How Pleasant to be Absent!

1.

One of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson is the entitled, "I'm Nobody!" It is a perfect example of the dictum that all literary writing is autobiographical. Although she is writing about herself, however, the poem is not confessional: when Dickinson uses the first person singular, that pronoun, which occurs so regularly in confessional poetry, is not to be rigidly identified with  Dickinson herself, as she once stated. She simply sets out to write a good poem, not to express her inner state. As Dickinson wrote in another poem, "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant," the inner state is expressed, but indirectly. Robert Frost, for instance, could never have written, "I'm Nobody!" The loneliness, the proud rejection of rejection evinced in this poem, did not reflect the way Frost related to the world. 

Here is the poem in its entirety:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you--Nobody--Too?

Then there's a pair of us--don't  tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreadful--to be--Somebody!

How public--like a Frog--

To tell one's name--the livelong day--

To an admiring Bog!

2.

It's certainly an example of chutzpah on my part to dare write a companion piece to Dickinson's great poem, but that's what I did. My poem, compared to hers, is, to quote George Barker, like 'a little doggie following a brass band.' But this little doggie has a reason for its existence. Dickinson's poem is about the difficulties and triumphs of being radically different. (Dickinson's poetry was ahead of its time, and she knew it). Think of the pride she must have had to keep writing and writing without hope of an audience; think of the loneliness that eccentric genius had to suffer as well.

Being a nobody, however, is still being a human being, albeit a rejected one. What if you look at yourself not as an eccentric, but as a thing? The condition where one feels as real as a rock is well known to psychiatrists, and is referred to as "depersonalization." It occurs most frequently among the young and can be quite terrifying. When one's self-image as a human being vanishes; when one sees oneself as being no different from, say, a cabbage or a coffee cup, mental health often vanishes along with the subjective experience of being nothing. 

Is this always the case?

Decidedly not. Buddhism has taught since ancient times that there is no abiding self; this is the doctrine of anatta. The purpose of this doctrine is not to increase suffering, but is an attempt to eliminate, or at least, to reduce it. The knowledge that the self is illusory is a factor of Buddhist enlightenment, a goal worthy of striving for and which promises perfect peace.

Most scientists agree that the self is an illusion as well. Every element inside a person can be found in the environment. We know a lot about which areas of the brain causes sensations, when stimulated, such as seeing and hearing. But the location of the self has never been located, and, in my opinion, never will be. The mistaken belief that one is separate from the environment is a trick of evolution, for which we can all be grateful, since if one didn't have a feeling of individuality, humans as humans would cease to exist. 

Just as we have learned that Earth, cosmically speaking, is nothing special, neither, cosmically speaking, are you.

The objective experience of being nothing is the knowledge that everything is connected. It is called wisdom, which gives rise to a deep feeling of contentment. You might not be cosmically important, but you are just as important as anyone--or anything--else. An illusion that feels like a person might as well act like one, and, for practical purposes, is one. Wisdom keeps everything in perspective, however. We play our roles so convincingly that it is natural to lose ourselves in them. I imagine the impersonal author and director of the play with a smile on its face. We need periodic flashes of wisdom, so we can get a glimpse of the entire stage and our true place on  it. When this occurs we cannot help but be 'beside ourselves with joy'--the definition of ecstasy.

It is said that the difference between a great sage and an ordinary individual is that the sage remains in cosmic consciousness, while the individual comes in and out of it. The latter is good enough for me. (Fully enlightened persons are, after all, extremely rare, if they exist at all).

The ecstatic experience of realizing that everything is connected, the opposite pole of depersonalization, is indeed a very great gift.

Words, words, words. Here is the poem:

I'm not nobody,

I'm nothing. What are you?

Are you whatever, too,

fragments, broken mirrors, Who

shattered into shards?

How pleasant to be absent!

How foibled, like the drop

who thinks it full fills billabongs,

yet desiccates like snot!

The poem was first published in The Loch Raven Review, Volume 17, 2021.