The Modern Man has not only forgotten how to be alone; he finds it difficult even to be with his fellow man. He not only runs away from himself; he runs away from his family. The heart of the Ten Commandments is to be found in the words: Revere thy father and thy mother. Without profound reverence for father and mother, our ability to observe the other commandments is dangerously impaired. The problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals or with the realization of how we blunder in dealing with other people. It begins in the relation to our own selves, in the handling of our physiological and emotional functions. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the natural acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The fear of living arises most commonly out of experience of failure or insult, of having gone astray or having been rebuffed. It is rooted in the encounter with other human beings, in not knowing how to be with other beings, in the inability or refusal to communicate, but above all in the failure to live in complete involvement with what transcends our living. Man's quest for a meaning of existence is essentially a quest for the lasting... The way to the lasting does not lie on the other side of life; it does not begin where time breaks off. The lasting begins not beyond but within time, within the moment, within the concrete... The days of our lives are representatives of eternity rather than fugitives, and we must live as if the fate of all of time would totally depend on a single moment. Animals are content when their needs are satisfied; man insists not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need... Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no man who has not been moved by that anxiety. |