Meeting up with selfhood means answering the question 'What does it mean to
be?'
The answer for the Stoics was to turn life into a project for self -reflection, to view it
in a similar way to an object or a work of art. This is nowhere more clearly evident
than in the writings of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus
Aurelius. Marcus kept a personal journal during the last years of his life which was
an informal record of his reflections, observations and self- criticisms. He called
the journal To Himself because he wanted to better understand who he was and
how he should best work and live with others. Centuries after he wrote it, the
journal came to be called
The Meditations. Throughout The Meditations Marcus
continually reminds himself to slow down and create moments of serenity in order
to be able to withdraw and reflect. He wrote, "Do the things external which fall
upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and
cease to be whirled around." And again "those who do not observe the
movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy". Marcus tells
himself;
"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and
thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most
common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself.
For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into
his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them
he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the
good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself;
and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them,
will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all
discontent with the things to which thou returnest".
It is evident that Marcus Aurelius subscribed to the Stoic tenet of self examination
in order that he might live a happier and more fulfilling life than had he done
otherwise and that for him, life was a project.
Within the Christian tradition, some have suggested that the key to being human is
our ability of rational thinking, freewill, our moral sense, or our capacity to face
our own death.
To be able to answer the question in terms of day to day living the question
becomes, 'What does it mean to be a citizen?' This requires that a person
meets him or herself as part of their culture and part of their community. This is
why there is now an English language requirement for new citizens of the UK.
Not speaking the language the other people in your community and culture speak,
is a major hindrance to becoming a true citizen – with regards to being part of the
culture. Being part of the culture though, goes much further than this. It is about
integration with others, about bringing your views and experiences to the table
and sharing them, to make the whole culture richer from the experience of
everyone in it. It can be about having a public service job, about volunteering and
about giving back. It is about working together for the greater good.
And therein lies the eternal answer to what does it mean to meet up with oneself.
Legally, a citizen is someone who has the required passport, a piece of paper.
But truly, a citizen is someone who shares with their communities and who gives
back what they take out. There are plenty of people in the UK who were born
here but could not be said to be true citizens – it is about an emotional state and
mindset just as much as geographical and legal term.
Two millennia further on from the world of Marcus Aurelius, we are all in grip of
great organisations, not only in industrial developments but also in educational
and social enterprises, in religious work, and in governmental activities. Almost in
spite of ourselves we are caught up into plans and social projects which are part
of social, economic, and educational systems. Organization is piled on
organization, one supervising and watching and "investigating" the other. The
greater the number of the commissions, investigating committees, and the
interlocking groups, the more complex does the whole process become and the
more difficult is it for us to find and be ourselves. The gains of scientific study
become so rigidly organized into great enterprises that the individual is likely to
be lost in them as an outcome of the group psychology that produced them. We
are more in need of personality than of administrative regularity. In this connection
it is well to remember that there is another method of discovering truth through
isolation and separateness.
The need for this kind of isolation was expressed by L.H. Bailey as follows:
“Never in the open country do I see a young man or woman at nightfall going down the highways
and the long fields but I think of the character that develops out of the loneliness, in the silence
of vast surroundings, projected against the backgrounds, and of the suggestions that must come
from these situations as contrasted with those that arise from the babble of the crowds. There is
hardiness in such training; there is independence, the taking of one's own risk and no need of the
protection of compensation- acts. There is no over-imposed director to fall back on. Physical
recuperation is in the situation. As against these fields, much of the habitual golf and tennis and
other adventitious means of killing time and of making up deficiencies is almost ludicrous”.
In The Rainbow (1915), D. H. Lawrence narrates the following moment, in which
Ursula, about to see Anton Skrebensky again after his six-year military service in
South Africa, is examining a protozoan on a microscope slide: She was fretting
over a conversation she had had a few days ago with Dr. Frankstone, who was a
woman doctor of physics in the college.
“No, really,” Dr. Frankstone had said, “I don’t see why we should attribute some special mystery
to life—do you? We don’t understand it as we understand electricity, even, but that doesn’t
warrant our saying it is something special, something different in kind and distinct from
everything else in the universe—do you think it does? May it not be that life consists in a
complexity of physical and chemical activities, of the same order as the activities we already
know in science? I don’t see, really, why we should imagine there is a special order of life, and
life alone——”
The conversation had ended on a note of uncertainty, indefinite, wistful. But the purpose, what
was the purpose? Electricity had no soul, light and heat had no soul. Was she herself an
impersonal force, or conjunction of forces, like one of these? She looked still at the unicellular
shadow that lay within the field of light, under her microscope. It was alive. She saw it move—she
saw the bright mist of its ciliary activity, she saw the gleam of its nucleus, as it slid across the
plane of light. What then was its will? If it was a conjunction of forces, physical and chemical,
what held these forces unified, and for what purpose were they unified?
For what purpose were the incalculable physical and chemical activities nodalised in this
shadowy, moving speck under her microscope? What was the will which nodalised them and
created the one thing she saw? What was its intention? To be itself? Was its purpose just
mechanical and limited to itself?
It intended to be itself. But what self? Suddenly in her mind the world gleamed strangely, with an
intense light, like the nucleus of the creature under the microscope. Suddenly she had passed
away into an intensely-gleaming light of knowledge. She could not understand what it all was.
She only knew that it was not limited mechanical energy, nor mere purpose of self- preservation
and self- assertion. It was a consummation, a being infinite. Self was a oneness with the infinite.
To be oneself was a supreme, gleaming triumph of infinity.
Ursula sat abstracted over her microscope, in suspense. Her soul was busy, infinitely busy, in the
new world. In the new world, Skrebensky was waiting for her—he would be waiting for her. She
could not go yet, because her soul was engaged. Soon she would go".
Lawrence's description of Ursula's epiphany is probably what most people would
recognize as a good description of the moment when they suddenly became
puzzled by who they are.
