We complain of the darkness in which we live out our lives; we do not understand the nature of existence in general; we especially do not know the relation of our own self to the rest of existence. Not only is our life short, our knowledge is limited entirely to it, since we can see neither back before our birth or out beyond our death, so that our consciousness is as it were a lightning-flash momentarily illuminating the night: it truly seems as though a demon had maliciously shut off all further knowledge from us so as to enjoy our discomfiture.
But this complaint is not really justified: for it arises out of an illusion produced by the false premise that the totality of things proceeded from an intellect and consequently existed as an idea before it became actual; according to which premise the totality of things, having arisen from the realm of knowledge and entirely explicable and capable of being exhaustively comprehended by it. – But the truth of the matter, I fear, that all that of which we complain of not knowing is not known to anyone, indeed is probably as such unknowable, i.e. not capable of being conceived. For the idea, in whose domain all knowledge lies and to which all knowledge therefore refers, is only the outer side of existence, something secondary, supplementary, something, that is, which was necessary not for the preservation of things as such, the universal totality, but merely for the preservation of things as such, the universal being. Consequently the existence of things as a whole entered into the realm of knowledge only per accidens, thus to a very limited extent: it forms only the background of the painting in the animal consciousness, where the objectives of the will are the essential element and occupy the front rank. There then arose through this accidens the entire world of space and time, i.e. the world as idea, which possesses no existence of this sort at all outside the realm of knowledge. Now since knowledge exists only for the purpose of preserving each animal individual, its whole constitution, all its forms, such as time, space, etc., are adapted merely to the aims of such an individual: and these require knowledge only of relations between individual phenomena and by no means knowledge of the essential nature of things and the universal totality.
– Schopenhauer, Thing Itself and Appearance, Essays and Aphorisms
This week started right at the bottom; I recognize the very depths to which I have sunk and to which I have let things tumble. There is no doubt that, despite the veneer, everything is held together merely by hope and faith, and a liberal dose of desperation. My Waterloo, as I have said, it is now or never.
As I pick through the debris of my life and steel myself for the months ahead, I know that despite my frailties and imperfections I have in my mind a clear and defined vision of where I want to be; it is now that I find that in stumbling, in not being quick or conventional, that I am about to lose it all. How paradoxical, that at the end of this journey, having found and finally come to rest, having embraced my mortality and fallibility, while preserving every facet of self, that frequent and familiar theme, that I am finally brought, as if in Kafka’s Before the Law, where a man had to sit for years and years before the gates, signifying the law, and as he withered and was about to die:
“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”
- Kafka, Before the Law
But in reality, I am already here, able and willing, human and prepared, except that I cannot find entry. I plod on, transforming and unbecoming, waiting.