LitLetter 230: Journey, continued...to the Answer to the Question
The simplest questions are hardest to answer
Who are you? Who ARE you?
How to answer. It changes like a kaleidoscope. My most recent encounter was a few days ago, at a Rotary Club meeting, an elderly African woman confronts herself with the question. She had been tortured by the apartheid police in South Africa for her role in the scholar uprising in 1976. Had gone into exile and suffered similarly at the hands of her ‘brothers’.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
Magically her answer contained not a shred of bitterness. Nor was it defined by words. Rather by actions, since 1976. Hotel service led to health service led to community service, finally community leadership. Giving now, giving, and no resentment. Gentle. Calm. Forgiving. Giving. No words, only acts.
My god, what a lesson for us all.
Sports achievements? I have just finished watching Chasing the Sun 2, the story of the South African rugby team’s victory at the Rugby World Cup in 2023. Interviews with all the major role players interspersed with clips of the games.
These guys, beyond the battle, because of it, because they realise their constituencies’ passionate desires for them to win, for a personal validation, they ask –
Who are you? Who ARE you?
These men know their purpose beyond any other team in the tournament. ‘We will win the RWC 2023 for all South Africans’. Not ‘to win the Cup’, not ‘to be the best’, but to lay themselves down for 60+ million people, most of whom need some love. This validation is all about identity, about representation of ourselves in our minds and in our external lives.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
The rugby players interact freely with the interviewers and photographers for the whole series, articulate and willing to share, sometimes difficult stuff. But after the final and victory, player after player is lost for words to describe the magnitude of the achievement. Silence. Introspection as to what they have accomplished, how it changes how they view themselves, how they view the world around them.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
The Sowetan grandmother and community leader. The diverse, mature set of rugby players. What in common? What do they have in common in the face of the most basic, existential question, who are you? Silence. No words.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
Silence. Inward reflection. Thoughtfulness. No words. What they DO have in common are acts, actions, bravery in the face of hostility, willpower to endure. These are their answer to the questions, these acts. For these shall they be remembered.
There comes a moment in all conversations on purpose when we want to stop talking, analysing, offering rationality. Stop talking, now, do something!
Who are you? Who ARE you?
The answer to the question is nevertheless important. If words are not used to define, to boundary, to clarify, our imaginations may run riot and reach untenable or unfortunate conclusions. Yet, silence, reflection, pause, are all justifiable reactions to the hardest to answer (and simplest to set) question of them all.
Whenever we face this question, we usually put the answering of it off, at least for a while. Some people are driven to know their answer, others not. It is prone to being put off as it is difficult. We are one thing on one day, then another thing on another day. Words are hard to reach, seeking to define something that may be indefinable. And words are anyway banal, lightweight perhaps compared to the weight of the vision you hold.
And then an utterance happens.
In the rugby series a sister hits the nail – ‘Rugby is Duane; Duane is rugby’. She may not realise – but it’s the fact – that everything her brother does, says, stands for, believes in is defined by the code of rugby union. Hard work, discipline, a need to achieve, trustworthy, a team player, a forgiving (moving on) nature, clever, able to adapt, a leader, close to people. It’s quite a list, and her brother is exemplary. The phrase ‘Duane is Rugby’ fits him to a T.
Here are some of my personal utterances on behalf of people I know. ‘Forgiveness’, ‘kindness’, ‘a shoulder to lean on’, ‘a cheerful, positive demeanour’, ‘quiet steadfastness’, ‘a will of iron’, ‘innovativeness’, ‘giving’, ‘a support at all times’, ‘love and joy’. Me - ‘interconnected’.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
Here is Albert Camus: ‘What counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity’. For Camus, living in the moment, aware of the world around him, is more important, he says, than happiness. For Camus, looking at the world NOW, fiercely, brings to him death awareness and life awareness:
‘How can I define the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair? In spite of much searching, this is all I know’.
Who are you? Who ARE you?
Dealing with existential despair, answering THAT question, Wendell Berry’s antidote.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
So here’s a way forward perhaps? Seek to answer the question AND be compassionate to yourself. When answers become difficult, when you are lost for words, are full of despair, rest in the grace of the world.
How else to live whole in in a distracted, disrupted, broken world?