Being alive

Recent history appears to have ushered in an era of collective trauma, following a global pandemic, countless wars, mass atrocities, environmental crises, and corresponding sociopolitical instability. We are living through a period of profound anxiety and instability that threatens our very existence and challenges our ability to continue. All of this challenges our ability to maintain the capacity to create meaning.

THE CERTAINTY OF DEATH

Freud witnessed the suffering of World War I, lived through the Spanish Flu pandemic, and was forced to confront the death of his daughter, Sophie. He believed that to live fully, we must first accept the certainty of death as a part of life. Our culture was unprepared for this. As long as we were denied, we could not mourn our losses in life. Only when we could accept difficult truths by mourning individual and collective losses in order to continue being could we create realistic solutions.

BEAUTIFUL DAYS TO COME

Freud wrote extensively about the psychic processes that carry the soul from despair to hope. Freud's call to confront death gave way to Winnicott's exploration of the sustainability of living—the rhythm of being. Writing about the conditions of "going on," that is, psychological resilience, Winnicott argued that existence reconstitutes itself on the experience of continuity. For him, "going on" meant existence's ability to sustain itself at a minimal level. Hope wasn't necessary to continue; in fact, hope could even be the enemy of being, because it pulled time forward. The promise of "better days to come," which once motivated societies, is completely dysfunctional, especially today, for various reasons. Yet, the state of "being" is made possible through the bearing of the present. While hope says, "something will happen," continuing says, "even if nothing happens, I exist." What is most needed today is not so much hope as preserving our ability to continue. As long as we can continue, hope will manifest itself.

DEAD-LIFE

Winnicott wrote that in some people, the capacity to continue is realized through a "necrotic vitality." In some individuals, this capacity to continue becomes an internally dead continuity: Life flows, but its rhythm is dead. This state is neither despair nor depression; rhythm and creativity are lost. We can see characters experiencing this state of necrotic vitality in many films and novels. For example, we frequently encounter these characters in the films of Zeki Demirkubuz, characters who have lost the capacity to reestablish the rhythm of life yet still exist. In popular culture, the same mood is reflected in a mass context in Francis Lawrence's "I Am Legend": a body that survives but does not live.

LIVE CONTINUITY

Many people today live in this state of deadness, a life of automatic repetition. The body moves but there is no rhythm, the emotions work but there is no resonance. Here the figure of "producing much but living little" is born: performance is high, existence is low. Depression is not always melancholic; sometimes it takes the form of a lack of affect. And paradoxically, one continues with this deadness-alive continuity. Therefore, "carrying on" is not enough; one must distinguish between a living continuity and a semi-dead continuity. Living continuity is possible not by denying or otherwise eliminating trauma, but by making it bearable. In this state, one does not repress the rupture; it becomes part of the inner rhythm. Continuing is no longer an automatic repetition; it continues through re-experiencing. In other words, one can both bear the weight of one's past and exist without being crushed by that weight.

If the world survives, so do we; if we survive, the world becomes visible again. And then hope is no longer a belief; it becomes the rhythm of life.