No distance
On getting right into your life
We have to ask ourselves: “What is real?”
It is a modern question, especially when it comes to the internet and artificial intelligence. We ask ourselves this question when we read what others have written, when we look at photos and videos, and when we examine our own interior life, our own desires. What do I truly desire? Has that desire been put there by someone else? How will I know the difference? We want to get in touch with our “real selves”—as if our lives were not already real.
I. No distance
Donagh O’Shea is an Irish Dominican friar, writer, and potter. He writes an advice column, which is a goldmine of wisdom. Nine years ago, an older woman wrote to him about her anxieties about aging, and a nagging feeling that her life was nearly over.
This is what he said:
Yes, the passage of time is the most pathetic of all mysteries. Other mysteries we can choose to ignore, but this one stalks us all our life and pounces on us in unexpected moments. We all get old, withering a bit as we do so, and eventually we die. Those are the terms, and they are not negotiable. So the only choice we have is to accept this or try to resist it.
Resisting the thought of aging and death won’t help much; so the big question of our life is how to accept it. In the push and shove of our daily life we mostly try to bin that unpleasant thought—which of course isn’t a successful move (this piece of rubbish keeps coming back). How can we bring ourselves to accept aging and death, and still live with some degree of joy?”
[…]
The covers of magazines you see in the supermarket never have tired and timeworn faces on them—only fresh and beautiful ones. That is bound to be a false picture of human life (and besides, those images are photoshopped). Unless we have managed to avoid nearly everything, our older self has more depth and resonance than our youth. Let’s take credit, at least, for having lived.
But I don’t think that can be a satisfying answer by itself. Thinking about our life this way, we are like people standing in the distance, surveying it, measuring it, assessing it. But in reality we have no distance from our life. I think this is the key: no distance.
How do we get right into our life? When we use the words ‘my life’, what do we mean? Do we mean the dates they will write after our names when we die? In other words, do we mean the length of our life? Or are we referring to the highlights of our life? Or could it be something else?
The something else is just this moment. This present moment, with its content (what I am doing, and what is happening around me): this is my life. This may sound a little forced, but it is not so at all. We are quite often immersed in this awareness. Whenever something wonderful is going on I am wholly taken by it; I am fully in that moment; I am immersed in my experience, there is no distance between me and my life. This ‘no distance’ is another word for love. When we love what we are doing, we forget about ourselves, we don’t say things like ‘I haven’t much time left.’ Our whole life is somehow crystallised in this moment.
It is only when we are bored or frightened or worried about something that we distance ourselves from the present moment; we attempt to stand outside our experience. Many people spend the bulk of their life alienated from themselves in this way.
Do not be a spectator or a commentator on your life; instead immerse yourself fully in it. Measuring it is a way of being subtly separate from it. Worrying about the future is a way of being separate from the present. Wondering how long we have to live is a way of not living now.
II. The false recovery of reality as “style” and the practical urgency of living the truth
If you look at the world critically, you’ll quickly see a lot of it is fake. Naturally, many people realize this, and, at some point, attempt to get in touch with what’s real. There’s a lot of windy writing that tries (I think in earnest) to help—vibes to tap into, aesthetics to claim, taste and style to be determined.
But so much of this stuff still reduces our real lives to mere aesthetics, products, and consumption: optimized habits, objects, clothes, so-called “hacks,” rules, chatter. If you want to feel alive, here’s what to read, what to cook, what to wear, what to think, and what mindset to take on. This is a materialist’s attempt to achieve a state of “no distance,” as Fr. O’Shea describes it, and it does not work.
Of course, this chaise lounge, or these flax linen trousers, are literally real. Objects can be grounding. Strong writing and certain attitudes can be, too. But none of this is the ground itself. Nothing is a substitute for getting right up close with your life, focusing your attention six inches in front of your face. The depth of life, the actual living, the deep, damp earth, is missing. There is always more stuff, better stuff—more materialism, greater distance.
We cannot confuse a stylish life with being alive.