Who are you? Can this question be adequately answered by merely looking into the mirror? I doubt it. You need to ponder. Now, I'm not talking of the kind of pondering I saw on Family Guy, where a Griffin character sat on a stool with head in hand, thinking. His wife came up to him and begged him to go look for a job, and he raised his hand carefully to heaven, struck a very contemplative pose and said, "Why?" No, definitely not that kind of questioning. The sort I mean is that which refuses to lie to the self. Heidegger calls this authentic existence, or Dasein. It is observing three ethical codes, which my uncle describes as the measures of good living: don't deceive yourself; don't deceive other people, and don't keep bad company. Words to live by indeed.
A story was once told of a woman that went to see a voodoo priest. She told him that she was having problems with her husband, and their marriage was suffering. The voodoo priest said he could help, but he needed five strands of hair from the mane of a lion. The woman was alarmed, but she knew there was a lion that lived not far from her village. She knew she could get five strands of the hair of its mane. But she needed to tame it first. The voodoo priest understood. He told the woman that she could in fact tame the lion. She was to go toward the lion each morning, taking with her a large portion of raw meat. She was to throw the meat at the lion and watch the animal devour the meat from a safe distance. From that safe, vantage distance, she was to speak and sing to it. The woman agreed. Each morning, she would draw close to the lion with some raw meat, and throw it to the animal to eat. While she watched the beast eat from a safe distance, she would speak and sing to it. She did this for many, many days. And when the lion became used to her, it allowed the woman to draw close and sit with it. The woman stroked the mane of the beast and, carefully, pulled five strands of hair from it. She brought the hair strands to the voodoo priest. He told her, "In the same way you treated the lion, treat your husband and you will be fine."
In the Lion King, Simba initially refused to go home. He was afraid of his uncle, Scar. He was afraid of embracing himself and fate. But when the baboon, Rafiki, confronted him, Simba realized that it was time to begin to return home. Sometimes a person treats a foreign land with more respect and reverence than he ever treated his, but just imagine if that person were to treat his own nation with the same love and reverence he treated another nation with. Just imagine, indeed. Of course his own nation might not be developed or fancy, but it is home. It truly is home.
Heidegger talks about the un-canniness of existence, and how the threat of the nothing scares us. Yet he insists that isolation is never the solution to the nothingness, to the threat of depression. Rather, embracing the present, the reality, the phusis; what is, with love, is the best way to endure and survive, and underscore the reality of being in spite of nothing; instead of nothing. Because, after all, as Paul would ask: "What can separate us from the love of God?" We must participate in spite of fear. We must return home and help our kin. We must be a gift to our people, to our nation.
"Perfect love drives out all fear," I have been told. It drives out the fear of oneself; it drives out the fear of the nation. It drives out the fear of one's family; one's truest family. For there is nothing wrong with the nation. All there is something wrong with is my perception. I can never know the nation; all I can know is what I think of it. And if I think and speak positively of the nation, treating it like God and Lord, in quite the same way I treated another nation; acting only good toward it, always, then I can begin to thrive, and be happy in my own land. And I am willing to try.
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