Others

Others

Samuel Bird

The frigid northern winters had me locked in my home for too long. Though I thought I could last a while without interactions with others, months of isolation had broken that theory down. I drove into town from the windswept and frozen countryside I live in. Parking laws made me park a considerable distance from the library, but I parked and began my walk. My hope was the presence and occasional chatter of a stranger would quell my intense loneliness. As I walked up the steep hill into the wind, one of my eyes suddenly lost eyesight. I pulled out my contact, looked it over with my good eye, and placed it back in. Still, my eyesight was terrible. I continued to walk into the library and sat down. I started writing an article, but I just couldn’t put words to page as I had hoped. The ideas were messier and more rambling than normal, and I was losing the ideas that may have made it worth it for someone to read. I kept messing with my eye as it became more and more difficult to see out of and my brain became more and more confused. Being in the library, I put my faculties behind studying what this could possibly be. One of the options was a stroke. I had nearly died from heat stroke, had a series of scarring events, and had been hit in the head many times before. As I became more and more confused, my brother picked me up and started driving me toward the hospital. Being in a tight financial position, I began to now direct my limited cognition on planning my finances out. When this had failed, I sat there trying to think. I started to talk to tell my brother not to worry about me, but I began to cry. My mind seemed independent of my body. My mind was at peace and knew what it wanted to say, but my body began to cry, wail, and flail about. I couldn’t get the words out for him to not worry about me. I pulled out my article “Esse Maxim,” and tried to read it to gauge how far gone I was and to try to lock in a memory if I was about to lose my brain. I thought of you. I thought of how I had failed you. 

My message was still mostly in my mind, and what was written down was obscure. If I died or lost comprehension now, I would have failed. I thought of Nietzsche and his limitations. What ideas bounced around his frenzied mind when it lost touch with the world around it? What powerful ideas did he take to the grave? I wrote out a message that detailed what would be done with my few belongings, but most importantly, I left a note to my close friend who was my philosophy professor. I told him to publish my stuff, and to the greatest degree possible, clean up the ideas and get them out there. I looked over my life and thought of all that was done, and all that was not. I had failed to become a father. This was my biggest dream other than you. I wondered if the same guilt that came from taking a life, could be felt for not giving it. I realized that my seclusion had left me with limited people to miss me. One of the reasons I disagree that happiness is the highest aim, is one of my aims is to leave the world with the biggest hole when I leave it. As dark as this seems, it would show me that I had truly filled a needed role for others. I wondered who would miss me. How long would their hearts hurt? When would they heal? When would be the last time someone read my books? When my soul lived on in the minds of those it impressed, when would it flicker through their mind one last time, and I would never be again? I prayed and told God that I was willing to take whatever was about to transpire with grace and dignity, but as I had asked many times before, if He let me continue I would do what I could. We got to the hospital. Despite me calmly telling them my history and possible diagnosis, they proceeded to give me long lists of questions as I live in the age of bureaucracy. Four different people asked me the same questions, but each time they told me they didn’t believe me. I have had this experience before where I had to go to three doctors until a fourth one would finally believe me and looked to find I had a collapsed esophagus and three hernias. I wouldn’t care so much if I wasn’t going to possibly die or be in crushing debt. The doctor listened as I told him my situation, and my diagnosis. He told me I was too young and healthy to have that problem. I reminded him mileage is just as important as years when you look at a vehicle. I kept pressing him and pressing him, while I was struggling to think clearly. He finally told me that he would do an MRI. This is a fascinating machine that uses magnetism to look through your body by getting definition through different tissues and their resistance. You do this by going into a small tube. They told me people often freak out in there, but I was able to meditate and enjoyed the experience. After sitting there for many hours, the doctor came in and told me that they looked over the results and I did not seem to have a stroke. I had just read a book the day prior about doctors misreading MRI results and asked for my own copy. After much debating, he finally agreed. I then asked if it wasn’t what I thought it was, what he thought it was. He shrugged his shoulders. I was extremely frustrated. It felt like the same issue I ran into with everyone I met who would talk with me about philosophy. I would posit ideas and they would just shoot me down. While I didn’t get any answers that day, I had my MRI results and my concerns about brain damage was now something I could look into more. I went home feeling embarrassed as the doctor had insinuated that I was being over dramatic and I was beginning to doubt myself. I went back home in the darkness to consider myself, my failings, and what I could do now. 

Surviving enough things, I often feel like I can’t be killed, but every now and again, an event reminds me that I both can and it could be soon. I thought about my life. I told Gof what I would do, but now that I was here, I was no closer to figuring out how to do it. In my day, there are many talking heads that will go in public and tell you what they think. There are also many academics who have more training. I know what Esse Maxim can do, but I am also aware that there is no avenue for it now. Being disheartened, I realized I would have to make one. I reached out to a friend I had met at a hotsprings up the canyon from where I live. He was from far away, but was passing through to see our mountains. As we began to talk, he was surprised to see a philosopher and writer was among this sparsely populated agrarian area. He had a medium for interviewing people about their ideas, and invited me to join. Our One four meeting turned into over three. He asked wonderful questions that allowed for me to share some things that mattered most to me. He then asked me what I was doing about it. I told him about these articles and my books. He asked about speaking engagements and personally advising. I told him that I had wanted to do each for some time. He gave me some advice on the speaking engagements, but then asked why I had not started advising. I thought about it and realized that there was no reason but cowardice and convenience. Not liking either, when I thanked him and we were done, I began to type out a system of how I would do it. What I wanted to do was use philosophy and reason to help people see themselves, their world, and its relation with better clarity and power. I reached out to people and told them what I offered and what I thought it would do. 

A few responded and I set up an appointment. I put together my notes, made sure they aligned with my philosophy, and started talking to him. We went through his line of thinking and saw where thoughts were unnecessary and sought to ground them. We looked at what informal fallacies he was using. By the time we were done, we had really done something remarkable. After a warm goodbye, I walked home and realized that this was my favorite thing. I loved talking with him to get to know him, helping his deepest aims, and using philosophy. At the core of it was Esse Maxim and helped him deliberately engage with existence. I walked home riding high on these experiences. When I got home, I received some concerning professional news and it reminded me that my existence wasn’t that cathartic ecstasy I felt just an hour prior. I returned home to be alone and to sit with my thoughts. I sat down to write. I started on one of my books. I wrote a few pages until I realized what a fool and a hypocrite I had been. I loved people. My selfish personal aims had become the aims of others and helping them choose those aims. However, from deep and personal pain, I had allowed myself to minimize how well I acted on that love. I was too harsh on that doctor. What if I had taken that same chance to care for him like I did my friend? What if I had been less self obsessed when my friend had interviewed me? What if I had talked to my brother and told him how much I loved him instead of reading my articles? This isn’t a mistake that blindsided me, but one I was pressed up against. My whole life has been a circle of wanting to love others, and then realizing that proximity I put myself to them opened me up to being hurt. For this reason, I loved every relationship that I could drop in, drop off some love, and leave before they could say anything. More than that, there was still so much love that if I died, so would that love. I turned from written pages and began to reach out to as many people as I could. I made a point to thank them for how their actions had affected me. This showed a personal note and accentuated their behavior over their character. I reached out to old friends, family, and even foes. I made it clear that they had impacted me, and I was grateful for their being in my life. 

Other beings are an epistemic curiosity. They are the alleged same type of a priori being I am. They share a world with me, and many of their qualities are similar. Much of our experiences are the same, but the way we relate to them and respond varies greatly. No matter how much I think and read, they still seem such a mystery to me. Thinking and labor have been my easy answers to every issue in my life, but I fail to find how to apply them to others. I find myself making the same mistakes over and over again. I fail to see how someone cares for me. I take up too much space in conversations and emotions. I am inconsistent at applying my care. I unfairly place all people into the same basket. Someone that has done me no wrong, can be suspect because someone once did. A warm word can seem to come from a lying tongue. Eyes that admire are associated with ones that hold malice. How do I plan to make my life about others and help them, if I am fearful about them responding to me? I have found a few things to be helpful. When I forget what they think of me, and rather think of what I am doing for them or if they feel cared for, my fears are muted. I am lamenting this, my greatest mystery and concern. I don’t know, don’t know how to start knowing, and know how badly I want to. I am grateful I have Esse Maxim to remind me failure is only to not commit. While I am lost as ever, I continually build resolve that I will work to solve. 

Feeling this great failure between what I believe and do, last night I went to a small party with strangers. This is not the type of thing I go to often. It was full of young people who were just as lonely and repressed as I. There were games that I found silly. As people talked, I realized that the concerns I feel are shared, and in that way they found new life in myself. Many of the young people expressed how lost they were. I was not situationally able to commiserate, but I wished to. One young man in particular had said something to hide within it a secret truth I could read. He had made so many attempts to be a part of society, but had failed. In this sharing, he also pointed out some pains that came from his failures. As soon as I could, I pulled him aside and we talked. It was clear he was not someone that wanted to talk about what ails him, but he happened to be an author. I was able to then authentically give this young man what he needed; I gave him my attention, admiration, and curiosity. With little effort on my part but open ears, curious eyes, and a nodding head, I got his full life story and what he hoped to do with it. I thought of all the minds that passed by him. Each wanted so badly for what he needed, but they wouldn't give it to him. As he poured out his heart with nothing more from me than the chance, I was grateful that I took the opportunity. We went our separate ways as I thought about him. The human experience is brutal and extreme as it is mysterious and marvelous. Antidotes are offered all around, but their effects are suspect. While I am still wary of making them your Esse Maxim, others make a great supplemental part to it. What better way to know me than to know you. Helping myself makes sense when I help you. Solving me seems like a task I can start when I support you in doing the same. I like the idea of maximizing personal value, but the more I look, I find the best way I can do that is by doing so for you. I know I am the last person to have earned the right to talk to you about this, but whatever you do, don’t do it alone. We must then ask if I achieved my promise to God. Had I lived any better after this experience? The more I think about it, the more “better” evades me. However, there is one humble and powerful thing I can say. I am living more deliberately, but more than that, I am living deliberately toward others. No matter what we do, we press against reality. What I have found is my pressing gets stronger, when I reach out and press for others.