My design studio was recently asked to read "Invisible Cities," by Italo Calvino. It's a short novel in which Marco Polo describes his explorations to King Kublai Khan. His final words in the story are somewhat ambiguous, and certainly something to ponder.
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
The inferno is in our culture, and the media makes its best effort to throw it in the faces of everyone possible. Daily news is permeated by stories about the Black Lives Matter movement, "I Stand With Ahmed," racism, sexism, political dissent, homophobia -- the list seems to go on forever. At first I want to be irritated by just about everyone thinking they've been done wrong, and that it's everyone else's job to fix it for them. It makes me want to ignore all of the rampant issues, to simply accept the inferno until I'm no longer sensitive to it like Calvino says we can. I'm finally starting to realize that I shouldn't -- no matter what our opinion is on any of these issues, I think it's our duty as humans to try and understand that people really are upset, hurting, and desperate for something good to happen. We have the opportunity to help things change for the best, and those opportunities should be sought after. To quote Calvino again:
"If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.”
It's not just our culture in which we should recognize the inferno. Everyone we know personally is consumed by the inferno on some level. We usually choose to only focus on taking care of ourselves; we all have a lot going on, and it's exhausting just getting ourselves through each day. We spend extensive amounts of time with people and still fail to learn what's really going on in their lives and how they're feeling. I think friendships are essentially wasted if we don't put forth a greater interest in personal understanding, and we often fail to do so.
It's a similar situation when dealing with people we don't necessarily get along with, or don't like. One of my all-time favorite sayings is by Abraham Lincoln (random, I know):
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
It's something I have to tell myself every now and then; we don't know what people are dealing with, or why they are the way they are. Everyone has their own unique inferno, and we should make more of an effort to help them endure.
It is time to stop being apathetic. It is time for us to take a greater interest in what's happening in our world, and take steps to improve it. It is time to strengthen our relationships. The only way to endure the inferno and find salvation from it is by focusing less on ourselves, and more on our world and its people.
