How to come to terms with the unpredictability of the world around us? How can we find the strength to trust life, if we know that it can be cruel? Reflections of an existential psychotherapist.
To be, to exist in this world already means to have a relationship with it. And just as we relate to the world in general, we relate to everything that surrounds us. After all, parents, and people, familiar and unfamiliar, and all objects, and animals are part of the world. But the matter is not limited to mere existence in given circumstances. Relations with the world are, first of all, comprehension of the rules of the game, which is called life.
Surprisingly, only Martin Heidegger developed this topic in philosophy at the beginning of the XNUMXth century*. He described such rules as «existentials». These are the conditions on which we exist in the world, «givens of our existence.» After all, we come to a situation that we do not choose. Gender and era, parents and nationality, social stratum and even, for example, the city in which we live — we do not choose any of this. Therefore, our task is to accept these givens.
And even if we plan to move to another city or want to break into another social stratum or even change gender, for starters we must accept that we now live in this particular city, were born a man or a woman … Then we can understand what does not suit us and try it’s change, but it all starts with acceptance. Heidegger saw the essence of acceptance in ceasing to be afraid of one’s circumstances, learning to look at them calmly.
Our relationship with the world is formed in the first seven years of life. The second seven years is devoted to our relationships with other people. In the third, we build relationships with ourselves. But first, the child discovers the world and learns to interact with it. The model for such interaction is his relationship with his mother: for an infant, the mother is the world. After a year and a half, other factors also turn on: trust in the world arises not only thanks to parents. In the end, the relationship with him is a personal decision for each of us. We have the freedom to trust the world—or not to.
Our relationship with the world is the search and creation of supports on which you can place part of the burden of your life.
The word «trust» is not accidental here. Remember how a small child learns reality. He then clings to his mother, then, making sure that he is safe, he goes to explore the world. And the distance of these «shuttle expeditions» is increasing every time. The child learns that the ground is solid and you can walk on it, that the neighbor’s dog is kind and will not bite, that the swing in the yard is strong and will not break. He learns to trust: mother, nature, people and his strength.
How is fundamental trust experienced? Here’s how: I put some of my problems on something or someone, on some kind of support — and the support survived! Moreover, there is no obligatory love and joy, there is only the experience of relationships with people who accepted me. So, I can be and they let me be!
Our whole life, our relations with the world, is a search and creation of supports on which we can place part of the burden of our lives. We find friends, master a profession, create a family. The support can be the structure in which we work, and relationships with colleagues, and our abilities and interests, people and groups of people … One of the most important supports is our own body. We feel well rooted when we have many supports.
The decision to trust is also related to the realism of our perception. The closer to reality our assessment of this or that support, the less disappointment and more confidence in people and in ourselves. Supports usually fail the one who does not agree to accept reality, who wants to remake it at his own discretion and does not perceive what does not meet his expectations. The world does not fit into schemes and theories at all. The only reliable statement about him is that he guarantees nothing to any of us. Only an open position of trusting curiosity can save.
Such is the world. To think otherwise is, in fact, not to respect him.
Anything can happen to any of us at any moment — this is one of the main rules of the game
By the way, stories about grievances that can be overcome, overcome by forgiveness — these are always stories about support that did not live up to expectations. And one of the practices of forgiveness is precisely to help a person understand: could someone who turned out to be an unreliable support withstand the burden placed on him?
Gratitude, on the contrary, is an experience associated with the fact that «my support did not let me down.» Anything can happen to any of us at any moment — this is one of the main rules of the game. And this is the biggest test of our relations with the world. When all the pillars collapse, will there be anything left? How can I be in the world then? And can I be? Or will I fall into this abyss of horror and despair, because there are no more supports?
In existential analysis there is the concept of «the basis of being.» We are talking about an experience rooted, as a rule, in previous experience. About the experience that even if all the supports collapse, something will still remain. This very complex philosophical construction is nonetheless intuitively understandable to anyone who is content with the phrase: «It never happened that it never happened.» This is the basis of our being.
I really like the image of the world as a trampoline stretched over an abyss. You can look in horror through the net into the abyss. And you can focus your eyes on the interweaving of this mesh itself, realizing that it has already withstood us more than once.
Yes, she tossed us up so that we fell awkwardly on top of her. But she endured. And will endure again. A person with such a focus of vision, with such an attitude to the world is well arranged in life — regardless of everything else. This ultimate experience of trust is often referred to by people as God. But this is not a question of belief in particular gods. It is a matter of our relations with the world.”
* M. Heidegger «Being and Time» (Academic project, 2013).