Revisit Camus. We read and seem to understand his words in The Myth of Sisyphus,
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. (--from, Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; translated from the French by Justin O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975), p. 11. http://www.camus-society.com/myth-of-sisyphus.html
Revisit and ask -- Is there another exploration, another investigation, emerging out from within his words? If words are living, they continue to reveal, disclose, unveil what is not yet unconcealed. This invites us to practice being an archeologist of aletheia
Aletheia (Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. It was used in Ancient Greek philosophy and revived in the 20th century by Martin Heidegger. It is a Greek word variously translated as "unclosedness", "unconcealedness", "disclosure" or "truth". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aletheia
Say it -- it is our contemplation and meditation to dwell with words in such a way that we allow them, and us, to assume our nature as ourself
In his poem, LOVE, poet Charles Olson wrote:
LOVE
(down
to my soul:
assume your nature as yourself
for the love of God
not even good enough
Stories
only
the possibility
of discrete
men
There is no intelligence
the equal of
the situation
There are only
two ways:
create the situation
(and this is love)
or avoid it.
This also can be
Love.
As archeologists of aletheia we excavate the bottomless depth and boundless horizon of what it means, to be, human.
There is, really, no end to it.
Like the sign says that we found in the Good Will store, now hanging on a beam in the hermitage wohnkuche (Raimon Panikkar Conversation Kitchen):
JOURNEY
The bend in the road is not the end of the road,
unless you refuse to take the turn.
So we look, we read, we converse, we meditate, we contemplate, we consider carefully what is found before us. And we fall into our excellence, our strength, our virtue, our faith, the truth that surrounds us -- even as we experience our doubts, our vulnerability, our feelings of inadequacy, our sense of personal failings and stupidity, and our participation in the ignorance that stands before our faces and smiles its belief in its own control and arrogance.
We attempt in our journey to take the turn whenever it happens.
From the Gospel writings of Luke:
NIRV What is hidden will be seen. And what is out of sight will be brought into the open and made known.
NIV For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
(We might also read each of the 55 translations of Luke 8:17)
This is a way to live one’s life.
I’ve often thought that suicide, or thought of suicide, is a veiled undisclosed desire to live one’s life free from the pain of separation.
Whereas, what is really true is that suicide, the act of it, would perhaps better not be acted on.
Rather a course of action be engaged in that looks into, digs deeper, excavates wider, and takes long looks at what hides behind appearance, what is longing to present itself to, for, as ourself, as ourselves with one another.
The philosopher/poet John Lennon wrote and sang:
Well we all shine on Like the moon and the stars and the sun Yeah we all shine on On and on and on on and on (Read more: John Lennon - Instant Karma Lyrics | MetroLyrics )
In Greek, the word όν (pronounced “on”) means “Being.”
Martin Heidegger, 20th century German philosopher, said that “we have forgotten Being.”
According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten. (-- Heidegger, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
If so, if we have forgotten Being, we are less inclined to ask the question, “What does it mean ’to be’?” Without that inquiry, the temptation ‘not to be’ (Camus’ serious philosophical question) does not receive a fair hearing.
Let’s turn a light -- (our light?) -- on this.
Doing so, we seek the intelligence of the situation wherein we find ourselves, dwelling.
This experience -- the experience of this -- is longing, to be, disclosed.
As Raimon Panikkar so beautifully points out in his Metaphor of the Window, this speaking to and through one another, listening to and through one another, is one of the ways dialogue and the archeology of aletheia goes “down/to my soul” -- and beyond, unconcealing the open, both within and surrounding us.
