Joseph Pallattil
Gabriel Marcel is a French Philosopher and a playwright. In the period the first world war, 1914, the French army faced sustaining appalling loses, the Red Cross’s information office in Paris was inundated with urgent demands, Gabriel Marcel was appointed as the director. His work was to find the information about the soldiers who had vanished during the war and to give the information for the needful. Regarding this tremendous task, Marcel described in his autobiography, “For me it was a question, as much as possible, of taking every particular case that was handed to us by an anguished mother, wife, fiancée, or sister and of gathering the necessary evidence that would allow me to shed light upon the disappearance of a soldier”. Even though Marcel worked at the information center for a short period, he spent rest of his life by responding to those painful inquirers.
Marcel had to work on two levels to provide the service. On one level, the missing soldier was a “problem” that was solved when Marcel learned of his whereabouts. Marcel created a “catalogue of the mind” based on field reports to solve this problem. The missing soldier was turned into a variable in a formula based on catalog data. On another level, Marcel’s position required personal interactions. When Marcel informed his parents that their son had died, it was painfully clear that the soldier was not a variable but a unique human being. Marcel had not resolved the missing soldier issue for the parents. Even though his news provided some closure, the loss remained a “mystery” that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
The distinction between this problem and mystery is very central to Marcel’s philosophy. As we know a problem is very external to us, it doesn’t have any relation with our being. The problems can be solved easily with some general techniques, dialogues and with adequate measures. In the other hand mystery is something internal, it can’t be easily solved by techniques, etc. Marcel called mystery “a problem which encroaches upon its own data”. The mystery is rooted in our being. According to Marcel there is no adequate solutions for the mystery, it has to be accepted, it has to be responded with wisdom.
When we examine our life closely, there are both problems and mysteries in our life. The question here is how we respond to these. Life is not a life without problems, so see the problems in an easy way. Be courageous enough to face the problems. The mysteries in our life are also an inevitable part of life, approach the mysteries with openness and accept it as itself.
