I met an alien today. If you humour me for a few moments, I’ll explain. It isn’t one of the aliens that appeared in the media earlier last year, were confirmed as real, and who then evaporated into thin air. Unfortunately not. Rather, the alien I encountered was more a thought-alien and one of my own making at that.
I was driving home from work one Tuesday through a humid drizzle. Idling at a red, I took to staring at a McDonald’s sitting kitty-corner across the intersection. I suppose it’s no surprise that my eyes rested there. The golden arches and their red backdrop draw every nearby eye to contemplate their majesty.
I was toying with a troublesome thought: why does it so often seem that people I meet perceive a simplified version of myself and cling to it? Profound for Tuesday, I know. Perhaps a slightly juvenile question. To retroactively apply an image to the thought, I sometimes feel like a caricature that individuals keep and refer to and interact with when they again encounter me.
I must admit, I set this nascent and yet unformulated thought aside, intending perhaps return to it, perhaps discuss it with someone, perhaps let it fade into that humid, drizzling afternoon.
But thoughts – especially rejected thoughts – have a habit of finding their way home.
Emerson more eloquently phrased it: “In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
Ralph said it well, and I’m glad he embraced that thought.
I’m glad because today I met the alien of that drizzling drive as I sat down to re-read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I was in search of a certain quotation when I saw, glaring up from the lines below, the eloquent phrase:
“And I have known the eyes already, known them all – the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase… sprawling on a pin…”
Now there’s a better image. And better, too, for coming from somewhere other than my mind. It was my Tuesday thought, alienated at the Golden Arches, come back to haunt me. How had he found his way to me through Prufrock? Time travel, I suppose.
That little alien, embraced and made majestic by Eliot, clarified my musings from earlier in the week. We make aliens out of our neighbours. We distance others from ourselves, by reducing them to “a formulated phrase.” Hearing it from Prufrock, I noticed I do it all the time.
We’re perhaps too tired, maybe too indifferent, or perhaps too afraid to know others for who they really are. So we grab at something readily available – perhaps the first thing they ever express the remotest interest in – and we make that their entire identity in our eyes. We formulate our little alien and pin it down for future interaction. It saves us time and energy, and maybe that’s the way it works best. Maybe we’re most contented interacting with aliens that we have under control. But I don’t suppose any one of us likes “sprawling on a pin.”
It also doesn’t seem to mirror the example of Our Lord. After all, didn’t He frequently ‘waste’ His time on others?
Recall how he interacted with the tomb-inhabiting demoniac, (Luke 8:26-39) the young man obsessed with his riches, (Mark 10:17-22) or the woman caught in the very act of adultery. (John 8:1-11) Was He indifferent? Far from it. Despite having a mere three years to complete His public ministry, form His apostles, and lay the foundation for His Church, He somehow had time for individuals. His eyes didn’t “fix” a person into “a formulated phrase.” Rather, He looked at each person and loved them. (Mark 10:21) The Gerasene demoniac was not simply demon-possessed; the rich young man, not merely covetous; the adulteress, not merely lustful. To Him, they were persons with names, worthy of being known and loved. (John 20:16)
Many of us probably couldn’t even be bothered to throw stones.
Our Saviour offers us a remedy, an elixir if you will: un-alienate your neighbors. Give the person in front of you the time of day. Take a genuine interest in them, even if just for a moment. Learn to look at them the way Christ did. People will amaze you, once you remove the pin. After all, books and quotes and musings will pass away; people were made to live forever.
