A Working Life
On retiring recently from moneyed work life, a significant milestone defined by capital values was reached. From this welcome vantage point, I have been contemplating the privilege of a life fulfilled. Meaningful work, necessary absorption, and the longing for recognition are some of the coloured threads that weave, recur and vibrate through the human spirit. My reflection traces back through time to the origins of substance set in place long ago. I remember my first job, defined as an effort or task for reward, outcome, or benefit to ones self or others, was initiated by a request from my mother to fill the coal bucket with turf and coal.
This required, as a consequence, to go out in the cold and often windy rain soaked darkness to the little shed attached to our farmhouse. Both the coal and turf were different sized forms of blackness, energy stored as dark matter dug from the earth and brought the final few yards to be piled in the hearth during the winter months, and burnt for our warmth and comfort. Everyone in the family relished placing the feet or hands near the flames once ignited and roaring, yet not all were so enthusiastic to brave the wind and weathered events to secure the necessary supply of raw material for our collective comfort. In those solitary treks to the shed, the foundations of character were laid, far removed from the record keeping or rewards of capital value.
There is a violence that we all fear, not just as children, which lurks in the dark of night and in the dark corners or reservoirs of our own interior - or in the underpinnings and underground of our own sensings. This fear, which is secondary to the violence, seems to lurk in that place, which is all around, that cloaks and contains our being, existing behind and below what we know we can perceive.
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The fear of hurt is what protects us, yet compels us intensely due to the captivation of our attention. Without adherence to the compulsory form of fearful content, we can be set free. Violence is gone then as is the fear and all its accompanying angels of darkness and finality. This is, we discover, where the beautiful lives, sustained now by our same attention that gives it full representation and light. Yet even without this attendance the beauty is self sustained because it depends on no thing.
We in our socialised form are entwined and connected to all others and in the structure of this relation we are sustained through recognition. Yet this social law has an adversarial nature because being recognised is the deepest need and requirement of a human self. This longing aligns with the historical struggle described by Alexandre Kojève in his interpretation of Hegel, where the desire for recognition drives the very engine of human nature and therefore culture. This desire often manifests as a struggle for prestige, creating a world of Hegelian masters and servants where everyone is a prisoner of the others gaze. This dynamic will happen whether the desire is for any form of perceived higher or lower values. Not receiving any recognition is our greatest fear, and is where a terror can live, giving birth to all manner and flavour of violence, gross or subtle. The metaphysical erasure of the self, gives rise to a fear so profound that it compels us to dominate or even to accept being dominated, just to ensure we are seen.
However, like all things born of the western mind, Hegels end-of-history utopian scenario, where everyone is reciprocated and recognised by every other, is an idealised confection. It is a vision born of linear thought, a straight line seeking a finality that lacks the depth of understanding of the absence that allows all to be. The western insistence on total visibility assumes that to be unseen is to be nothing, yet it is in the absence of the self and the absence of the others gaze that true freedom is found. A life of great meaning and value is one free from this root of violence through the desperate need for recognition in the eyes of an other or others. The core of the transcendence of violence occurs when the goal of our effort shifts from the acquisition of status to the total absorption in the work task at the heart of life.
A life that has been coloured by this specific kind of work that brings an end to the need for recognition is a holy life. In the silence of that effort, the violence of the world falls away, leaving only the beautiful, sustained by an attention that seeks nothing in return. This work changes the world not through force or the demand for attention, but by offering a model of existence that is not predicated on lack or hunger.
To fill the vessel of your life without the need for thanks is to negate the struggle for prestige entirely. It is to walk through the drama of the dark rain and return not as a mere servant, but as a source and agent of light. We change the world not just by conquering the place where fear resides, but by occupying it with such complete attendance that the fear simply has no room to remain. Through this holy work, we do not just warm the house; we light an interior lamp that requires no external spark, finding peace and sharing a love, in the very absence that linear thought is incapable of understanding or containing.
