total un-totalization

I’ve been thinking a lot about totalization.  It’s an idea of Emmanuel Levinas, a modern philosopher whose ideas have rocked my world.  He’s all about the Other—anyone who exists other than you.  It’s your responsibility as an “I” to care for the Other.  Because of the presence of the Other, I am aware of my own existence and it is through the Other (by recognizing and accepting my responsibility to them) that my existence has meaning. 

Anyway, totalizing, according to Levinas, is trying to confine things to our own limited experiences…putting things into categories and labeling people in ways that we can comprehend, which are not always accurate and are never a good representation of who they really are.  Well, we all totalize, but why?  Why do we feel the need to fit people into these nice little boxes, to make judgments about them, to always assume that they must act a certain way, to confine them to a single descriptive sentence or even one word that came from some inaccurate impression we got from them?  

I’ve been really struggling with this one; I always tend to judge people right off the bat and think that I know everything there is to know about them just because I noticed that they were wearing a certain thing or I heard something they said.  For some reason, we have to control things and feel like we understand them.  Like me right now—I’m trying to understand why we need to understand things!  Vicious.

…

I’m sitting on the roof right now of one of the buildings on campus, eating a loaf of bread and gazing at the mountains.  I suppose it’s officially spring (finally!), and the mountains are covered with all sorts of wonderful shades of green. Some are even still a little snow-capped.  The bell tower is ringing out a melody I’m unfamiliar with…it’s as if the mountains themselves are inviting me to listen to what they have to say.  So many people have come to and gone from this valley, each having their own story, their own way of doing things, their own existence.  But those mountains have always been here.  I wonder what they would say about the true nature of human beings, what they think it means to be an individual and to truly exist.  I bet that even after centuries of watching us humans down below, they’re still surprised by us.  Or, maybe the most surprising thing of all is that they’re not. 

Next time you’re surprised by something someone says or does, stop and think about it—why are you surprised?  Is it because you never expected them to do or say that certain thing (be it good or bad)?  Aristotle said “we are what we repeatedly do.”  I like that; I would tend to agree. 

So let’s apply that and say that I’ve never told a lie in my life (which would be a lie, but that’s beside the point)—that would make me honest, right?  What about when I finally do tell a lie?  Would I be considered a liar?  What if I had never stolen anything and one day I decided to rob a bank, would you call me a thief?  But I was a repeatedly honest person, except for that one time.  Let’s look at from the opposite view:  take a compulsive liar who finally decides to tell the truth.  His status hasn't changed--we still think he's a liar.  Doing a good thing just that one time wasn’t enough to make a “bad” person good, but for some reason, doing one bad thing was enough to make a “good” person bad.  I guess these examples only work if you think that Aristotle meant that we are what we repeatedly do 100% of the time—I personally don’t think that’s possible, so these might not be the best examples.  But they help me illustrate something:  I think it’s interesting how it seems that we like to keep people defined by what they repeatedly do only if their habits don’t meet our standards of what is appropriate to do.  If someone is a less-than-savory character, that's all he'll ever be, it’s final.  But if they’re (mostly) good, we want to bring them down a notch or two.  Why? 

I don’t know, but I’ve done it myself plenty of times.  I think it might have to do something with the totalization idea—we can’t explain why someone would step outside the boundaries we have set for them.  Why on earth would someone so good/wonderful/smart (etc…) ever do something so bad/terrible/stupid (etc…) or vice versa?  They must not be who we thought they were, right?  Right!  I am not what you think am, I am what I think I am.  Sure, what we do is a huge part of what we are in the moment and of what we will become.  But what about what we want?  What we dream, what we’ve experienced, what we hope for?  What about what we believe in? 

I am highly religious; I believe that God has certain expectations of us and that we are required to meet those expectations to the best of our ability in any given moment.  I also believe that I will always make mistakes and that I will not always meet the requirements that my Father in Heaven has for me.  But I try to live according to my beliefs as often as I can.  So even though I am not repeatedly doing what I believe to be good, I am repeatedly trying to do those things.  And always want to do those good things.  So I think that what we are, how we can define ourselves, is how our repeated actions line up with our efforts and with our most sincere desires.  What do you want?  What do you have to do to get it/be it?  Are you trying to do those things as often as possible?  Great!  Sounds like you are what you say you are, not what someone else says you are. 

Mess-ups happen.  But I know that forgiveness is a gift from God and is as real as I’m sitting here.  The problem is, at least for me, is that I’m reluctant to try it out.  I’d certainly like to forgive someone for messing up, I do it often enough you’d think it’d be easy for me to forgive and forget, as the saying goes.  I think the problem with forgiveness comes because we don’t want to forgive ourselves.  I guess it’s one of those things where the quality that I can’t stand in somebody else is the same quality that I hate about myself.  I won’t forgive myself, why would I be able to forgive someone else?  It’s something I’m working on, but it’s definitely an uphill battle.  People have so much potential to be as excellent as they can be, and I think that by being able to forgive them for falling short every once-in-a-while I can look beyond the label and help them reach that potential.

...

I suppose to some extent it’s important to be able to have some sort of system for identifying those around us.  But identification is different than definition.  Even though the fact that I’m a college student helps others identify me, it doesn’t really define who I am.  The trick is to not let those identifiers get in the way of the person we’re identifying.  As the saying goes, we shouldn’t miss that big beautiful forest just because we can’t see around the tree (that’s not exactly how it goes, but that’s how I interpret it). 

People deserve a chance, what does it hurt to give it to them?  Even if it’s the 490^th time you’ve given it to them, give ’em 491.  It’s what we all expect everyone else to do for us.  More importantly, give yourself the chance.  You can do it, you just have to know what you want and be willing to go for it. 

There are so many wonderful things to know about a person, more than I could ever get to know in three lifetimes.  But I certainly won’t know anything if I can’t just let someone be and accept that their being is different than my own. 

So live and let live; let others do the same.