“What a piece of work is a man,” says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, Act II, Scene II, “How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!”
But his eloquence was not matched by the disturbed and disturbing quality of his experience. Indeed, from his current mood and vantage point, “the earth seems to me a sterile promontory . . . [a] quintessence of dust.”
Many of us equate the quality of our lives with the things we have acquired. Prosperity. Security. Comfort. Makes sense. But here’s the rub. If the acquisition of these things doesn’t show up in a competitive standing acknowledged by others, life is not good. Always aware of “their” eyes, their judgment, we want to be known and admired in a particular way by particular others. This mindless focus persists, provokes and fixes us, no matter how high we climb.
Others of us may trade upon misery just as compulsively as Scoreboard players trade upon their “stuff.” We say that life’s disappointments and inequities rob us of hope, energy and initiative, or that the world’s imperfections make us (righteously) angry, litigious, despondent. This, too, is a grinding, impoverishing, fixed way of life.
There is another, remarkable way to look at existence. It is a way of being, a mood, a tenor, that makes each day a celebration, a witness to life, to sentience, to the ability to see ourselves, to think for ourselves and to recover ourselves when we lose, when we fall, when life’s burdens and irritants exhaust us.
What makes human beings uniquely fitted to be in control of their lives is what they have in their sights. We don’t have to capitulate to Scoreboard’s perspective, nor to listlessness and pessimism when our will—by circumstance or by others—has been denied. Instead, we can have our minds serve as a major determinant in the matter of our transformative fate. It’s not magic. It’s brain power—the emergent ability to focus, to ponder, to reflect, to choose our own way in life. Indeed, nothing short of celebrating this gift can bring us the peace—the sense—that we know and belong.
Yes, we are scrappy, up-from-fish creatures, thrown and endowed by biology with the intelligence to keep breathing on land. Already marvels abound. If leaps and dives and echolocation are any indication, dolphins are celebrating their existence!
For humans, biology is only the initial thrust of existence. We also come from an extraordinary historical and spiritual narrative tradition that can propel us from a fixed position into another world of wonder, beauty and majesty—into the light of Shakespeare-described noble reason, infinite faculty and graceful acts and apprehensions of metaphorical angels and gods.
When we stand for it, tell of it and celebrate it, this gift of life is alive, authentic and expansive. And when we err, we err on the side of hope, kindness, connection and love.
Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes