Unpacking Indifference

Prompt #1

Andrew Roseman

Scott Harris

UNIV 392

11 July 2018
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We understand indifference today to mean a lack of interest or sympathy, but indifference

in Ignatian Spirituality takes on a different meaning than the definition we are familiar with.

Ignatian indifference is the ability to let go of things that guide us away from goodness and the

capacity to focus on those things that bring us closer to God. Put simply, it is closely related to

harmony, balance, and the quality of being neither good nor bad. This balance is not only one we

must create for ourselves, but also exists naturally in our day to day lives. In “The last night that

she lived” and “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” Emily Dickinson highlights the balance that

exists between things that we assign meaning to and the insignificance of our mundane lives,

inviting the reader to analyze the value we place on death and the incomprehensible reality that is

human mortality. In T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” Eliot illuminates the objective truth of our

lives that can be found when we remove our personal attachments and faith from the world

around us, ultimately showing the reader that we need to have faith in order to find meaning in

our lives. When pairing the works of Dickinson and Eliot, we find value in Ignatian indifference

and come to see that understanding ourselves and the world around us often leads to a cognitive

journey.

In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The last night that she lived,” we are invited into a

reflection of a woman’s last night in the mortal world. Dickinson begins by commenting on the

setting of the woman’s death, writing, “It was a common night,/Except the dying; this to

us/Made nature different.” From the beginning, we are introduced to the paradoxical nature of

the world around us. Though the woman is dying, there is nothing extraordinary or cosmically

significant occurring. Death happens at all points in time and is only as important as we make it.

Objectively, death is an experience that all living things must come to know. It is an event

similar in objective meaning to tying your shoe. Though we all know that death is a reality that
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we must one day experience, we are unable to truly understand what it means to die and no

longer exist in the reality we have created for ourselves. Even the time of day is insignificant:

time is a human construct that we place value in and depend on to function. The cerebral process

of understanding our own reality and making sense of it depends on the value we assign to

events in our lives, though this analysis is entirely paradoxical. This sentiment is expressed

throughout the poem subtly invites the reader to grapple with the notion of our perceptions of

death and what it means to no longer exist in a sentient, corporal form. Dickinson continues to

play with the reader’s mind and demonstrates a superior understanding of human thought and

emotion when she comments on the duality of survivor’s guilt and jealousy that surrounds death.

On the one hand, the speaker feels profound guilt that she is able to continue existing while the

woman lays dying, ready to submit to the incomprehensible eternity that is death. On the other

hand, the speaker feels jealousy that the woman dying is finally able to experience death, an

event that our entire lives are leading up to. She is also being gifted with an escape from the

material world that we all must continue to suffer in. This complex analysis of human experience

perfectly illustrates Ignatian indifference: there is an inherent paradox, and equally a balance,

that comes with every aspect of our lives. As we live our lives, we must stay mindful of the

objective truth in everything and examine what meaning we assign to events and happenings.

The natural world does not have the capacity to give human mortality a meaning. It is, in a sense,

indifferent to our ideas and notions. However, it is to our advantage to revere the values we

create if we hope to make meaning of our lives.

Dickinson creates a similar feeling of complex indifference in her poem, “I heard a fly

buzz when I died,” in which she writes about person reflecting on her own death. From the very

first lines, we are exposed to the complex interplay between the significance and simultaneous
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insignificance of our own death. Though our mortality is the defining characteristic of human life

and is what makes us alive, death is inherently unimportant. At its lowest level, completely

stripped of meaning, it is no different in value than a fly buzzing. However, the indescribable

power of death when placed in the context of human reality seems as fundamental and infinite as

God Himself. When juxtaposed with the buzz of a fly, an uncomfortable, tense emotion is stirred

in the reader as we try to understand the immensity of death and the seemingly unimportant

existence of a fly. Death, which we view as ordered and a fact of life, is interrupted by the

chaotic buzz of a fly. In this juxtaposition, Dickinson highlights the duality between order and

chaos, death and life, and significance and insignificance. When reading the poem, the reader

must accept and come to terms with the fact that the speaker has experienced death and is

recounting her experience. Dickinson’s language is also interesting, particularly in relationship to

her description in of the buzz. Dickinson writes, “and then/There interposed a fly,/With blue,

uncertain, stumbling buzz,/Between the light and me.” In the midst of the speaker’s final

thoughts, the buzz of a fly would seem blue and uncertain, especially when paired with our

expectations of death and the serenity we imagine follows. In this poem, Dickinson unpacks

what we think we know about death and asks us to view the world through an indifferent lens: to

see neither good nor bad and to strip everything of meaning aside from what effect different

events have. In order to practice indifference, we must simultaneously recognize what it means

to be human and the fact that our actions are just actions while also respecting and revering the

capacity we as humans have to create meaning in our lives. The way we perceive good and find

God in our lives is undeniably important, even if it is merely a human construct. Therefore, we

must honor ourselves and take actions that we believe create good in the world. The way

Dickinson employs indifference in this short, succinct poem invites us to reflect on how we
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identify good and bad, how we assign meaning to our lives, and what we can do to continue

finding purpose and sharing goodness with others.

In T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” we are invited to immediately reconcile the objectivity

contained in mere existence. However, Eliot moves past Dickinson’s reflections on indifference

and asserts that we depend on faith and the meaning we create in our lives to engage with the

world around us. Eliot essentially slaps us in the face with reality in the third stanza, writing,

“Because I know that time is always time/And place is always and only place/And what is actual

is actual only for one time/And only for one place/I rejoice that things are as they are…” In this

passage, the reader is reminded that things are what they are until we decide they have meaning.

However, coming to this realization is too much to handle. We are unable to completely remove

meaning from everything in our lives or even truly understand what it means to view things

objectively. As Eliot comes to this realization, he is suddenly grateful for our capacity to identify

and classify events, places, and times in our lives. The poem is coming from a lack of

indifference and life stripped of all understanding, possibly a place of despair and darkness. Eliot

is arguing that without faith and a conception of a higher purpose, our lives are insignificant.

This realization is too much to handle and actively disregards any attempt at order. Eliot shows

us that through a belief that there is good in the world and a notion of higher purpose, we are

given the capacity to be indifferent and guide ourselves toward things that are good. This theme

runs throughout the poem and is emphasized in the last stanza, when Eliot references the Hail

Mary prayer, writing, “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death/Pray for us now and

at the hour of our death.” Eliot is reaching out to God to save him from a life without meaning

and is consistently grateful for the presence of God in his life. Eliot’s approach toward
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indifference sheds another light upon what it means to live a life removed from the pursuit of

happiness and the fundamental dependency of humankind on having faith.

Through the works of Dickinson and Eliot, we are asked to reflect upon how we conduct

our lives and what it would mean if we didn’t have a notion of good or bad. These works deepen

what it means to be indifferent and show readers that we all have an intrinsic capacity, whether

we are Christian or not, to practice indifference—whether we choose to seek the good in life or

find ourselves lost. When reflecting on what life would be like if we didn’t honor what we

believe to be good, we see that it is in our best interest to be constantly mindful of how we create

reality and what we can do to continue to promote goodness.