|
|
A face-to-face encounter is a moment that disrupts this process: it is a moment when you wake up. The points I made earlier still stand: face-to-face encounters are moments when we recognize humanity as vulnerability, and when this realization impresses itself with unconditional force; but they are also moments when, so to speak, the fog parts and the gravity and solemnity of life become clear. It is for this reason that Levinas equates face-to-face encounters with sobering up. We tend to become drunk on our lives; in doing so, we forget what makes them meaningful. I become intoxicated with getting my book published, getting my students to succeed, fixing kinks in a romantic relationship, keeping in touch with old friends, seeing my party voted into power, getting bills paid, getting the peppers to grow in my garden. These dramas consume me. And then an event befalls me that both tears me out of them and clarifies them to me. I am sobered up. That is, I become aware that my life’s dramas do not matter in their own right. There is something beyond them that matters more: the well-being of others. And it is their well-being that invests these dramas with meaning.
It is for this reason that my father’s story stands out in my memories as an example of a face-to-face encounter. It is not simply that he came face-to-face with suffering or spontaneously rushed to help the woman. What interests me about this episode was its influence on him. It was a moment when he was sobered up. In a way, nothing changed in his life. His job remained unpleasant. The commute home remained long. He felt the same frustrations about where he had ended up in his life. He had been grateful to have his children home before the accident; he remained grateful afterward. Yet, in a way, everything changed. His frustrations appeared different, less overwhelming. They did not disappear, but they were brought into clearer perspective by having been moved by the loss the woman seemed to have undergone. They appeared as what they were: common frustrations and longings for respect and a few moments of leisurely peace.