Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.
Interpretation
Our deep involvement in our work may distort our perception of reality, yet it facilitates further understanding despite life's inherent mysteries.
This quote by W. G. Sebald explores the relationship between our engagement with our work and our perception of reality. It suggests that as we become more absorbed in our tasks and intellectual pursuits, we may lose touch with a more objective sense of reality. However, this complexity can also lead to a deeper understanding of our experiences, even if certain aspects of life remain beyond our comprehension. Sebald points to the paradox of human understanding: our work can engulf us, yet it can also illuminate the intricacies of existence, reminding us that some truths may always remain elusive.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of work on personal perception, one might quote Sebald to emphasize how engrossing projects can shape our understanding.
How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper.
When I was a boy, I'd hide under the kitchen table and wind string around the chairs. I have a sense now that I am pulling on those threads. The more I pull, the more it comes unraveled.
If you're based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages everywhere. On a bad day, returning to Germany brings back all kinds of spectres from the past.
The seasons and the years came and went...and always...one was, as the crow flies, about 2,000 km away - but from where? - and day by day hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract.
You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist.
No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding.
Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
I'm not me but living matter fermenting and forming its own shapes in the fruitfulness of every day.
What 'March' is saying is that it doesn't matter whether we are black or white, Latino or Asian. It doesn't matter whether we are straight or gay.
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
If you accept the belief that baptism incorporates us in the mystical body of Christ, into the divine DNA, then you might say that the Holy Spirit is present in each of us, and thus we have the capacity for the fullness of redemption, of transformation.
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