Thanatos and Eros
03.31.07 (8:31 am) [edit] |  |
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Thanatos and Eros
Funny how certain memories stand out, moments saved from the oblivion that the majorities are slated for. The reasons for them standing out are not always obvious. For instance I have one memory of fighting my mother over a baby bottle she was trying to give to me as an infant. It was a glass bottle, filled with apple juice and I simply did not want it. Why on earth would I remember that? Other memories are easy to understand why they make a mark in consciousness’ that will not go away. So let us together journey back, way back, the year 1954.
It was in the early spring, the reason I know this for a fact, is that the field outside the kitchen, behind the chicken coop, was yet to be planted, plowed, waiting to be seeded. It was a nice day, sunny, not too hot, late morning, perhaps about 11:00 or so. I was 6 years old, dressed in a white shirt and shorts of some dark color, but that is not important. What is important is what I did, or perhaps attempted to do. Something not thought out, but as if I was directed by some sort of inner irrational impulse, from my chaotic inner world.
I went into the kitchen; my mother’s back was to me, trying to get lunch ready. It was the weekend, so there were 7 of us to feed at that time, the others came later; 11 in all in the final tally, though one died at birth. I went to the knife drawer and took out what was to me at that time a very large knife and walked outside. I went into the field, toward the back corner, next to my favorite crab apple tree, my favorite fruit at that time. So I simply stood there, in the late morning sun, feeling the gentle breeze caress me, and did not really think about anything, I just stood there. I had the feeling that I should die, that I wanted to die. Nothing extreme, I was not in any great pain; just death was on my mine. Thanatos, the death instinct was in ascendance and demanded some sort of response from me I guess. So I looked at the knife, not sure what I was really supposed to do with it. Then I simply thought, this is really wrong, laughed, and went back inside the house, put the knife back in the drawer and went outside and played with my brothers. Eros won out, life and the desire for life, even if the response was not thought through, came out the victor. I am not sure I was even capable of rational thought at that time, it was like some kind of archetypal struggle went on within me, and lucky for me I did not do anything stupid. I suppose that was a defining moment in my life, though it did not feel like it. Though a choice for life was certainly made and has probably served me well in ways not yet fully known.
While how the above incident was played out might be unique, I doubt the actual experience was. The desire for life, for more often than supposed, covers the death instinct, the desire for simply not existing.
I remember one day while spending some time at my Dad’s gas station, in East St Louis, I noticed a bridge nearby. It seemed to my very young, inexperienced mind, to be covering over an abyss, and that the people and cars going over it had no idea how tenuous it was for them. If the bridge collapsed while they drove, or walked upon it, they would simply fall into a bottomless pit of nothingness. From this, I got the feeling, that perhaps that is how everything is. The world and all in it is simply waiting for something to happen, and then the eternal fall into oblivion. It is like when you tear up the floor boards, you find that there is nothing underneath, solidity is an illusion. Of course I am talking about an emotional experience, I am only using concepts now as an adult, reliving the experience, that I could not possible articulate at such a young age.
I think perhaps that within all of us there is the dance between Thanatos and Eros, life and death. For many, like me for a short time, Thanatos, seemed to have the upper hand, but the desire for life did come out the victor. Perhaps it is because at that young age I somehow intuited that a state of nothingness is not possible, since I believed in a transcendent realm, so death was not in anyway an escape. Perhaps what saves us, or in the end many of us, is this belief, that a relationship with the transcendent is more important than ego strength, for when that goes what is there to cling too, or to believe in. Life is good. For in life we can grow, yes fail, choose to get up and keep going, or to give up. We can feel joy and pain, love and hate, communion and isolation, yet in all of this perhaps we are not alone, at least I believe this. I feel pursued more than pursuing. I feel stalked by a loving presence that simply keeps coming and nothing I do seems to slow it down in any way. This experience comes from deep within, a presence that insists on being noticed, taken seriously, a response, even if that response is rejection.
The transcendent present’s it-self in the simplest events. A smile, from even a stranger, music, friends, movies, nature, all are doorways for the transcendent, humble in its presentation, yet powerful in its effects on my inner depths. I am wounded by this presence, at times when I least expect it, a healing touch, giving me hope of going on.
At times the illusion of some kind of eternal peace, or oblivion will assert itself, but I know it is an illusion. For some any kind of belief in an afterlife is the illusion, it is the other way around for me. The fact that I may exist after death is no more remarkable by the fact that I exist now, and hopefully will have more years here to continue to choose and grow. This life is important, and no matter how hard, how lonely it can be, it is worth it. For when it is over, it is over, we are here only once. As one of my charges told me a few years ago: “we are here for such a short time, we should hold on for as long as we can”; words of great wisdom, from a man who lived life to the full.