Caring for People--Wisdom or Foolishness?

PART I --

Most people, if asked the question: is it wise to care for people?--might pause before answering--because if you care for people, you might get hurt and be disappointed. This is what I felt; and at the same time I longed to feel I could really care for a particular person or persons, and was pained because I wasn't sure I could.

Aesthetic Realism is necessary for understanding what it means to care for people, and why it is wise! I learned that, through knowing other people, wanting to see them truly, we will know ourselves. In a lecture of 1950, "Aesthetic Realism and People," Eli Siegel shows the dignity and large meaning every person has. He says:

“The importance of people is that they are reality in the richest form....The more we like people, the more we will be proud of ourselves.”

And the logic of this Aesthetic Realism explains resplendently. Our deepest desire, it shows, is to like the world on an honest basis--and this includes the people who inhabit this world. But this desire is in a fight with another desire--to have contempt for reality and people. In the lecture, Mr. Siegel explains:

“There is something in us that doesn't want to like people-- that doesn't want to like anything. There is something in us that says: if we respect something, or like something, we have taken away from ourselves. There is that in us which wants to like nothing but ourselves, and any time we consent to like something else we think we are giving up some of the love pie, the approval pie.”

Like young woman today, I had friends, and liked going to concerts, nightclubs, movies, and theaters. But with all the conversations I had with girlfriends, I was not really interested in knowing deeply their thoughts and feelings, what they were worried about, or hoped for. And often, these conversations centered on what we wanted to buy for ourselves, gossiping about other women, or on how the young men we knew were either Prince Charming, or selfish brutes, or little boys to be taken care of. It wasn't until years later I learned from Aesthetic Realism why I often felt so terrible after these conversations--and my friends did, too: it was the contempt in those talks that made us feel bad--foggy-headed, ill-natured, and exhausted, needing a nap!

Now I will tell more of what I am learning from Aesthetic Realism, and about aspects of the life of a woman, Constance Markievicz, who did care for people in a wide, important way in the struggle for Irish independence.

I. I Felt Caring for People Was Foolish

As I was growing up, I liked playing games with other children. Sometimes I wanted to be useful to another child, but I was also pretty selfish and spoiled‑‑secretly feel­ing I was better than other people. And like many girls, I used the fact that the adults around me weren't so interested in what I felt inside, to put up a wall between myself and others‑‑seeing it as smart to protect myself from getting hurt by them, and also getting pleasure hiding what I felt, and inwardly laughing at them. This was contempt, and it came with a high price.
In his lecture Mr. Siegel explains what was working in me, and what I needed to know. "The more we like people," he says --

“the more we'll be proud of ourselves. No person has ever disliked people and been proud of it. It isn't because people are people; it is because they are reality. We cannot afford to despise reality. If we do, we are giving ourselves poison.”

That was true of me, and it took its toll. While still quite young, I remember watching the movie "Heidi" and being aware that there was something wrong with how I was so cool toward people. When a mean relative tries to take Heidi away from her grandfather, I cried along with her, and wished I could show that much feeling for someone!

Aesthetic Realism explains the purpose we need: it is good will: "the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful."
I spent my teens and 20's not knowing this, and my desire to have contempt accelerated--as did its hurtful results. I had boyfriends, traveled on vacations, studied fashion--and only cared for people, not because of who they were, but because they made a lot of me. Anyone looking at me would think I "had it all together," but more and more I put on a show: hiding the emptiness I felt inside behind a smile, drinking too much, and, inside, afraid of never being able to care truly for anyone. Once, when the brother of a close girlfriend became ill with cancer and died, I remember feeling ashamed at how unmoved I was. I never once asked my friend what she felt.
Then, near the end of 1981, I learned about Aesthetic Realism from my brother, Kevin. I attended a Thursday evening seminar--and felt I had met at last what I was hoping for! I began to study Aesthetic Realism in classes and consultations. In one consultation, when I said I was afraid that thinking about a friend who was having difficulty in her life would make me sad and feel like sinking, I learned what the real reason was: I felt it would take time away from thinking about my favorite subject--myself. And my consultants asked:

If you look at people [deeply] do you think you will find not just sadness?...Are the elements in the drama of every person elements that will make you fuller and lighter if you think about them? If you see them truly?

I saw that this was true! I learned that the world and people I had once tried to get away from and scorn are actually related to me--and that every person can tell me something I need to know about my very self. And my education richly continues as I study to teach Aesthetic Realism in classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss.

In a class I attended some years ago, I spoke about my feeling troubled that I wasn't enough interested in other people, including friends, and Miss Reiss asked, referring to three of my friends, "Do you think if you knew Joanne Belle you would know yourself better?" I said that I wasn't sure. And she asked: "Do you think that Marion Fennell is an unrelated entity, or made of the same elements that Bill Marcus is made of, that Barbara Jackson is made of?" Miss Reiss then explained what only Aesthetic Realism teaches: that we are related to every other person through the opposites. All people, I learned, are a relation of sureness and unsureness, hardness and softness, energy and thoughtfulness, hope and fear. And if we don't want to see that relation, we have to feel our care for people is a donation. But when we do see our kinship to people we feel, as Miss Reiss said, “Encouraging a person is the utmost in selfishness."

What I have learned in these years has given me such a happy life, with a mind that is much keener and deeper, and a desire to know what people feel--people both close to me and far away.

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In Part II, I will continue this subject using the life of the important Irish patriot, Constance Markievicz.