TO EXIST…
Stage 29 / Monday 25 May / From Lauzerte to Moissac / 24 km
While the path indicating Compostela invites pilgrims to walk on dirt paths, I quickly realize that yesterday’s rain has made these very slippery. Not wishing to find myself sprawling again, my existence, and especially the integrity of my person seem more important than faithfully following a trail clearly intended to be picturesque, through pastures, vineyards and woods, but less direct and less certain than paved roads. Less sure? That’s not really certain either, because walking along a road there’s always the risk of a car hitting you. The risk exists, and so do I! And without much beating around the bush, I embark on a meditation about existence!
My feeling of existing is like a dotted line. Absolutely null when I sleep, it can be very strong as I awake, especially if I’m coming out of a bad nightmare: “Whew! It was only a bad dream and I still really exist! I can get up and choose what I’m going to do next, no longer caught in an implacable dream where I felt like the plaything of a bad fate!”
When I take hold of my freedom to act, when I am in a situation of choice and I take control of my decisions, I find for myself then, retrospectively, a stronger sense of existing. This feeling implies therefore the act of choosing, acting, changing, questioning, making an effort. Whereas when I let myself go, when I slump in front of the TV to watch sports or a film, my feeling of truly existing slips away greatly, and sinks to zero as I fall asleep.
So I wonder: this existence, more perceptible at certain moments than at others, is it a reality? If so, it seems at first that I am really the only one to experience it with such intensity. And yet, as I stated earlier, I discover myself only existing sporadically! An uncertain reality, how strange! If my body is always there, even when I’m asleep, it’s another me who orders it to become active on waking. This is what is called in modern terms “the intellect” (the “νόος” by the Greeks, pronounced nouss), a part of me which appears and disappears depending on my fatigue.
And it’s this part of me, the intellect, which reveals existence. The intellect is capable of distinguishing if a part of me is in need: “My stomach is feeling hunger, my dry mouth feels thirst, my whole body wants sleep, etc.” The intellect is also capable of distinguishing pain, and designating the place in the body where the pain is manifest: “My foot hurts, my head itches, etc.”, and in so doing, proves the reality of belonging to a particular body which exists: mine.
Does that mean the reality of my existence implies the capacity to be able to designate, give a name to, parts of my body or my all (my first and last names)? In one sense, no. Because, if there is no one around me who can see, feel or hear me, nor know where I am, at the moment when I am writing these notes, I can affirm that I only exist to myself and that there is no need to designate myself by a name. Then it would only be my conscience that would make me exist in that moment!
But if my cell phone rings at that moment, an instant of perfect aloneness, one must admit that someone has thought of me, since somebody is calling me. For this friend my existence will be real, as soon as I push the green button authorizing the communication, and I have presented myself …
Such that my existence is equally a form of reality, with a first and last name, in the consciousness of other human beings … And not only human, because as the noise of my step on the road frightens a lizard who was warming himself in the sun on a nearby wall, I can conclude that my existence was quite real for him too, in the instant he fled! Yet, without this poor animal having the least idea of my first and last names!
My existence is perceived in different ways by different consciousnesses, my own of course, but also that of my friend, or the lizard’s. The fact that I exist is therefore thought by others, and interpreted differently depending on the circumstances. Menacing for the lizard, friendly for the one phoning me, my most objective existence is the one made in my own intellect, and which auto-defects when the latter has lost consciousness! “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am” (René Descartes – Principles of Philosophie - 1644): it’s a certitude! It is also the first principle of a method of founding all knowledge, even to the extent of wanting to prove the existence of God …
This said, what level of objectivity should I attribute to the awareness that I have of existing, when I compare this reality with other things that trot through my head and are much more conceptual: the notion of negative, or infinity, for example. The universe existed long before, and will exist long after my dwarfed consciousness today has perceived and appreciated it. As for infinity, it doesn’t exist materially. The universe can exist, whether my consciousness exists or not! But infinity cannot exist without a consciousness attributing this name to it, to give it a meaning, an explanation. Would God be in this category of concepts, despite the Cartesian method reputedly capable of certifying its reality?
What about other things: that tree I passed under, for example? Did it exist when I wasn’t thinking about it? It surely exists in time as an assemblage of atoms and molecules which give it the form of trunk, branches, and leaves that I perceive. Without forgetting its hidden roots whose existence I guess from experience. This beautiful great plane tree was there before I was born, and probably will still exist after I have passed by!
It (the tree) and I (thinking human) exist in an exterior world to which we are intimately connected. My consciousness allows me to distinguish myself from it. Other conscious beings will perceive it and me from different perspectives than my own. I exist in differentiating myself from that which is not me. Others perceive me differently from how I perceive myself, and also perceive the tree differently, like the lizard that scurried to take refuge there …
Thus, all existence exists in many forms, according to the conscience which perceives it, mine among others. And in such a proliferation of forms of existences, is a proper existence, an existence “in itself” really conceivable? There probably exist an infinity of aspects! |
“Cogito, ergo sum” - according to Goscinny & Uderzo |
What complexity then, around this simple word: “To exist.” I want to say: “In word and in thought, by action and omission!” This reminds me what catechism inculcated in me regarding the word “sin!” And now I have sinned here, yes I have truly sinned … having cogitated far too long on existence: two pages of notes instead of just one that I had originally intended in these paraphrases on my friend’s book. In my defense, since Rocamadour, I am inhaling and tasting the beauty of existence twice as much as before …
OK, the week is looking full, it’s time to get to the end of this stage, and to drown this flood of quibbling thoughts in a glass of “chase all” … uh, I meant to say “chasselas”, the specialty of Moissac! It’s also good to sniff and taste!
