Seeking substantiality

Foggy, foggy days. Fog obscures and obfuscates. Some find it frustrating when things aren't outwardly clear. Others find it comforting, a damply opaque cocoon; protection against too harsh reality.

If nothing else, fog is a shade of grey - a challenge to our need to keep things black and white. Lives can oscillate between this need for definition and a desire to keep things fuzzy. Ultimately, we are insubstantial and we face or hide our own contingency; our inherently temporary nature; because for all our sculpting and accomplishment, our substance will finally melt and resolve itself, perhaps into a dew, maybe a fog, perhaps not even that.

So we seek substance to stave off mortality or bolster our sense of oblivion. The neurosis relating to buildings and our need to own or control them is a very common symptom of this - it underpins whole systems, economies. But the quest and even the 'fact' of ownership only fuels intenser insecurity because basically it isn't achievable. Witness the shockwaves when the premise that all should own their own premises cracked wide open. If property is so highly prized and priced, and so hard won, its privilege cannot be universalised.

Arthur Miller wrote on Death of a Salesman:
" I hoped it was a time-bomb, under the bullshit of capitalism, this pseudo life that sought to touch the clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator, waving a paid-up mortgage at the moon, victorious at last."

Seems the bullshit was more resilient than he'd hoped. We'll probably carry on attempting to solidify ourselves inside bricks and mortar, putting up names chipped in marble to tell them we did it, long after we've shuffled off; edifice as obituary.

But is there another kind of legacy?

Some more quotes: Maya Angelou said "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel."

Feelings. Who would deny they exist, but not as controllable as buildings, we think. Insubstantial as fog but deceptively powerful. What is passion, just heat in the blood or the driving force of society? The word comes from the Latin patior, to suffer or endure. What of com-passion then?

It was FEAR of failure that drove Willy Loman, some would say fear of the truth. He thought he was unloveable without substantial success. He needed a monument to his achievement. That's why Miller represents him as a gravestone at the end as his wife sobs above it how they're finally 'free' (having paid off the mortage).

Could Willy have lifted his cloud of delusion, wrestled his fear directly? Perhaps, but he couldn't even see it, only his externalised quest, and haunting taunting delusions. Are feelings akin to weather, states we must simply live with? Or can we make and shape them? Can we own or control our inner space?

Albert Camus said: "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

This suggests not only weather but landscape, seasons, a climate. A whole inner world. But not as substantial as a building. Not something you can point at, impress people, say I did that, make them admire you. How can discovering your own "invincible summer", have any outward effect whatsoever, create an important legacy?

The lesser known start of Camus' quote is this: "When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him."

A vocation to awaken glows. Seems Camus was of the persuasion that our own inner light can lift others. So perhaps the lack of light can limit. Willy Loman in Miller's play strives for his mortgage to prove his success but loses his mind, his family and life. No learning, no light - just a building.

What do we tell ourselves about our quests for happiness? Are we seeking the spotlight or greater illumination?