Day
Sunday was Father’s Day. Well, it was for most of us. It was merely a day that I have come not to fear but to hope passes by without incident. I am past the lying in bed crying in bed stage of grief of losing my father, now I am at the ‘keeping my head up’ stage where I try and merely get through the day.
I don’t want to talk about how amazing, funny, and flawed my dad was. That feels easy and cliched, it’s what everyone says about anyone close to them when they die. It doesn’t make it any less true, nor would it in my case, but I do feel it makes it slightly less meaningful. The same is true of focusing on my grief and pain. It is a ritualistic exercise we all engage with but which loses its meaning the more it is acted out.
This is not sad, it is natural. In some ways, we should celebrate such a fact. To experience such loss we must first attain such treasures and if we don’t attain such treasures this itself comes with a form of imagined loss. Anger at what we believe we should have possessed and ultimately at the meagre offerings of what we currently have. To loss and to mourn should be an act of celebration at what once was.
A lack of something especially when you once had it is difficult to live with. You seeth with bitterness at the unfairness of losing what you once had. This does not simply apply to dead family members or death itself but to those who lost fame, talent, fortune or even good looks. The loss is always linked in some way to mortality. Death after all comes in many forms with the physical act merely being the final one. But it all travels with us as we become a little more broken the further we move.
Freedom traditionally comes in three core categories- positive, negative, and republican. Positive freedom tells us that we require self-actualisation to be ‘free’ i.e., we need help to realise our potential; negative freedom requires non-interference to be free i.e., to be left alone and republican freedom requires freedom from domination i.e., not to have a structure or a person overhanging us which can interfere arbitrarily.
The possibility to intervene arbitrarily is typically given to a structure or a person who still exists, someone or something which still has power and authority. But what about those who still possess authority despite their absence precisely because of their previous presence? We are defined by such love, hate, wealth and poverty. We may escape our conditions but this does not mean we can reset our psyche.
Our ability to define domination therefore looks like a forlorn effort. Yet, the desire to resist domination is an entirely human one. Few of us are like Hobbes fearing the shivering, friendless wreck of the state of nature. For my money far more of us are Rousseans seeing the possibility and potential of living without such structures in our lives. Optimism is boundless and more than half try to ‘look on the bright side of life’. But the ability to really live without such structures is more than difficult it is impossible.
Living in the shadow of domination with it appearing over our shoulders is a messy and necessary part of the human condition. There is no escaping it and despite our best attempts there will be no eulogies forthcoming. Instead of weeping, moaning and reflecting we should be embracing these possibilities. The possibility to be defined is full of meaning and counterintuively the freedom to seek who we truly are.