This column was part of a talk presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation.
Years ago if I had been asked, I would have said I wanted big emotions and experiences that would have my life be full; but I didn’t see that there was something in me, as there is in every person, working against that. Aesthetic Realism explains the cause of emptiness — and how it can end.
Eli Siegel, the philosopher and founder of this education, showed that at every moment of our lives we are making a choice between liking the world — seeing its meaning — or getting rid of the world and its complexities by having contempt. In his great 1949 lecture Mind and Emptiness, he said: “The desire to do away with things makes for a tremendous emptiness .... [Contempt] is a great discarder. It is a great incinerator of the useful.”
I felt most
people were insincere and the world was too complicated, always making demands
on me; I wanted to be unbothered and not let things affect me too much. By age
27 I had a degree in podiatric medicine, and a position in a large hospital,
but inside I felt a pervasive emptiness that continued even in the midst of an
active social life. My life shows that no matter how much praise we get, and
whatever our achievements, if our purpose is not to like the world and see
meaning in things, there will be emptiness. The word like is important, because, I learned, if we want to feel superior
we won’t be able to see how we are like
other people and things, related to the world outside us. Seeing that relation
in more and more ways, we can never feel empty.
Welcoming Meaning or Emptiness
Growing up in Ciales, Puerto Rico, I saw meaning in the study of science, and would spend hours with my chemistry set, amazed by how different compounds came together to form a new one. But I also felt cursed by fate: I thought I lived in the most boring place on the planet, was born to the wrong family, and was destined to be overweight and miserable. I didn’t ask: Is my feeling of emptiness reality’s fault, or does it come because of how I see?
The truth was that I grew up on a lush mountainside overlooking a green valley where two rivers met; and my parents were useful in our community and worked hard to provide a good education and comfortable life for me and my sister.
I was praised by members of my family and came to feel I was a special child, unequaled in charm and sensitivity. My grandmother Ana treated me like a prince and would not let me play outside for fear I’d get hurt. Another child would have rebelled, but I used this as proof that I was too valuable to be involved in an unfriendly world. In my quiet way I acted like a tyrant: I said “Water” and a glass came quickly. I said, “I don’t like that,” and another lunch was prepared. I came to see, through my study of Aesthetic Realism, that it was this desire to be served and superior that made me feel I didn’t need to value and see meaning in anything.
As I grew older, though I seemed very amiable, I was a snob. What I valued most was being liked by the “right” people and envied by everyone else. I excluded more and more, and as time went on, felt painfully bored, empty, and distant from people. Thank God I met Aesthetic Realism and the kind, exact logic that changed my life! In an early consultation, as I spoke about being an affable guy who just couldn’t “connect” with people, I was asked: “Do you like people?”
Jaime Torres: People say that I’m nice.
Consultants: If those people were able to see what’s in your mind, do you think they would like it?
Jaime Torres: Oh, no!
Consultants: Do you know the difference between acting nice and being kind?
Jaime Torres: Wow, I don’t think I do!
I had thought I was keen in being able to spot flaws in others. I came to see I had a hope to find flaws — real or imagined — and this hope made me unable to have true feeling for people.
Through consultations I began to see with excitement the meaning of things I had dismissed. I saw that the feelings of people were interesting, important, and added to my life. I never felt empty again! I respect Eli Siegel for his magnificent understanding of mind and the world.
Overeating and Emptiness
Aesthetic Realism shows that the taking in of food represents an organic like of reality, that eating is a tribute to how much we need the world to be strong. It can also be used as a means of having revenge on a world we see as unfriendly. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known philosopher Eli Siegel describes a mistake people have made:
A man very often says, he can never get pleasure from people--he can only get pleasure from food. He may go out in company, but there is a big fear. He feels he doesn't have things his way. But with food...he has it entirely his way. So there is a tendency to give ourselves more to food than to feeling, and in this way we lessen our lives...If there is something pleasant like eating, and people can feel that they are managing things, they will take that. So they will have a sensation from the plate and not from the heart.
Growing up, when I felt things got complicated — which was often — I’d get annoyed, and a quick means to composure was in the refrigerator. I’d have a swift victory over a pound cake, but afterward feel ashamed and empty. This terrible cycle would be repeated again and again. By the age of 15, I weighed close to 250 pounds. I’d take pills, lose weight, and gain it back.
When I went away to college I was able to lose weight; but it wasn’t until I met Aesthetic Realism and began to learn that my deepest desire is to like the world, not look down on it, that I began to eat more respectfully. As I’ve seen meaning in, for example, how a pastry is made, the history of flour, how my morning coffee began with the labor of a man in Colombia, I have felt a sense of fulness that is bigger than the victory of devouring food. The only thing that will bring sanity to the subject of overeating, which torments so many people, is the learning from Aesthetic Realism about the fight in all of us between respect and contempt for the world.
Several years after Donita Ellison and I married, I found myself waking after midnight, impelled to go to the kitchen for a snack. When I mentioned this in an Aesthetic Realism class, Chair of Education Ellen Reiss asked me: “Early morning dining — what do you think it comes from?” I said, “Wanting to please myself.” And she asked: “Do you think at night you feel you have yourself to yourself? Is there that in you which would like to be completely alone? In being married, you have the question of how you can be joined with someone and alone .... Ms. Ellison’s existence is a nag to you — she is dear to you, but why does she have to be around so much?” That was what I felt! Then Ms. Reiss showed me that the solution is in aesthetics. She said if a photographer,
were going to photograph this glass of water in a certain light, he would need the glass and the light — but feel he is taking care of himself in needing them. No one could do anything in the art field without feeling that the thing liked also stands for oneself. Does Ms. Ellison — the stranger — stand for you? Does Jaime Torres like himself more through a conversation with Donita Ellison than through roaming around the house alone at night?” I am happy to say that after this discussion, my impulsion for nocturnal dining stopped.
It is a
wonderful thing that Donita, a woman from the Midwest, who has written
important articles on behalf of justice for farmers, does stand for me. As we
talk about what we are learning, about world events, about our thoughts, I feel
Donita wants to know me, and I love her! A lifetime is not enough to express
what it means to me to have learned from Aesthetic Realism that to be affected
by the world is my greatest need and largest freedom.
