Dignity of Presence
There is great beauty in dignity; it is a special quality of presence. It is lovely to behold people who inhabit their own dignity. The human body is its own language. Every gesture you make speaks about who you are. The way you hold yourself, how you walk, sit, speak, and touch things tells of your quality of soul. Some people have a clear dignity of carriage and composure. You sense their self-respect and the ease with which they are at home in their own presence. There is no forcing of presence; they do not drive themselves outwards to impress or ingratiate themselves. Other people squander their dignity completely. They live a half-mile outside themselves, their personalities sprung in search of notice and affirmation. Your presence inevitably reveals what you think of yourself. If you do not hold yourself in esteem, it is unlikely that others will respect you either.
The beauty of dignity is its truth. When you were sent to the world you were given great freedom. This is a gift we forget. Regardless of how you appear to others, you are free to view yourself with affection, understanding, and respect. Although you depend on the affection and love of others to awaken your love for yourself, your sense of self should not depend on outside affirmation. When you have a worthy sense of your self, this communicates itself in your physical presence and personality. Outer dignity is gracious and honourable; it is the mirror of inner dignity. No one else can confer dignity on you; it is something that comes from within. You cannot fake it or acquire it as you would an accent. You can only receive the gift of dignity from your own heart. When you learn to embrace your self with a sense of appreciation and affection, you begin to glimpse the goodness and light that is in you, and gradually you will realize that you are worthy of respect from yourself. When you recognize your limits, but still embrace your life with affection and graciousness, the sense of inner dignity begins to grow. You become freer and less dependent on the affirmation of outer voices and less troubled by the negativity of others. Now you know that no one has the right to tarnish the image that you have of yourself.
There is such a feeling of shame when you let yourself down, when you have acted beneath your dignity. There is something demeaning about having done something that is “infra dignitatem.” You would give anything to return to the point two minutes before the event and act differently. Having dignity of presence is not to be equated with being nice, always good, or behaving conventionally. You can be as free as the wind in your views, beliefs, and actions; you could be angry and awkward at times and still hold your dignity. Neither is dignity equivalent to stiffness or arrogant aloofness of personality. Dignity allows an immense pliability and diversity of presence, but still holds the sense of worthiness and the honour of a larger horizon of grace and graciousness. Even in compromising and demeaning situations, you can still hold your sense of dignity. At such times your sense of dignity will keep a space of tranquillity about you. In the Third World, one is often struck by the immense dignity of the poor. Even hunger and oppression cannot rob them of this grace of spirit. If you do not give it away, no event, situation, or person can take your dignity away from you. The different styles of presence reveal how we belong to ourselves.
The Architecture of Belonging
A Canadian who recently visited Ireland for the first time remarked on landing at Shannon Airport how the patchwork of fields had human proportion. Our world is indeed addicted to the vast expanse, be it the World Wide Web or globalization. With this relentless extension, we are losing our sense of the humane proportion. When a thing becomes overextended, it loses its individuality and presence and the power to speak to us. The landscape in the West of Ireland partly owes its intensity and diversity of presence to the proportion of its fields. Each field has its own unique shape and personality. When the walls frame a piece of land, they bring all that is in that field into sharp and individual relief: the stones, the bushes, and the gradient of the field. Patrick Kavanagh speaks of “the undying difference in the corner of a field.” The corner is always where a wall is most intense. The walls focus the field as an individual countenance in the landscape. It is no wonder many of the fields have their own names and stories.
Where there is neither frame nor frontier, it is difficult to feel any presence. This is our human difficulty with air. It is invisible and always the same blank nothingness. The sky is a massive expanse but it is rarely the same blue all over; it is brindled with cloud and colour and framed by the horizon. The human mind loves proportion and texture. Though we are largely unaware of it, we always need a frame around an experience in order to feel and live it. When you reflect on all the things you have known and experienced, you begin to see how each of them had its own different frame. Think of the time you met your partner and fell in love. This event happened at a certain time, in a certain place, and at a very particular phase in your life. At any other time, it could not have happened in this way. In the landscape of memory there are many fields. Each experience belongs in its own field. This is what hurts and saddens us so profoundly about death. When we lose people to death, they literally disappear. They vanish into thin air and become invisible to us. Our hearts reach towards them, but their new presence has no frame and is now no longer to be located in any one place that we can know or visit. Our voices call to them, yet no echo returns.
All of human experience comes to expression in some kind of form or frame. It is literally impossible to have an experience that did not have a form. The frame focuses individuality and gathers presence. Without this frame, neither identity nor belonging would ever be possible. Belonging presumes warmth and intimacy. You cannot belong in a vast, nameless space. There is no belonging in the air except for birds who ride its currents. Belonging is equally difficult in the ocean; the vast expanse of water is anonymous. It has no face, and only sailors who know it well can identify a particular place in its endless sameness. Where there is anonymity, there can be no real belonging. Of the four elements, the earth is the one with the greatest stable presence and thereness. Clay loves shape and texture. Of all the elements, the earth forms naturally into individual shapes, each of which is different. It is no wonder that the human body, being made of clay, is capable of such longing and belonging. The human self is intimacy. When we choose to give our hearts to or belong with someone, we do it only when we find a like echo in the intimacy of the other. Belonging seeks out affinity that has a definite form and frame. We feel we can trust that which has its own contour and individual autonomy of shape. This trust enables belonging.