THROUGH UNTRUE
Fr. Rolando V. dela Rosa, O.P.
Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, said that the unexamined life is not worth living. For him, self-examination leads to self-knowledge, which is a sure way to happiness. Hence his famous dictum: "Know thyself."
Many centuries have since passed. Thanks to psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and social scientists, we have learned a lot about ourselves.Through the internet, we have access to seemingly infallible knowledge about the origins of our species, the infinite progress of human beings, the limitless frontiers of discovery and invention. But despite this, our world wallows in misunderstanding resulting in racial, religious, economic, cultural, and socio-political conflicts. No wonder, we don't describe this era that we live in as "the happy age." We call it the nuclear age, the post-modern age, the computer age, or the Artificial Intelligence age. The vast amount of self-knowledge that we have acquired seems to lead us not to happiness but to anguish and despair. Millions of people are sick, spiteful, suspicious, and lost. Perhaps we have misread Socrates. "Know thyself"could be his way of reminding us that the "self"is like a chameleon that assumes many forms, always challenging us to discover the real from the fake. Sad to say, we feel that this task is too difficult for us. Instead of self-examination, we resort to selfie propagation. By disseminating our selfies through social networking, we think we can finally determine our identities through the number of responses that our photos generate. We wrongly think that every "like" we get is worth a kilogram of affirmation.Like the hedonists, we think happiness lies in the gratification of the self's every whim and desire. Jesus' version of the Socratic dictum is never more relevant today. He did not say, "Know Thyself." He said,"NO THYSELF." Jesus taught us that happiness is not giving the self what it wants because not everything that we want is a human need; not every pleasure is legitimate; not every desire is for our best interest. The gospel reading today is all about that. The devil tempted Jesus to give in to what every human being desires: possession, power, and prestige (Luke 4:1-14). The answer of Jesus to the devil was a consistent NO.For Jesus, the mindless pursuit to possess, to dominate, to be adored and worshipped hurls us into a bottomless pit. It leads to addiction, not fulfillment. It focuses our attention on what we want, not what we truly need. A scene in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel The Cancer Ward is a fitting picture of this constant chasing after the wind. In the novel, some patients discuss a serious question: “What does a man live by?” One says, “By rations and clothing.” Another says, “By his wages.” Still another insists, “By air, water, and food.”And the last one says: “By ideology and social interest.” These are cancer patients. They all know what they want, but not what they so sorely need—HEALING.To really know the "self," we have to learn to say NO to the desires and wants of the moment, so we can say YES to the happiness of a lifetime.