During a drive back from doing many endless errands, talk radio was on in the car. Subject matter was dealing with the current Haiti crisis, and as we know, everyone has an opinion on everything. People were calling in left and right, and one thing struck me. Everyone who called wanted to say something without really contributing to the debate in a healthy way, or without asking the host of the program any questions. At times, people even started to go on tangents moving away from Haiti earthquake to the price of tea in China. Well, not literally, but you get the point.
I am convinced that people really only wish to talk but never to listen. Nobody cares what you have to say, nor do they want to ask questions. They want to get on the air and say their opinion. Why is this? Do we live lives of quiet desperation? Do we truly live day to day without being heard? And who is supposed to hear us? And what happens when we are heard? Are we content then or do we get addicted to being heard and we want more? Most of the time, people are waiting for a lull in a conversation so that they can say what’s on their minds. Even now, as I am writing this, I know that nobody will read this. Even if I plaster it all over the Facebook and Twitter, and many other channels that I can think of. Nobody will read it. What does that mean for me? Am I quietly disappearing into nothingness? Was I part of nothingness to begin with? And why do I think of myself so special that anyone would indeed read this? And who are the others that should hear me? Are they experts on the subject of hearing and listening intently? Highly unlikely. Or maybe my emotional self is playing tricks with my intellectual self, and those out there are indeed experts.
So many times, we lament. Some lament quietly, some loudly (like Job). But we find ourselves, even if it’s once in our lives, to lament to God about something that went wrong. We want someone else to respond to that lament; we want God to respond to the utter pain and isolation we feel as human beings. The more nobody responds, the more we fall down the hole of darkness and quiet despondency. I have asked myself many times: why do we need the other to affirm our existence? It is a fair question, I think. We don’t but at the end of the day, we are wired for relationality—finite (human beings with other humans beings) and infinite (God and human beings).
This brings to mind Krysztof Kieslowski’s film trilogy Blue/White/Red. In “White,” the main protagonist Karol Karol walks the streets of Paris. He doesn’t speak the language, he is utterly misplaced and displaced, he doesn’t know anyone, his credit card is rejected (and so is he, in a way) and he doesn’t have enough money or any other means to go back to his homeland, Poland. People are quite literally bumping into him, as if he is invisible, as if he doesn’t exist. His voice is not heard. The pain of feeling invisible to one’s fellow human beings is unbearable. I would say, to turn Kundera’s title the other way around, it is the unbearable heaviness of the being. We do not feel light; we feel heavy dragging our feet and our body and the heaviest of them all, our heart. Finally, in an act of complete and utter despair, Karol Karol sits on the floor of the busy Parisian metro (where all those busy Westerners take no notice of us tired and haggard Slavs) and “sings” a Polish song on his comb. A man comes towards him, looks at him and start to speak to Karol Karol in Polish. He has been heard.
Sometimes those who speak the same language as we do cannot understand or fail to hear us. We truly need for someone to hear us and understand us without endless explanations. Will the lament be heard? Perhaps this is the question which is mostly on our minds (even in the midst of busy-ness and productiveness) because it signifies one aspect of the meaning of our lives. Will the lament be heard? I certainly don’t have an answer to that question nor would I presume to have it. As William F. Buckley, Jr. once remarked (when asked “what happens in the mind of God?”): “I cannot answer that question simply because I do not know; my imagination is finite, whereas imagination of the Creator is infinite.”
I am convinced that people really only wish to talk but never to listen. Nobody cares what you have to say, nor do they want to ask questions. They want to get on the air and say their opinion. Why is this? Do we live lives of quiet desperation? Do we truly live day to day without being heard? And who is supposed to hear us? And what happens when we are heard? Are we content then or do we get addicted to being heard and we want more? Most of the time, people are waiting for a lull in a conversation so that they can say what’s on their minds. Even now, as I am writing this, I know that nobody will read this. Even if I plaster it all over the Facebook and Twitter, and many other channels that I can think of. Nobody will read it. What does that mean for me? Am I quietly disappearing into nothingness? Was I part of nothingness to begin with? And why do I think of myself so special that anyone would indeed read this? And who are the others that should hear me? Are they experts on the subject of hearing and listening intently? Highly unlikely. Or maybe my emotional self is playing tricks with my intellectual self, and those out there are indeed experts.
So many times, we lament. Some lament quietly, some loudly (like Job). But we find ourselves, even if it’s once in our lives, to lament to God about something that went wrong. We want someone else to respond to that lament; we want God to respond to the utter pain and isolation we feel as human beings. The more nobody responds, the more we fall down the hole of darkness and quiet despondency. I have asked myself many times: why do we need the other to affirm our existence? It is a fair question, I think. We don’t but at the end of the day, we are wired for relationality—finite (human beings with other humans beings) and infinite (God and human beings).
This brings to mind Krysztof Kieslowski’s film trilogy Blue/White/Red. In “White,” the main protagonist Karol Karol walks the streets of Paris. He doesn’t speak the language, he is utterly misplaced and displaced, he doesn’t know anyone, his credit card is rejected (and so is he, in a way) and he doesn’t have enough money or any other means to go back to his homeland, Poland. People are quite literally bumping into him, as if he is invisible, as if he doesn’t exist. His voice is not heard. The pain of feeling invisible to one’s fellow human beings is unbearable. I would say, to turn Kundera’s title the other way around, it is the unbearable heaviness of the being. We do not feel light; we feel heavy dragging our feet and our body and the heaviest of them all, our heart. Finally, in an act of complete and utter despair, Karol Karol sits on the floor of the busy Parisian metro (where all those busy Westerners take no notice of us tired and haggard Slavs) and “sings” a Polish song on his comb. A man comes towards him, looks at him and start to speak to Karol Karol in Polish. He has been heard.
Sometimes those who speak the same language as we do cannot understand or fail to hear us. We truly need for someone to hear us and understand us without endless explanations. Will the lament be heard? Perhaps this is the question which is mostly on our minds (even in the midst of busy-ness and productiveness) because it signifies one aspect of the meaning of our lives. Will the lament be heard? I certainly don’t have an answer to that question nor would I presume to have it. As William F. Buckley, Jr. once remarked (when asked “what happens in the mind of God?”): “I cannot answer that question simply because I do not know; my imagination is finite, whereas imagination of the Creator is infinite.”
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