Someone must turn the hourglass over!
For somehow the grains of sand gently slide
through the tiny space.
Someone must watch the grains of sand.
And someone must see the gap that remains
As the young sand drops and nothingness remains
Until the glass is turned over once more;
Till life and love begin once more.
The old grains of sand, now newly replaced,
Can rest in peace, dream and hope
That someone is still turning the hourglass.
-- Roberta Israeloff.
Having walked the earth for roughly seventeen years, I have been able to create a rich palimpsest of experiences. Some recent, and conspicuous as an embossed image, some very old forgotten memories, akin to fading sketches on old tracing paper, some others which remind me of some obdurate storms faced en route, and some more that have been as gratifying as the warmth of a golden sun after a blizzard. However, on turning over the leaves of memory, I find that experiential learning is not an automated lived and learnt process, but one that entails subjecting one’s experiences to critical scrutiny. Such reflection may be an immediate off-shoot of the experience just lived, or one that may occur days, months or even years after the experience has been lived. Either way, an objective and rational reflection process aids in deciphering hidden meaning/s and lesson/s to the myriad experiences that might have otherwise just been a part of memoryscape, slowly fading into oblivion. Also, the blessed few who have had the privilege of education and have been able to learn from educational institutions and other sources have the advantage of applying several of their learnt theories and concepts to real life, so as to enrich and plurify the significations contained therein. Of course, this is by no means a definitive claim to demean the analytical capacity of a person who hasn’t been too fortunate to gain a formal education or even an attempt to associate formal education with better reflection and analysis skills, but just an observation, that seems to befit my case, and rightfully so.
One such experience that resonates deeply within my being and bears reverberations akin to the epistemological theory I now hold most dear is an event that happened two years ago. However, to completely grasp the implications of the experience and the experiential learning that followed, I shall recount it as it happened that day, intercepting the narration with the reflections thereupon.
“Listen Kylie, you have zero clue about the shit I’m going through. So please save your “all is possible” lecture,” I screamed into the phone for the nth time, hung up and stormed out of the house.
I had been going through a terrible time and had not been handling it too well. My friends bore the brunt of my anger, which, I knew, was unmerited and uncalled for, and yet, somehow I felt incapable and almost helpless to change the situation. My parents were separating. Not that they had been around too much since my inception, and I had only related to Julie, our housekeeper, as some sort of tangible parent, an adult I could feel safe with when I would scare as a child, someone I could ask to hear stories from and who’d take care of everything else that a parent needed to ensure. Of course, it was, by no means, a perfect substitution, but a sufficient one. The rest I made up for by spending money. It was as if spending money was compensation for the absence of happiness in my life. I knew, even before the lightning struck, that life hardly had any meaning. The futility of human pursuits for wealth, knowledge or any other thing was blatant to me. The meaninglessness inherent in existence was so clear to my disturbed and fragmented psyche that I had grown to be addicted to Beckett and Ionesco and espoused the tenets of existentialism as the only logical explanation to the baffling occurrences in life. Until it all changed on that fateful day.
Having stormed out of the house, I went for a walk in the city, with a mind full of seething anger, ready to be directed at any object that’d happen to cross paths with me. I walked past my favorite coffeehouse and recollected the numerous times me and Kylie had sat on the corner table, debating upon the possibility of attaining happiness. In as much as I liked to live up to my self-proclaimed status of an existentialist, I contested even the existence of a thing as true happiness, and the validity and meaning of a construct so named but I also remember hoping, even in the heat of the arguments we threw at each other, that she prove herself right. I knew that my stomach tied up in knots at the sheer zest for life evinced in her verbatim rendition of an argument for the possibility of humans to find wholesome joy and complete happiness, and the knots would spread upward, stifling that tiny bit of me which wanted to approve of her concept. Yet some unknown power within me would remind me of all the vacuity in my life, and there I would be split again, allowing my existentialist vein to win. These thoughts were charging through my mental landscape, the two factions/trains of thought still warring, when a little child, hardly four or five, ran into me and fell down on the pavement. He scraped his knee and an elbow, and had tiny beads of tears welling up, when a few of his friends running behind him caught up with him and held him, and told him it was his turn now to catch them. He immediately started to smile, and forgot about the pain. I was observing them play, until they ran across the pavement onto the other side of the road and weren’t visible anymore. I do not know what led me to try and trace the child who had bumped into me, and I crossed over too, hoping to find the child playing somewhere along the opposite pavement. Luckily, I found him and two of his friends pressed up against the glass front of a sunglass shop, looking at the kiosks and pointing out to a few shades. I walked until I reached them and touched the hurt child on the shoulder. He turned to look at me and was visibly scared. He must have thought I had come to shout on him, or worse punish him. His companions ran away.
On hindsight, and a lot of probing and delving into the unknown chambers of my psyche, I know why I followed that child, and wanted to communicate with him. I didn’t vent out my anger on the child, even though he ran into me. I also was intrigued by the sudden acceptance of pain and its consequent transmutation into genuine and innocent peals of laughter by friendship.
Whilst I was just trying to initiate conversation with the child, his companions came back with a lady, who as it turned out, was the child’s mother. She told me that her son was dumb and deaf and that he had cancer. He only had a week to live and also apologized profoundly on behalf of her son, for any wrong he might have done to me. I was moved to tears. I held her hand and for the first time in my life, cried. I wept and wept so much, whilst the poor woman kept comforting me by running her fingers through my hair, that I could hardly see for a while after the tears stopped. She took me to their small home, and fixed me a simple meal of barley. I devoured the meal. In a long conversation, I learnt about her deceased husband and her only child. We laughed and cried, and before I knew it, I had two good friends with whom my anger was also transformed into something that healed. And I was reminded of Rumi’s quote “The wound is the place where light enters.” I promised them that I would see them everyday thereafter and left. My heart felt lighter and I felt some deep wound within me heal, and the scab wear off, to show fresh, new skin. I visited them for the entire week thereafter, and even offered monetary help, which Joanna (the child’s mother) immediately declined. I do not know whether it was more for myself, or for the child who I immediately felt a connection to, but I spent hours at their place, talking and laughing, and their happiness was infectious. I stayed over at their place for three days after Rick (her child) died. And she had precious tears to offer as a token of thanks for my companionship. How could I tell her what I had gained in return. I visit Joanna still, though only on weekends. My life, ever since, has not been the same. Nor has been my perspective.
On reflection, I know that this incident, albeit a ‘trivial?’ one (as many deem it?) has been the most pivotal experience of my life. My quest for meaning and purpose in life and questioning the validity of everything was definitely not unfounded. Existentialism did keep me sane, and for a long while. I had to find a logical explanation for the vacuity in my life, and existentialism offered as much. My incapacitation and debilitation to seek further and find better answers was aided by the avalanche of doubt and disillusionment bred by incidents in my life and I procrastinated any attempt, or rather avoided any attempt to explore answers that shall deviate from the false sense of comfort and security I had lulled myself into. Having seen two of the kindest souls on earth lead a life of joy, even in conditions of material depravity, led me to become aware of my false existence, and my silly ways of compensating for the happiness that I lacked. Spending time with them healed my wounds and made me realize that I had avoided any release of pain, by any means whatsoever, and collated them to form a pile that was bound to seek a channel of escape, sooner or later. Rick’s immediate laughter that followed a physical wound was precisely what I needed to learn for my emotional and psychological healing. I had to learn to let go. I had to learn to be positive, to imbibe the same positive vibes that Kylie had been trying to bestow upon me for years. And I had finally managed to do it. Humanism was the way. Of course, the indication isn’t towards any religious aspect of the epistemological theory, but only to the fact that the power of human agency, individual and/or collective is irrefutable. I have found my inner peace and happiness the same way, and therefore, do not mind or shall we say, do not need any “all is possible” lectures now. The belief is mine too, now. And let’s just say, as the most apt close to an enjoyable reflection, Kylie and I do not debate in the coffeehouse any more.
References
Israeloff, Roberta. (1997) Lost and Found. Simon & Schuster.
