The Great Reduction. Jay Trott

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that life—not stuff or honors—is the thing we really want the most.

      So why do we chase after the stuff and honors? Because unconsciously we think they will give us life. Our desire for life is the hidden force in all ambition and striving, hidden even from ourselves. But in old age, this desire is unveiled, and then we see the futility of our toil.

      This is the analysis of our continuing unhappiness put forth by Ecclesiastes. You can decide for yourself whether it fits the facts. If so, then you may find some interesting information about contentment in this bracing old book.

      A generation goes, and a generation comes,

      but the earth remains forever.

      A great irreducible truth has been revealed to Solomon in his old age—or through old age—and will not let him go. Any thought of the importance and uniqueness of our toil is lost when we realize that generations come and generations go.

      It is hard to say exactly when this happens. Maybe it’s the first time you find yourself being extra careful on the stairs or stymied by blurred words on the page. Maybe it’s when the hearing starts to go. Maybe it’s when you realize that the people in the nursing home are not that much older than you.

      But it does happen, except in the oblivious. At some point it will become evident to all that we are far from being immortal. Our heroic struggles and toils do not make us like God. We will pass away into oblivion, and those struggles and toils will be forgotten.

      For Solomon, the undertow of this realization came from the fact that it caught him while he was still unhappy. He had been toiling all his life for happiness but had not found it, and now he is beginning to realize that happiness might not be possible at all.

      The sun also rises, and the sun goes down.

      . . . and Solomon is still unhappy. Not only is the sun not his own personal source of life and identity, but it is also indifferent to his unhappiness and changing moods. This makes the rising and the setting of the sun wearisome to him.

      It wasn’t always this way. When we are young, we tend to think the sun rises and sets on us alone. It seems personal. But in fact the sun rises and sets to sustain all life on earth, not only ours. The larger context of this sorrowful reflection, then, is life.

      The sun’s indifference to his suffering is painful to Solomon and the shining identity he has been pursuing all his life. Instead of bringing him the dawn of a new day and a new hope, the cycles of the sun begin to mark his discontent with relentless precision.

      A sunny day without joy can seem very long indeed. Solomon is looking for the restoration of the joy he once knew. He will find it, but he has a long, long way to go.

      The wind returns again according to his circuits.

      That is, according to God’s inscrutable plan. Like the sun, the wind is indifferent to us and our little struggles. The plan for the wind is not known to us and has nothing to do with our hopes for happiness. It has a purpose, a function in the natural order of things, but it is not to our purposes.

      The reason this thought is oppressive to Solomon is it shows him his nothingness. The winds do not change when Solomon is unhappy; they do not adjust themselves to give him good cheer. The more he understands about the winds, the more his sense of nothingness and dislocation increases.

      The wisdom he has obtained about the winds only increases his sorrow. And in fact the sorrows of wisdom will become an important theme as we go along—which is all the more amazing when we consider that Solomon sought identity in wisdom.

      The rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is never full.

      This could be Solomon’s motto. Think of the sea as identity. All the rivers of his highly productive life ran into this thirsty sea, but it can never be filled because he could never give himself the one thing he really wanted, the only thing that could make him happy.

      And this one thing is life. The desire for an enduring identity is the engine of all our striving, and it is rooted in the desire for life. We don’t want fame for its own sake; we want fame because we want our identity to live. This shows that our highest value is life.

      The Bible is unique in linking happiness to the desire for life. Adam and Eve were in paradise as long as they had access to the tree of life; their misery commenced when they were cut off permanently from that tree. That’s a poetic way of saying only life can make us happy.

      “The people living in darkness have seen a great light.” But what is this light? It is the resurrected life. Christ is glorified specifically because he obtained life. “In him was life, and this life was the light of the world.” John links the happiness that is found in him directly to life.

      Today we have another tree that gives us access to life. But Solomon knew nothing of this tree. He was among the people living in darkness. All his life he tried to obtain happiness by being a superstar. What he was actually trying to obtain, without knowing it, was life.

      All the rivers of his ambition flowed into this sea, but it was never full. There was no rest for him, no respite from his labors, because it was not possible to obtain the happiness of life. And now he is beginning to see the futility of all his striving.

      We are told there is a river that can satisfy eternal longings, the same river that “makes glad the city of God.” Ezekiel saw it, and it was last seen flowing down the streets of the new Jerusalem, quickening everything it touches, turning brown branches into life.

      This river can fill the sea of our longing because it represents the Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of life. But the age of the Spirit had not yet come. All Solomon could see from his disadvantaged viewpoint was the futility and weariness of striving to make himself happy.

      Unto the place from whence the rivers come, there they return again.

      Solomon’s great soul-weariness is marked by the theme of the perpetual return, which he will bring up repeatedly.

      We will ask your permission, dear reader, to use this term without invoking Nietzsche or Buddhism or the “eternal return,” the reincarnation meme, which is a very different thing.

      Aristotle tells us all good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. That’s because all good stories are rooted in identity. They have an ending because identity requires closure in order to be happy. The ending sets the story and the identity it provides apart from other stories.

      But Solomon has seen something terrifying: the rivers return from whence they came. God’s artfulness in providing for our needs—the cycles through which evaporation of the seas brings us clouds and rain and rivers return to the sea—has become oppressive to him by taking away happy endings.

      The rivers are always returning to themselves. And the same is true of the rivers of striving that we pour into the sea of unfulfilled desire. The moment we see them returning, the ending of the story is undone, and it is no longer possible for our endeavors to make us happy.

      It now occurs to Solomon that the stories he has been telling himself do not have a happy ending. He thought he was accomplishing something when he was participating in the perpetual return. Nature never grows weary in her cycles, but this is not the case with old men, as he is about to tell us.

      All СКАЧАТЬ