Restless Bodies, Restless Hearts

It is August.  Reflecting back, I see that July has been a rather barren, dry month for me.  It seems (to me, at least—although most of us are incapable of self-objectivity) that I have not accomplished anything.  But I was supposed to finish a first draft of that book I am working on!  And on top of it, I was supposed to write at least 25 pages of my theology thesis!  And I was supposed to have read all of Emmanuel Levinas’s works!  And I was supposed to have read The Divine Comedy AND The Magic Mountain AND The Brothers Karamazov!  And I am supposed to read the whole Qur’an during this month of Ramazan! 

July has also been a month of draught and extremely hot temperatures.  It is not surprising that my own perceived dryness coincides with the weather.  Summers are usually slower for me; it’s when autumn arrives that things begin to make sense again.

One of the main “themes” in Stoic philosophy is this notion of flow.  Life works according to nature, not against it.  And I could not help but think about this “flow” as I kept resisting the weather and anything else outside of weather that came my way during the month of July.

Sometimes, it feels as if you are running into things, into furniture, into other people, even into yourself.  Well, maybe not literally, but things just don’t feel right.  You want to accomplish a lot, so you go from step one to step seven immediately, thinking that things will get done faster in such a way.  But it always works against you.  Somehow, you always end up spending more time later correcting what you attempted to do (supposedly) faster.

I wonder why we always feel pressed for time, or pressed to do something as fast as possible so that we can move on to the next thing, which will surely be better than the previous thing we have been doing.  But then, the minute you move onto that “better” next thing, you want something else.  And so the cycle (or circle, depending how you look at it) continues.

Aristotle said that man is a political animal.  Man is also a restless animal.  How many times have I said to myself, “things will be better there,” or “things will be better then.”  Too many.  But this restlessness need not be a prison we can’t seem to get out of.  Restlessness sometimes indicates that we need to direct ourselves in a more fruitful and productive manner in relation to the rest of the external world. 

Restlessness implies a dynamic, a tension.  Eric Voegelin wrote extensively on the Platonic notion of metaxy, or an in-between-ness in relation to the political lives.  Simone Weil, too, wrote on metaxy in relation to our spiritual lives.  Both of them found nothing wrong this tension—in many ways, it is the paradoxes of humanity that keep humanity alive.  If we did not acknowledge our finitude, we would have no idea that we are capable of moving toward the infinite.

The difficult task is to be able to recognize when we are in an endless circle of indecision.  Although, we are in a constant state of dynamic, or that Stoic flow I mentioned above, we still have to be able to make a decision or a conclusion about something.  We don’t need to worry that we will run out of questions or doubts or moments of metaxy.  I say again that man is a restless animal, even when we submit to our Creator.  Augustine was right when he said that “our hearts are restless until they rest in you [God].”  But I think that Augustine spoke of a moment of conversion, rather than a continuing dynamic of life. 

Submission to our Creator results in a different form of restlessness.  We do not yearn for better temporal or spatial option in life.  We begin a need, yearning, longing for a union with God, even our fellow man.  We may even attain more wisdom than what we had before (at least, that is one’s hope).  But we are still finite.  Life still continues and we are thrown into different kinds of challenges, which give rise to restlessness that is dynamic.  Perhaps in the past, we were an acediac, and in the present, we emerge renewed with a sense of purpose.

But even so, I am careful of absolutes, especially when it comes to spiritual life.  Just because one has moved beyond restlessness as impediment, it does not follow that one is rid of it.  If not careful and disciplined, it is quite easy to go back to the old and familiar ways. 

Perhaps what Augustine really meant by that phrase that, for him, after his conversion, he was able to be a full and authentic human being.  Restlessness that he experienced before was purely based on the fact that he was unclear about who he was, and after submitting to God, he was able to become the authentic Self.  This is certainly at the center of Christian thought—losing yourself in order to become yourself.

I am not sure how one is to move beyond restlessness, which is brought up by acedia.  Recognizing the present moment?  Maybe it consists of doing small tasks, as slowly as possible, in order to know that most of life is sweat and not glory. Maybe we just have to stop aimlessness and choose a particular task in order to move beyond emotions of desolation or confusion.  And maybe, knowing that even desolation is part of the dynamic of metaxy, and that with perseverance and engagement with another person, (stepping outside of ourselves), we might experience a brief glimpse of glorious elevation.