Opening thoughts

Firstly and most importantly, if you're reading this then you thought it worth your while to take time out to and read my writing. My deepest thanks!

I should say from the outset that the first post of 2014 'The Sight of Vitality' was not originally meant to be shared publicly. In fact it was written as an extended 'note' on my phone over a few days and just refined itself into what it is here. I mention this so as to account for the rather abstract and philosophical nature of the piece. I usually prefer blog entries to be more conversational in nature so as to stimulate conversation between myself and you the reader.

Be that as it may, I had to start somewhere, and was finally convinced by a close friend and my sister to share this. I hope it is a blessing of some sort.

Lastly, leaving comments/questions/thoughts on the actual blog is ideal but can be tricky (I've tried fiddling with the settings though) so should you want to give such feedback but are unable to for whatever technical reason, do email me at zamamoyo@yahoo.com. That you should share in my passion (writing) is an honour; that you should respond to it the sweetest of pleasures and a real privilege.

Stay Blest!

-Zama, 02 Feb 2014

The Sight of Vitality

I regard seeing as the fundamental characteristic of vitality. To see is to know you're alive and to recognize the life around you simultaneously. The tendency, I suppose, is to add emphasis on seeing things 'as they are'. But I find this needless. For it seems to me that, by definition, to see is to apprehend the realness and reality of things, that is, to be sure of the immediacy of what one is seeing and to be reasonably certain of the object's empirical stability -there is no perpetual threat of its annihilation. Therefore, if I 'see' what is not there I am not really seeing but I am in fact hallucinating, or projecting, or the like.

This seeing-as-awareness notion is evidenced by how, since times biblical, human beings associate knowledge with light, so that to have something revealed to you is to be 'enlightened'. Perhaps it is best demonstrated at the scientific level. Seeing, in the strict sense of visual perception, is contingent upon three things: light, an observer, and that which is observed. Take away any of the three and the possibility of seeing is gone. For if we take away the object being observed, it stands to reason that there is nothing to see. In scientific terms, there will be no object off of which the light can bounce back to the observer. Secondly if we take away the light itself, there will be no signal for the observer's brain to process, and therefore no sight (even though the object does indeed exist). Finally, if we take away the observer, then there will be no reception of the light bouncing off the object, and therefore no seer. 

I would further conjecture that the latter (absence of the observer) is the principle behind the clinical condition known as depression. At a psycho-emotional level, one is not able to see his surroundings when in the depths of a seemingly chronic state of melancholy. Though there is a visceral knowledge (light) of one's immediate environment (object), it seems that one's sense of appreciation is lulled by the constant hum of pathos. Some years ago, a relationship ended, and having been attached to the person to an unhealthy degree, it triggered a 6 month period of depression. I remember very vividly a visit to the nursery with my mother, after which I intimated- perhaps in writing- that the flowers seemed to have lost their colour, and that my world, everywhere I looked, was just grey. Hence I was not seeing at all; to simply say that I did not see the flowers 'as they were' is to say that I beheld a version of the flowers that was non existent. And this is true. If indeed it is the case, I was not seeing but imagining/conjuring a world in which all was grey. Seeing is absolute. Clarity is another matter altogether.

But aside with technicalities. The gist  of the above, loosely, is to say that depression blinds one so that all the vision one has is merely a composite of the brokenness (grey) and a vague memory of one's surroundings (flowers). Thus on that day at the nursery with my mother, all I "saw" were dull flowers in a grey world, when in fact there lay in numerous rows in front of me beautiful petals exuding all sorts of hues in a world of possibility- good, bad, but infinite nonetheless.

"The opposite of depression, notes author-psychologist Andrew Solomon, "isn't happiness. It is vitality". For it's quite possible to be happy and be unaware of it; it is possible to lose touch with who, where and why one is in the ecstasy of elation. Feel the wind. Don't be lifted by it.

The inspiration for this elaborative piece came when I saw a group of children singing Katy Perry's 'Roar' in tandem. I chuckled quietly to myself. Having not grasped the exact words to the song, they simply fabricated intonations to the tune so that it sounded like the popular anthem. That was good enough for them.

As you can gather, what I saw was not by any means profound. What is significant is that I did see it; I observed those carefree souls giving expression to their childhood innocence and it evoked a response from me. That, surely, is to be alive. It is to see, and in recognition (or bewilderment, or amusement etc) to respond to what I see. To see is to be aware. To be aware is to be vital.

The intuitive reader will pick up that there is a sense in which the seeing being elaborated upon here has to do with more than just ocular perception, but includes, as awareness necessarily does, a general consciousness involving any and all senses. We are alive to sight, sound, taste, touch and smell (some would extend that list). Indeed I physically watched the little ones scuttle up the street in melodious unity, but I obviously had to have heard it too.

And so I write in celebration of vitality, and though I don't possess the eye of a tiger, am scarce louder than a lion, nor will you hear me roar, I hear another song, the last line of which oscillates in my head like a welcome refrain:
      'Was blind but now I see.
- January 2014