Imlisanen Jamir
An old saying holds that a person’s life is incomplete unless or until they have tasted love, poverty, and war.
Somewhere in New York, a century ago, the brilliant O Henry, once wrote a short story entitled “The Complete Life of John Hopkins,” in which a character manages to undergo the whole trinity of these phenomena while stepping out of his cramped city apartment in search of a five-cent cigar.
O Henry’s view was that “It seems the wise executive power that rules life has thought it best to drill man in these three conditions, and none may escape all three.”
Neither faith nor facts have given me gift of a belief in this supreme executive power, let alone in a wise one, but it would be idle to deny the element of perspicacity here. Most thoughtful or sensitive people would presumably like to say that we have too little of the first of these “conditions,” and a surplus of the second and the third.
George Orwell and Joseph Heller, two giants who have shaped my literary and ideological tastes, registered strong disagreement, arguing vigorously that money is far more important than love. To the extent that it is more important than health which—as Heller reminded us “won’t buy you money.”
But this in turn may have been an over-reaction to poverty, itself often falsely praised by many as something ennobling but now widely marked down for having the contrary effect.
Even though war has a bad press in general, yet it seems able to win glowing reviews in retrospect: retrospect being the very department where love lets you down the most. One might phrase it like this—and I am sincerely sorry if the address here is too masculine, but there is no help for it.
Men wish that they had been warriors, or are proud that they once were. They wish that they were in love now. And they like to view poverty as something that they overcame, or at least could have overcome.
Yet, the man who stresses his early struggles with want and scarcity is to be found practically everywhere, and will go on emptying rooms until the end of time.
Valued as war seems to be, concerning love, I had best be brief and say that when I read Bertrand Russell on this matter as an adolescent, and understood him to write with perfect gravity that a moment of such emotion was worth the whole of the rest of life.
And so it has proved, and so to that extent I can regard the death I otherwise rather resent as laughable and impotent.
Like all three phenomena, poverty is relative as well as absolute. All would place my ilk under the most fortunate of circumstances. Nobody would have any patience with my complaints, especially given the sad realities of many others.
Even so, that is no reason for the privileged not to fall prey to indifference; to resist the temptation to allow this status quo of political and social lethargy.
Now, from the personal to the public. Did politics always seem to be a sordid auction between banal populists, and did a visit to the movies or the theatre most often reward me with a sense of insult?
The struggle against pointlessness, as conceptualised by Erich Fromm is more resonant than it once would have appeared. But the enemies still look and feel much the same— that of greed, violence and xenophobia.
In the fight against these most base and contemptible forms assumed by human egotism and stupidity, our personal experiences can help shape our fortitude as individuals and people.
Nice thoughts and words are all good. Though what is really required is real action to placate the greed for power, and the lust for violence. This comes from facing our inner demons, our weaknesses, our shame.
Every action we make is an opportunity. To forge the ability to love; the will to help overcome poverty; and the fortitude to shun war.
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
