CONSIDER this: As an old friend was on the phone receiving the news that his agency got the juicy advertising account of a big national advertiser, the TV set in his living room was flashing images of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City being hit by planes. Jubilation and tragedy happening side by side.
A local religious procession was solemnly passing by our alley while two stray dogs in heat were copulating, oblivious to the praying folks who glanced uncomfortably at them. Solemnity and crudity.
There was an old movie I once saw. I don’t remember the title nor the names of the cast. But what I remember is the plot: As the husband was enjoying an adulterous tryst with a woman in a hotel, thieves were breaking into his house, and consequently raped and killed his wife and daughter. The husband nearly killed himself out of remorse, but then he channeled his guilt into a single-minded vow to seek and kill the murdering thieves.
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” is a line from one of John Lennon’s songs. But may I tweak it a little bit to “while something is happening in your life, other things are happening in parallel—sometimes tragic, sometimes sad, sometimes laughable, but always incongruous. Meaning, they don’t jive.” As in the dictionary meaning: not harmonious in character; inconsonant; lacking harmony of parts. Dissonance and contradictions.
Someone once said, God has a sense of humor. The proof? He created life on earth. A perverse sense of humor, I might add. That’s what comes to mind when I note these observations about life.
Yet, I am led to believe that there must be a design to these contrasting things happening at the same time. Maybe, the parallel juxtaposing of incongruous elements is meant to give life to that certain ironic ring so we don’t take it too seriously, so it doesn’t go to our head.
At the apex of the Roman empire, whenever a military commander returned from a successful campaign, he was feted with a triumphal march around the forum. At such moments, it would be so easy to get drunk with feelings of grandeur and power. So a slave was placed at the back of the triumphant general and amid the clamor and the din, he would whisper from time to time a wise reminder into the victor’s ear: “Memento mori,” which, in English, would mean: “Remember you are merely a mortal.”
Even the inexorable sweep of history showed the incongruities. As one thing was happening in one part of the world, incongruous things were unfolding simultaneously in other parts. It’s as if these simultaneous happenings were from parallel worlds. People talk of synchronicities, but the opposite is incongruities.
Instead of striving to achieve harmonies and synchronicities, let us learn to accept incongruities and dissonances as part of living. Embrace them.
As Reinhold Niebuhr said: The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity, but the achievement of serenity within and above it. To do that, one needs to believe like William S. Coffin does, that “Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, while humor handles the more immediate ones.”
Finding humor in the incongruities of everyday life is what David Langdon did for over five decades as a magazine cartoonist. A shrewd observer of human nature, he sketched and drew thousands of topical cartoons and witty commentaries. On top of that was a successful book illustrator, writer and advertising artist. He excelled at presenting the incongruities of everyday life. As one observer put it, Langdon’s world was “peopled by quaint souls who wear a continual look of surprise, who are obviously trying very hard to do their various jobs seriously—and failing. For they all prove themselves to be unconscious comedians.”
This was what Langdon was trying to tell us: Let us not give too much importance to what we are doing. We’re insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But because many of us put too much importance to ourselves and too little to our actions, we miss the fragmentary, inherently asymmetrical and unsatisfactory nature of life itself. If we could just make peace with that, we wouldn’t take everything else so personally.
Albert Einstein always strived for the symmetry in his mathematical equations and yet he noted: “Life is not one path. It needs our acceptance and tolerance of the asymmetrical.”
Amen to that.