In his Four Quartets T.S Eliot comes at us with the curious phrase, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” Deceptively simple, with a seemingly cynical head-in-the-sand cast to it, the challenge demands interpretation. The temptation is bluntly to ask, what is “reality?” This question has numerous answers, depending on the point of view, or even the agenda, of the answerer. The question is also the wrong response to the statement, because it concentrates on the wrong word. A more useful response would be, why does “human kind,” alone among beings, shy from reality?

Animals live only in reality. Humans have the power, and burden, of subjectivity. Animals cannot imagine; humans burst with more imagination than they can handle.

The reason humans cannot bear much reality is because the human reality is in fact many realities. It includes facts we can prove using scientific experiments as well as notions and strivings we cannot even name. It includes winter and summer, birth and death, Mickey Mouse and Barbie, music, terror, chocolate, sex, pain and joy. It is unlimited. The more you encounter it, the less you know of it. Reality is more a process than a state, the act of looking, of excerpting and processing information that comes from both without and within. It is a blinding, powerful light. It is work. It requires subjective, intelligent, philosophical action. Since our physical bodies and physical brains are created out of animal matter, we of human kind cannot stand this exhausting work for more than short periods of time.

Reality in this dynamic sense demands that we juggle concepts, metaphors, and abstractions in an arena of ambiguity and doubt. To do this is quintessentially human, but we are only part human. Sooner or later, we run from abstraction and tend to cling to something we call “concrete.”

It was Benjamin Franklin who wrote that “in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” I know a lot of clever lawyers and accountants who could argue about including “taxes” in that certainty statement. That leaves death. Not only is death the one true certainty, but, turning this around, “certainty” is a form of death, a running from human-defined life.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality. Human kind cannot bear the reality that death is certain—that the biological portion of our being will end. We are slaves to the protoplasm that built us. Human kind also cannot bear the reality that the non-biological human part of us has no container. It is, in other words, “free.”

Am I heading toward a discussion of grand spiritual or theological aspects of humanity? Definitely not, though you can call it what you will. The part of us that is human is unlimited and infinite. We can imagine anything. We can love without limit. We can create and destroy as no other being can. We can give meaning to the world around us and then change that meaning. It is easy to say that given the unlimited human ability to create we live in a world of joyous prospect and opportunity. But we know that most human inhabitants of the world do not see their daily struggle in such an optimistic light. That feeling of alive-ness, of feeling the blood coursing through your veins, is experienced by few of us, and not even all the time by those few. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Is brilliant ambitious success the only path to fulfillment as a human being? No. Not everyone has the gift to become a brilliant success. Few of us can count on circumstances being right for the kind of attainments that will land us on magazine covers. But we all can lead lives free of “quiet desperation” if we learn not to sabotage ourselves. We can reach a state where our efforts are rewarded and our talents are utilized. What is required to do this is to recognize the biological urges and fears that make us run from freedom and responsibility, and to develop the personal maturity to cross over into the arena of freedom, responsibility and uncertainty for as long as we can stand it.

Here's why what I'm suggesting is not as scary as it sounds. Most of the time, we're on automatic, neither enjoying nor fleeing the free state where we make decisions and feel life's stress. From time to time we encounter “contact points” with reality where we are forced to make decisions and act on those decisions. The experience of driving a car is an excellent example of automatic behavior. You arrive somewhere and are suddenly hit with the realization that during the entire trip you had been thinking of baseball or fashion or your collection of bottle caps and yet here you are, safe and sound. If a child had darted out in front of your car you would certainly have reacted instantaneously and hit the brakes.

Let's say a rude driver moves to cut you off. You snap out of your elaborate fantasy about your debut at the Metropolitan Opera and now face a decision point. It is here that you can move forwards or backwards in your life. You can risk an accident by trying to foil his attempt to cut you off, then curse him and raise your blood pressure if you fail at this, or you could do the mature thing and let him cut you off, adjust your pace in traffic and get back to your fantasy. The momentary challenge requires reflection as to the consequences of your action, free decision, and hence stress. But, like much stress, it's stress of a short duration. A side benefit of doing the right thing now is that when the stress comes again, you will be even more mature and process even less stress as you let the bastard cut you off. In reality of course, you may very well commit to a hybrid plan, where you do not contest the cutting off, but you (who never claim to be a saint) do indulge yourself in a few nasty comments.

I've resorted to a little humor here, but let's look at the consequences of doing the wrong thing. You feel a threat from the other driver and let your Paleolithic fight response engage, all for a few feet of lane space. Wars are fought and soldiers die needlessly over disputes which soon after seem as trivial as the prospect of losing five seconds of commute time. At one point in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the prince looks on as a Norwegian army marches by in preparation for an invasion of Poland. He questions a captain who tells him that,

“We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.”