The task at hand

Ultime Thule Origins - Karesoid Michal Karz

Runnels of thought, silently slipping away; billowing then dispersing, pulling and repelling, never offering a firm grasp. A sudden splash of insight onto the banks revealing a rare, ephemeral clarity. Clear for an instant, like a droplet of water on a stone, reflecting the morning sun; disappearing under the fumbling grasp of paid attention. The rolling current, passing by, carrying him onward. Carving out time from the rocks it tickles past, the course of its carve, crystallising his form.

My brother was interested in everything except the task at hand. It was as though his head was on a swivel, spinning and turning from one interest to the next. He seemed to be his most creative when he was unhappy. Often drawing, or writing to soothe himself of what looked like mild suffering, but for him, was a blackened spiral of despair. To me, he always seemed most alive around family and close friends; however if you asked him, he would have told you he was most himself when alone. He loved ideas, but not enough to see any of them grow the fruits that would have sustained him and provided the independence he craved.

Everyone liked my brother, but he didn’t really like himself. It was though he was always grasping at something and as soon as he had whatever he had been chasing; he would soon cast it to one side, like a spoiled child with too many toys. He once told me that his restlessness came from a desire not to end up in the kind of mid-life catastrophe that our father became mired in. This fear pushed him to try as much as he could, futilely trying to stave off any future regret. What he didn’t realise then, was that we don’t get to choose our catastrophes. Whilst we are so focused on not repeating the mistakes of our parents, we unconsciously blunder on into new mistakes of our own, unaware that we are teetering on the edge of our own future flood. I suppose you could say that my brother was looking for a truth by which he could live his life, a truth that was often tantalisingly close, but faded away under a grasping hand. The truth about my brother was that he was happiest when he wasn’t grasping at all. When he was simply there, living, the grand projects and ideas set to one side.

Tortured by his lack of conviction there was a trepidation about doing what he needed to live the life he wanted. He had read all the books, had all the experiences, certainly more than most. There wasn’t much more he could have done to come to some deeper level of understanding. His problem was that he was always wondering when he would grasp something solid, something that might free him from the constriction of his rumination. What he hadn’t realised was that he had grasped it on multiple occasions; and that the truth he was searching for, had already been found. Found in the action of his searching. He hadn’t realised that the key to the life he wanted wasn’t to be grasped triumphantly, but was a continual movement. In fact, the grasping would have been in complete opposition to the way he was. He was always open, looking, interested, curious. Any grasping of some perceived truth never would have sustained him, as he would have cast about for what lay behind that truth! The reaching is what sustained him, what kept him moving. The truth he wanted to grasp would have led to the stagnation he feared.

The truth about him, one that he didn’t realise, was that he had a lot of conviction. He was tortured by his self-consciousnesses and how it presented itself as the only source of knowledge. How it discounted all of the times when his sense of what was right had taken the leap and landed on the other side. He had forgotten that while the landing had always kicked up an initial plume of dust, the dust always dispersed and the path would clear. He was generally vindicated. Vindicated because it was the leaping that continued to sustain him. By reminding him that he was alive and that life was to be lived and that to live required the willingness of faith.

But of course he was vindicated, we almost always are, eventually. Our memories are fallible, our minds flexible, and we have a great ability of re-arranging the furniture of our conceptions to match whatever new position we find ourselves in. When someone tells us that ‘everything will work out’ they are right. Not in some specific, calculable way, where a formula is applied and the hoped for, ‘yes everything worked out’, is weighed up against whatever imaginary benchmark we set. No, ‘everything works out’ because our minds, which are inherently optimistic, reconstitute our frames of reference, tying in a narrative that makes it feel as though this was all part of the plan. That whatever happened, happened for the best. As Dostoevsky said, “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything”.

A sense of fate, that everything happens for a reason, is a feeling that many of us hold, which we do so because we are simultaneously shaping it by our actions and having our actions shaped by it. If fate is a path outside of our control, then in some ways we are all governed by a fate. Not one that has some predetermined outcome, but that is constituted by our reactions to events outside of our control. Very few of us are able to rise above this self devouring serpent to the point where we are freed from the cycle of being shaped and shaping the experiences we have. Everything works out, because life would be intolerable if it didn’t. Even in tragic grief, there is meaning found in the suffering that follows, a kind of duty to live, in order to keep a part of a lost loved one alive in you.

So often our confidence is diminished by our analysis. An analysis that only leads in the direction of whatever has already been decided by our biases and the runnels of our thoughts. Our willingness to change only comes from moments of insight where our focus is taken away from the problem, and we are able to feel for whatever else might be. That ‘aha’ moment might come during a walk, in the bath, or whilst reading a book in the sun. Our analytical rationality is wonderful at processing and manipulating what is already in front of us, but insight and the ability to change direction requires us to look up. It is not something that can be willed. Insight is like a flashing light in the distance, obscured by fog; calling, asking us to look up beyond our blinkered view of the world and to take a leap.