever we wish we had that new cellular phone in the hands of the man in the next table or when we someday dream of owning a beach house like the ones we see in glossy picture magazines. To covet, in its simplest and purest form, is to ardently wish. And I have neither heard of a coach sternly reminding his track star not to covet the gold medal in the next meet nor have I seen a grownup forbidding a child to wish for something for his birthday because that would mean breaking the tenth. So when does envy become a "sin" and coveting something inordinate?

And why is it that while his watch or his body will never faze me or make me look twice, his lover's happiness always leaves me in envy? Need my soul worry already?


. . .

The Secret Joy of the Lover

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears;
they cannot utter the one, nor will they utter the other.
--Francis Bacon

Can the lover be truly happy? We know that he can be and that he is. We see it everyday. What is interesting is how that is possible.


Given that the lover can only love and cannot ask to be loved in return; given that to give love is to lose one's self in favor of the beloved; given that to love means placing the beloved first, displacing me and relegating me to the last and the least; given that love entails losing one's will, thereby weakening me and making me powerless; and finally, given that in order to truly love I must set aside my own happiness and aim at the happiness of the beloved--given all of this, how can the lover still remain or become happy?


So whence come the riches that love brings when love means dispossessing the lover of all that he has? How can I relinquish my powers and rights and find harmony with this sort of injustice? How can I be happy by losing my very happiness? At bottom, only this: what kind of happiness does the lover still have?

Let us see.

Pleasure

To set aside some preconceived notions that may block the path to the lover's happiness, we tentatively say that the happiness sought here is not the happiness that we usually take it to mean. The very designation of love easily cancels out many of the usually accepted notions we associate with love's "happiness."


First, the lover's happiness is not restricted to the physical. While I may indeed find pleasure in that beauty or this body, aesthetic happiness is circumscribed along the limited contours of the physical because such pleasure only receives its pleasure from the visual. And when I draw pleasure from the beloved in this way, I easily turn her into an object before me, thereby disqualifying her subjectivity, and easily installing me to the rank of absolute subject. But the beloved is no object and to love is to surrender one's subjectivity and, along with it, one's aesthetic mastery over the beloved. This is why love is invisible: I should not see her (as body, as object) for if I do, I will miss her and thus be unable to love her.


Secondly, the lover's happiness, as is usually said, cannot come wholly from the emotional. While love does give the lover intense "feelings" or emotions (bliss, euphoria, mania), such emotions are hard put in retaining themselves because they easily fluctuate or fade away. We know this already. If the lover's happiness is based solely on what he feels, then his love becomes unpredictable too: today I love because I am happy, tomorrow I hate because I am melancholy.


Such a love is phenomenologically described as self-love or a love within me: what I love are lived experiences of consciousness I have within me and that the beloved by chance brings me. And if what I love are only these lived experiences I have within me (e.g., loving the feeling of falling in love or being loved), I therefore ultimately only love my self, and again miss the supposed beloved.


Hence the difficulty of pinning down love's happiness as it cannot be reduced to physical or emotional pleasure. Blind and numb, from where does the lover's joy come?

Invisible Object of the Happiness

Drawing from the consequences of what was seen above, the lover then by definition, and generally, cannot be happy because of its own experiences as they are ultimately experiences of his self or ego. Thus the lover is forbidden to experience the beloved as an object of happiness in the sense that the corporeal beloved cannot be the cause, source and trigger for the lover's pleasure. But if I cannot refer to the beloved as the object of my happiness, then where does my happiness come from and what is its object?

The usual way to escape objectifying the beloved is to think her as subject. When she is subject, the beloved enters invisibility: she becomes an I too, an ego, a person who also experiences the world, her self, and more importantly, also has the ability to turn me into an object. This is clear and has been reflected upon already by many philosophers of alterity.

Yet what is still problematic, at least coming from the context of what is sought here, is how her subjectivity can possibly give me happiness. If I must maintain that the beloved is never object and forever subject, I can then only love her in her subjectivity. But in reality, when I say I am happy because of the person I love, am I really saying that I love her for her subjectivity? We have no experience of the other's subjectivity; this is the principle of individuation: I can only experience my self and my own subjectivity.

What then do I love when I say love the invisible beloved? Or more dangerously so: isn't this or that other also subject?--and if so, if my beloved is like any other in that they are subjects, why do I love particularly her and not this or that other? Why does it happen that this beloved makes me happy while that other does not? Or what then do I love and what then makes me happy if I cannot see and feel her? Or am I just loving in the void and happy without reason or cause, that is, arbitrarily?

The questions raised can only lead to an impasse because they all seek for answers which can only be pointed to or pinned down--like an object. When we ask What in love makes me happy? we are already presupposing that the answer will come in the form of a something, a thing, an entity, an identity--either the beloved or the I.

Yet what if the source of happiness is a source which is no source? What if love's happiness is happy without knowing why--not in the sense that it is so arbitrarily or absurdly, but in the sense that its happiness is founded on "something" which it cannot explain? What if the joy of the lover cannot be shown or cannot be said--a silent happiness, perhaps, or a secret joy?

Presence and Silence

What about the beloved makes me most happy and what answer can escape the danger of reducing her into an object of my experience? Because I cannot love her for her beauty or body, for her intellect and daring, for her love for me--things which I can see or feel or think of and things which can pass away because they are contingent to her--what else can I be happy for except for her being?

By loving her for her being, I do not say "I love you because you are this or that" but "I love you that you are," or "I am happy that you are." And her being, presence and existence--all these are invisible, that is, non-objects that cannot be grasped by the intellect and strictly experienced by the senses. What we see are essences only and never existences: what a thing is can be seen and thus known; that a thing is, the fact that it is, cannot be known and seen, cannot be objectified--but it can still be experienced in that experience we call love. Otherwise we absolutely have no idea how to understand existence because concepts only pertain to essences, hence the silence of existence: nothing can be said about it aside from being able to say "it is." In the case of the beloved's existence, I can only affirm that she is, and such an affirmation is nothing other than loving her because she is.

And to affirm that the beloved is: this means to be happy that the beloved is especially when the alternative is (always) possible--she is whereas could not have been or she will not be in the future. This fact makes me prioritize her being over my being as her existence will always be fragile to me, a loan, or more so a gift I neither asked for nor deserve. That she is and may be not--I can only feel the urgency to love her more because she may be lost. And this reverses everything as the lover's happiness from hereon is not restricted to any of my own experiences valid or otherwise. The happiness of the lover begins and ends with the sole and true cause of happiness: this invisible beloved who by her sheer act of existence, without giving me anything or having to be anyone, without having to make me happy and by simply being whatever she is gives me a reason to be happy, affording me a happiness I can never repay. Never: because how can I ever repay her for her existence?

Before the beloved only a silent word of gratitude, like a mother's whisper to her sleeping infant at night, can be said. I can only say thank you, that you are, and that you are in my life. My happiness stems from a world which is suddenly struck with beauty and grandeur because you are in it. This is how I am able to say that you mean the world to me. That you are makes all the difference.

Love's Weakness

Mary: We're becoming mortal. It's us, being close to each other. It never happened this fast before. You have to leave. The further you get from me, the better you're going to feel. You'll start getting your powers back — and be flying and breaking things and saving people before you know it. It's like I said. We were built in pairs, and when we get close to our opposites, we lose our power.

Hancock: Why?

Mary: So we can live human lives. Love. Connect. Grow old. Die.

a --"Hancock" (2008)

Why is it that love finds and leaves us weak?


How does it happen that what ought to be a strong tie that binds two lovers always shall be a thin flimsy thread where they forever balance themselves? Why does it happen that what should make you complete can also break you and crush you? Why is it that that which is able to give you impossible joy is also able to punish you with a possible pain?


Whence come these paradoxes of a weak love? Was not love supposed to be powerful?


Let us see.

***

Initially and for the most part we find a person who seems to us complete in himself as lovely. I see in the possible beloved all these characteristics which endear him to me: as having this confidence or that certainty, possessing this charm or that grace, this eloquence or that smile, this will or that dream, etc. We do not usually "fall" for someone who is needy--someone who just wants to be loved because no one loves him or because he needs love. Neediness asks for something which will always fall short of what it can and wants to receive. Because if he only needs me because of the possible love I can give, then I, as giver (without any malice or resentment here) will only be loved because of what I can give and never for the person that I am or can be. And the needy will always be needy--they cannot give back or love back.


And so it happens (and we hope or believe) when we are in love that we love each other for the person one is. Because I do not love because I am needy or so that I may only receive, I then am able to give love and make it--and this qualifies me for attaining the rank of lover. As lover, I by name and by right have only one thing to do and that is to love the beloved. Or the beloved, the forever aim of my love. But to hope that he, too, shall see me as beloved and also love me is no longer my responsibility and concern--in principle.


But what if I, all too human, may also become needy? What if I, unable to give love or to make it at times, falter and fail to carry and accede to the weight and the name of love? What if all too suddenly I lose what made me the complete person that I was and become myself needy for love? And above all, what if my beloved does not support me or absorb my precipitous fall?--especially if I cannot ask from him, forever beloved, to become a lover to me when that is precisely already beyond my powers.


Herein lies the beginning a possibility of love's weakness: when I lose my strength and when I tire; when I become what I was not; and the "unkindest cut of all"--when the beloved leaves me for my weakness.

*

"Love is a verb," it is often said: it requires effort and resolve, determination and labor, strength and power. It may be true that using such adjectives seem to diminish love's pomp and grandeur, bringing love's high pageantry to the dirty soil of the earth. Yet this is the price for those who yearn for the skies above: our feet will always be soiled because whatever goes up, like Icarus, shall fall.


Verbs tire. And they do so because verbs, whatever intention they may have, whatever reason they are done and whatever they may bring--verbs always require one thing: the will.


And love is no exception because love is a will. No matter how great you say your love is (that it is eternal or that it shall conquer all) and no matter how many pretty promises you make--love can only manifest itself when it is willed, that is, when it is made, done, shown. Now, let's admit it, that's never easy. Against Schopenhauer who says that the will is untiring, remember that our will is a human will and thus always a finite will.


All my will to power, especially in the form of the will to love, will always be in the danger of tiring and running empty. All the more: because in order to be a lover, I must by necessity and desire, in each and every case--I must will love and make it and give it. Lest: the end of my will to love, the end of love. And this makes weariness possible: when the "well runs dry," when the "tank is empty," when we become "depressed" and helpless--when the sun of our powers sets on the bright days of love. The infinite call from the beloved to love him will never be matched by my finite will. Of the beloved I can never say that I loved him enough.


And above all, this: because the will to love, unlike the will to power which exerts itself in order to maintain, gain and heighten its own power, that is, in order to make itself more powerful, the will to love is not a will which goes out only in order to go back to itself; the will to love is a will which diminishes its own power, lessens itself, makes itself smaller, deprives itself and gives its own power to an other who does not even need or ask for it.


Love is a will which empties its self of its power. Like an inverted battle it fights and struggles to lose its own freedom and power to an other, to thy beloved and sweet enemy. The will to love is a surrender of power par excellence. Love can only be strong in weakness. Love can only win by losing.


. . .

The Dream of Someone Else

Frank: What about you, is there someone else?
Kathleen: No. No, but . . . but there's the dream of someone else.

--"You've Got Mail" (1998)

My good friend at the bar I frequent turned the "bar" on me recently when I found myself listening to her advice instead of being the one offering it. She said I had to widen my horizon, meet new people and make new friends because as it is, she continued, I only go to work, go there and go out with the same people. Of course, there was a violent reduction in what she said; but that's not the point and I appreciate someone saying these things to me. And that was what she could see, even regularly: me being alone, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends. So I see where she is coming from and I am happy because she got me thinking. It's nothing like I'd do anything she advised though; but what was really interesting was the idea behind it and what I felt when I imagined it.


Initially and for the most part we are amidst beings which surround us and capture our attention: because we are "thrown" into these beings, as Martin Heidegger would say, it may happen that we "lose ourselves" in them. And this "being lost in beings" has nothing dangerous or immoral about it; it only points to an essential aspect of our being, that we take care (Sorge) of beings around us. When the clock stops we care to change its batteries. When there is a problem at work we care enough to do our best to address it. When a friend needs a hand we drop everything to be there for him. All these point to that fundamental disposition of our being which concerns itself with beings around us.


It may happen, however, that such a natural concern for beings goes unnoticed and we find ourselves so preoccupied with them that we tend to think that these beings are what is most important. That we value the most beings that we care for (things, work, friends, family, etc.) is redundant because we only care for what we value and value only what we care about. Thus it goes without saying that what matters most are real beings which I care for; inversely, when a being which I care for is absent or becomes a non-being, I suffer a loss: thus the watch I cannot find fazes me, the departure of a friend saddens me, a death in my family terrifies me. We only value beings which we care for and we can only care for beings which are real. We all know this already.


There can nevertheless be occasions when without one's willing or wishing it, and in privileged moments which escape the everyday dictatorship of presence, the real beings that surround us and care for all too slowly become--not as important or real anymore. Not as important or as real as what? They do not become unimportant in themselves--as if their being was diminished or as if I deliberately no longer care for them; they only become less important to what as of yet has no name--because it is not yet real or is not yet a being. But what may be remarkable is that in some cases this non-being (non-present and not-yet) may have a greater reality than beings which are around me.


What is this absent being which may have a greater reality than what is already real? Only this: possibility. And "higher than actuality stands possibility," says Martin Heidegger.


But how is this possible? How can something which is not present become more present than what is already present? How can something which does not exist be more real than what already exists?


Or in an ontic sense: How can I leave and surrender all I have for a beloved which is yet to come? Or how can a dream that may arrive tomorrow have more worth than a thousand todays?


Let us see.

* * *

We are looking for an experience which is available to us and our being that accommodates the possibility of having possibilities.


One such experience, one which is already shopworn and always played around with in movies and television shows, is the experience of dreaming--that profound experience we take for granted or dismiss too easily. But what does dreaming mean? Without going into the psychology of dreams, we shall attempt to describe it instead of explaining it.


When do we dream? We dream when we sleep, that is, when we are away from the waking world, the real world, the actual and the present world, when we rest from our being-in-the-world. So we dream when we sleep and the world sleeps, too, when we dream. The sleep of the world: when beings fade away and recede into the silence of the night, where evening covers over beings in its black shroud which eliminates all difference and makes it appear as if all beings are non-beings, or at least all beings are alike--and when everything is alike, nothing is (void). With one mighty closing of my eyes I neutralize all beings.


Sleep, to be clear, does not annihilate the world as if they do become non-beings; they still are in their being, nothing has changed them, they are only eclipsed by my sleep. I evade them or they evade me: I leave them in sleep, rest from their presence, wave a flag for a retreat which only retreats to gather strength for a return to be made tomorrow (responsibility, work, eternal recurrence). Or beings leave me in my sleep as if to respect me, to reward me for a "day's work" in the world of beings, grant me respite like armies which withdraw from battle at the coming of night with the mutual understanding that one, even the brave and the heroic, needs to rest.


The dark eclipse of beings and their withdrawal grant me the possibility of creating another reality: one that is "made up," "virtual" and "illusory"--in sleep I enter the world of dreams. And strictly speaking, what kind of world is this but a world of possibilities?


However, the uncanny aspect of dreams and thus always possibilities is that they present themselves to me as seemingly real, sometimes too real, in that we believe that they are indeed real. We know this already. But what is essential in that uncanny aspect is this: that I have the sheer ability to "think" and "feel," even for a moment, as if something unreal could be real, which means that I can be deceived. What is the point in this and what does it matter if I can be deceived into thinking and believing that something unreal is real? Is this not all the more problematic and confusing and even sinister and evil that something can deceive me (Descartes)?


To be sure--yet the inverse of this ability to be "tricked" by something unreal, and the positive side of such a deception is that this indicates the possibility which I now find in me that I can imagine, dream, and perceive something else than what is real. This only means that in having the ability to be deceived by the unreal I at the same time in principle can then also be deceived by the really real. The unreal can thus deceive me into thinking that it is real, so what I think is real (and actually is) can also seem unreal. Without a sleight of hand I thus recognize that the real, too, could also be an illusion or--a dream.

***

"Life is but a dream." There is truth to this though we may not always understand it fully.


Through the ontic experience of dreaming we have grasped a possibility for us to imagine something else than what is real and actual. And this is only possible for human beings.


Only human beings are capable of imagining and dreaming ultimately because only they have possibilities. The rock on my feet (because it has no ability to decide) and the god above me (because it's possibility is already its actuality) have no possibilities--they cannot change. Only I have the ability to change, to be otherwise than what I already am, because only I have possibilities in the sense that only I have a future before me. Hence the true meaning of Being for human existence only unfolds in Time (Heidegger).


For what are possibilities other than having a future? That I have a dream of becoming this or that (a teacher, physician, world leader) only formally indicates that I am able to project myself to a future which is, strictly speaking, unreal--a not-yet. And this is an incredible ability: to be able to be in the future otherwise than what you already are, that is, to become what you are not now in the future and leave what seems to be real now for what is presently unreal. In a word, I can be what I am not. Hence Sartre's words: "I am what I am not and I am not what I am."


What is actual and present then, what seems to be real or true will never be the last word; perhaps it is only the foreword, a preface and an introduction to "the true life to come." Nietzsche confirms this when he challenges us to finally become who we really are: "Be yourself! What you are at present doing, opining and desiring, that is not really you."


That you are this or that now; that you have a past that can no longer be changed and which seems to have determined who and what you are right now; that you are doing what seems to be what is right or the only thing you can do for the present; that you are loving this or that person who seems to be the right one because she has made you happy; that you are living a life which seems to have found it sole meaning or purpose in this dream or in that goal--these are not the final words of your story. Everything is prelude and preparation for a future which is always richer than the present, truer than the true, more real than the real, and always more beautiful than the beautiful.

Ontological Singlehood and the Illusion of a We

Not As We
Alanis Morisette


Reborn and shivering
Settled on new terrain
Unsure, unkind, insane
It's faint and shaken


Day one, day one
Start over again
Step one, step one
I'm barely making sense
For now I'm faking it
'Til I'm pseudo-making it
From scratch, begin again
But this time I as I
And not as we


Gun-shy and shivering
Tear it without a hand
Feign brave but still intent
Little and hardly here


Day one, day one
Start over again
Step one, step one
I'm barely making sense
For now I'm faking it
'Til I'm pseudo-making it
From scratch, begin again
But this time I as I
And not as we

Eyes wet toward wide open fright,
If God is taking bias, I pray he wants to lose,


Day one, day one
Start over again
Step one, step one
I'm barely making sense
For now I'm faking it
'Til I'm pseudo-making it
From scratch, begin again
But this time I as I
And not as we

***

When I woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, I found myself in bed alone. A moment later came the flood of responsibilities I was to play out again that day, as in the day before and the day after. There were "things that had to be attended to," things without which life would be both boring and at the same time happy because quiet. I looked at the small blue clock by the television which I was surprised to find was still open, and there a pseudo-astrologist was dispensing today's horoscope as one gives away fliers of cheap condominiums in malls (she said my star was in direct opposition to Mercury, the god of communication, and that I was headed for conflict that day). It was already getting late. One has to wake up early nowadays. I did not want to suffer the punishment reserved for those who dream in daylight. I got up from bed.


What interests me is that twilight moment between sleep and lucidity when one has not yet fully assumed one's persona or worn his mask. Assuming one's person is required by the world and the decision to comply with it orders the march of actions and responsibilities reserved for one's role. But that is easy because that is automatic. It is the delay which is more difficult and thus entertaining (the lonely clown, the angry priest, the wretched rich man). You cannot suspend and stave your self off for too long before it hounds you and inevitably possesses you. It will always be there--the self: "How does one hide from that which never sets?" (Heraclitus). Whence the intermittent joy and profound melancholy of always being alone.


In dreams, yes, perhaps one can say that one is not alone--at least some times. There are such dreams when one does not have a point of view, and this means not being a subject (like God?). But all too usually your waking life is also your sleeping life. There is no rest from your self: it will always assert itself, a will-to-self. How to get out of this solitary imprisonment and go beyond this sole horizon which is always before me because it comes from me--where I will always, and I cannot but, have to be an I?

***

It is said all too easily that the loneliness of the I can be overcome by the arrival of another I. Upon the coming of the Other the I or the Same becomes exposed to a dark sun which reverses its own white light, topples it though never extinguishing it, destroys it in making it surrender to it, receives it by also loving it. This is all good.


And we are reminded, of course, that the I does not surrender its subjectivity in order to turn into an object for the Other; it only relinquishes its rights over the Other in being responsible for him, in rejoining the first come and responding to the call from elsewhere. In loving the Other, the I is supposed to turn into a me where the point of reference of the subject is no longer its self as an I, but already in reference to him, thus making the I a me-here-for-the Other.


Now the philosophers of alterity will insist that the I, in turning into a me, does not diminish its self but only strengthens it in a re-covery because I am also an Other for the Other: the I, which found itself as a me, as a subject-for-another-subject, ultimately is established as a subject-with-another-subject--or the miracle of miracles, when the I becomes a we.


Now my question is this: Which is more originary?--the solitude of the ego (the Same) or its alterity (Difference) or its relationality (the We). This is not a question of priority but a question of what is primordial: not on which comes first, i.e., that I initially and for the most part wake up to find myself alone and then only discover "later" that I am in the end a being-for and a being-with; but more so whether I to begin with and up to the ultimate end am and will always be alone, which may or may not find itself with an Other (through its own volition and will, a will to be-for and be-with, or through mere circumstance and luck, through destiny or from the initiative of the other--whatever it may be), which means, intrinsically so, that I am fundamentally because ontologically alone.


In a word: Is Being singular and alone?


Let us see.

***

Answering an ontological question, that is, a question which asks about one's being, necessitates an ontic and existential entry point, that is, an experience common to us which may formally indicate and lead to an insight about our fundamental being or what we in each case are. Thus in order to find out something about our being we may have to pass through ordinary experiences or moods or "feelings" which say more than what they say and show more than what they show in and through themselves; and that "more" is what may deliver us into the province of our being.


We are then looking for an experience which makes us question whether or not we are really singular and alone, or always already with others (being-with) or ultimately ontologically for the other (being-for). Simplistically again: am I "fully" alone, or "partly" together with another, as if there's a space in me which the other fills and fulfills, or am I "wholly" "incomplete" without another, that I shall be deprived of completion without an other?


We may already have two experiences, for the most part in opposition with each other, that indicate whether or not we are "made" to be alone or with an other: there is the sadness which envelops a man when he is alone--(aptly called) loneliness--and there is the joy in the presence of an other which one loves--happiness. Now the question is if loneliness and happiness can say something about what we are fundamentally--if I am alone or not.

***

Let us take a look at the experience which is more accessible to us: loneliness.

Initially and for the most part we conceive loneliness as the sadness of being alone. A lonely man is thought to be a man without friends or company, going about his business and days all by himself, devoid of a partner, a katuwang, a kasama, an other. And we usually pity such cases ("kawawa naman mag-isa siya," "malungkot siguro siya"); and this entails that we see it as only "normal" and even necessary to be with someone (friends, marriage, family), something (service to country or God)--in order to lead a "happy" and "meaningful" life. That no man is an island means that no man can ever live by and for himself; and that without even knowing or wanting it, the lonely man is still part of something other and something greater than himself.


Being alone therefore is only possible as a negation of the reality that we are not alone, that is, we are always with and for others--but the lonely man just negates this or is deprived of it. Loneliness then, as sadness, as a longing for others, for love, for meaning--loneliness then only seems to indicate that human existence is from the first never alone: that sadness then is gone through in order for us to want to be with others again like sickness leads us to seek for health; and that sadness is something to be avoided because loneliness is a curse or punishment--like the fallen Satan who sits alone on his icy throne.


There is, however, another experience which retains the formal fact of being alone but is essentially nothing like loneliness and is in no way melancholy. This experience, which is always there as a possibility for human existence but is rarely embraced and oftentimes avoided, is what we call solitude.


To be sure, solitude retains loneliness's state of being-alone: they look the same, they do the same and they seem to be the same. But that is where their likeness ends. For very much so solitude is nothing heavy, brooding, miserable, or despairing--but to the contrary.


Solitude is light-footed and sure of step; it takes its time because it need not hurry for anyone else, so it enjoys its own company. Solitude enjoys itself. Here, one becomes a joyful experience to its self--a celebration which does not need others to take part in. The solitary, unlike the lonely man, celebrates himself--he is able to laugh, sing and dance alone. The theologian Paul Tillich summarizes the difference between the two as such: "Loneliness is the pain of being alone, solitude is the glory of being alone."


But seeing that both loneliness and solitude are factically or objectively the same yet totally different in mood--the one cannot stand its self while the other embraces its self--what has to be determined next is which of the two is primary and more fundamental--in order to know whether or not we are originarily alone. Am I primarily lonely, and that the solitude I sometimes enjoy is only a positive derivation of my loneliness, an escape from it, and an unusual occurrence, as it were? Or am I fundamentally at peace with myself in my solitude, that the loneliness I sometimes feel is only a disruption of that original peace? Which is a derivative or a negation of which? An experience which shall finally settle the matter should be here sought. And one such experience is the finality of death.


Death, as being always only mine, delivers each human existence before its self. Death, said to be absolute, is not only so because it cannot be avoided but because it cuts all my relations off in an absolute manner: there is nothing else, no one else, who can save me from it, who can stand in my place, who can love me so as to deliver me from death. All the pretty talk about love and the eternal and hope crumble before the shrine of death. My brother, my lover and my God cannot save me from death's fall: it is I and I alone who has to suffer it. Death only exposes what I had feared the most: that I was truly alone. And in death I march into that loneliness without end and without recourse to a hope or to an other.


Death is a privileged case which simplifies the duality between loneliness and solitude: it simplifies the two because it shows that the two are really one and the same. Loneliness, which comes now and then to a man, is the foretaste of death's bitterness; in solitude one tastes its sweetness. I see in my loneliest loneliness that beyond my willing it I am before a world which is not mine because it is not me. It is this opposition, for the most part covered over by familiarity and habit, by relations and illusions, which is slowly and quietly revealed to me in loneliness. When the world suddenly opposes me by withdrawing itself from me, when it silently "slips away" from me, I uncover the reality that I am a being in a world which I do not belong to because of the sheer fact that my being is not the being of the world.


Heidegger called this quiet shudder before the world Angst or anxiety. In anxiety I disclose myself as a lonely being before "the receding of beings as a whole." But such Angst, Heidegger clarified, is nothing like sadness, nervousness or fear: "Much to the contrary," Heidegger says, "a peculiar calm pervades it"--very much like the calm and peace that solitude brings.


And it is through such peaceful anxiety that I finally understand what death, and life, mean: that I have all along been marching towards both the pain and the glory of my own death, and that I have always been alone.