Anam Cara

The world of media and corporate marketing has actually homogenized things completely and wants to make everything the same. The advertisement you see for Levi’s over the Midtown Tunnel as you come into Manhattan is the same as the ad you’ll see in Limerick or Dublin or even in the desert or the Middle East. There is an incredible difficulty for individual places and individual experiences to assert their own uniqueness and individuality. It is very difficult in mass culture to argue for a unique space—for what is individual and different. Yet one of the most important conversations in any life remains the conversation with what is other than you. When people get into trouble psychologically, it is often because something comes upon them that frightens them, or paralyzes them, so that they cannot move, work or function. It is something they would never have anticipated in themselves. This sudden confrontation with unexpected otherness becomes crippling. For instance, some people who are perfectionists may find an otherness awakening in or around them that renders them helpless. One of the most threatening forms of otherness in any life is illness. It is a frightening thing that you can be going on with your life, thinking you have troubles, and then you run headlong into serious illness and your life and your world are absolutely altered.

The oppositions that are in us often constellate themselves in other ways, in terms of contradiction. It is interesting to see how the media handles contradiction. The media focuses on an image, but an image is always just one view of a thing, it is never the full view. If you want the full view, you meet with a person face-to-face, or you read good literature or listen to good music or look at a good painting or a good landscape. Then the multi-dimensionality of a thing comes through. The media is essentially like Plato’s Cave—a parade of shadows that we take for the real world. It is a huge subtraction from what is real. To believe in the media as the actual vehicle of truth or the way to “what truly is” can be very misleading. It is necessary to have the kind of exploration that the media does, but on its own as sole authority it is totally insufficient. Its presentations grow ever more syncopated into sound bites.

It is interesting that when the media notices a contradiction in someone, the reportage turns merciless. Usually, it has to do with a fall from a principle, because the media will inevitably have structured the image in the first place in such a way that a certain principle has been embodied. When a contradiction emerges, there is a sensational story. The media “outs” people and, in certain instances where it has a public interest dimension, this can be warranted. More often, however, I believe it is a massive intrusion into the private lives of individuals. While it may make a story today, the media light moves quickly elsewhere, and the exposed individual is left with years of struggle to put his or her life back together again.

What is interesting about contradictions is that each person is a bundle of contradictions. Normally we are not aware of our contradictory nature because there is so much of ourselves that we keep completely hidden. Perhaps one of the reasons we are on this planet is to try to become acquainted with all that is in us. When you meet someone who is not afraid of themselves it is a lovely experience. They might be a mass of contradictions but at least they have patience with their own otherness. I think that, in many ways, the images of self that we see reflected in political life, religious life and media life are totally inadequate to carry the depth that is in us.

In a contradiction, the two sides are meeting. An opposition is happening; it has come alive with great tension and energy. It can be a frightening time in a person’s life, but also a very interesting time. Usually, the way we settle and compromise with ourselves is by choosing one side over the other side, and we settle for that reductionism until something awakens the other side, and then the two of them are engaged. I was talking to somebody who was going through a huge conflict trying to decide if he should do A or if he should do B. A wise friend of his said to him, “If it’s either/or, it’s neither.” The idea is that at the heart of the opposition there is something else coming through. That is where I think the notion of balance is really very powerful, because balance is a providential thing that allows something new to emerge from the depths of crisis and contradiction. This suggests faith in a third force that often endeavors to emerge through the oppositions that are coming alive in us.

The Myth of Balance