Alienation: Our absence from ourselves

The current issue of Communio International Catholic Review is dedicated to the subject of restlessness. Hence, the first article is On Restlessness by Fr. Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

"With a work ethic that assumes worldly success as the governing principle of life," writes Fr. López, "and an increased sense of scientific progress claiming significant mastery over the beginning and end of human existence, the Western world has come to cultivate a seemingly positive, though superficial, concept of restlessness" (Communio, Summer 2007, vol. XXXIV, no. 2, 177-8). Indeed, human restlessness, the inability to be content and satisfied, has been a topic of theological and philosophical investigation for centuries, but especially in the twentieth century as existentialism matured. Indeed, one of the driving forces behind Heidegger's project of the recovery of the question of Being was restlessness, known in his writings and translated into English as boredom.

"Work," continues López, "valued almost exclusively for the sake of income, claims all of man's energies. Culturally speaking, it gives man's time and space their form. Man is ever more tantalized by the idea of moving ahead and upwards, keeping the door open to any change of job, city, country, or interest that may be required" (178). Such an openness, while the having allure of being liberating, is really quite disorienting, not mention destructive of communities.

Cutting to the chase, Fr. López observes that all this change, this standing ready in the hope of change, "signals a permanence of youth" (178). We must "keep going, transforming 'old age' into a sort of adolescence that is blind to its mortality. This restless, spasmodic search for an increasingly exciting novelty, however, is an appalling index of man's absence from himself" (178)

One of the most poignant pieces of television I have watched, albeit on DVD, is the final episode of season two, which was the final season, of the original BBC program The Office, in which Tim discusses the meaning of work in people's live. The monologue, while trying to be hopeful, comes off as a rather sad commentary.

Of course, St. Francis is a model of overcoming alienation, as are all the saints in their own ways, which is not a painless endeavor. We must be willing to suffer, even open to suffering. The saints are the concrete examples of how we become who we already are, how we overcome, in Christ, the alienation between ourselves and God, between each other, and between us and the rest of creation.

I could write much more, but others, including Fr. López, have written better. His article only begins with the critique I have touched on above and then moves toward a Christian understanding and synthesis, locating this all too human restlessness in our yearning for the transcendent and pointing us to the One for whom we long, the One who is our heart's desire. It is this encounter that changes and re-directs us. This certainly gives us something to ponder for Friday and serves as a long overdue philosophical/theological refutation of Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life , a book, at least the contents of which, not to mention the subtitle, I loathe.