“Myself and my circumstance”

[mount_oregano]

My novel Immunity Index opens with a quote from the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.” I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.

If you know nothing else about José Ortega y Gasset, remember that sentence, his most famous, written in 1914. The Spanish philosopher died in Madrid on October 18, 1955, at age 72. He was active in the Second Republic and went into self-exile at the outbreak of the Civil War, although after 1945 he returned frequently to Spain.

For him, “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” expressed the constant conflict between every person and the time and place where they are born: the drama and tragedy between necessity and freedom, of living with a reality that “forms the other half of myself.”

For him, freedom meant “being free inside of a given fate,” with a necessity to act: “if I do not save it, I do not save myself.”

 “Life is what we do and what happens to us.” Within fate, we can choose our destiny and create “a project of life.”

Some may find their philosophy of life in religion, existentialism, or nihilism. He created a philosophy based on pragmatism:

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.”

What are you going to do?

Comments

[larryhammer]

What you say is more important than how you say it
What you do is more important than what you say
And what you build is more important than what you do
So what you going to build today?

from "To Young Leaders," Guante

[mount_oregano]

Exactly.

[asakiyume]

It's a good philosophy. In a quotidian way, I think about it in terms of how we spend our time each day. There are many things I want to do: I want to write, I want to refurbish the statue in my basement, I want to sew an Afghan nomad dress, I want to check in on my dad, I want to help my tutee, I want to ... (etc.) --But where do I put my time? What do I actually do? What we do creates our life.

I don't really understand what Ortega means though by saving his circumstance. How do we save our circumstance?

[mount_oregano]

That's a lot to do! I have a long list, too, and what I ignore creates my life, I think.

You can save yourself by making a circumstance worth living in. This might mean changing the circumstances. To pick a heroic example, Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, and then he saved his circumstances and thus himself by spending the rest of his life fighting for freedom for others.

[asakiyume]

*nodding* I see--yes, that makes sense.