Meditations on Quixote (1914)
Isabel Ferreiro
Let us begin by returning to this famous phrase —one of Ortega’s most celebrated— which appears in his first book as a proclamation of the integrative philosophy he would develop throughout his entire body of work. This statement may lead us to think that if I do not accept all that exists, I do not accept myself and therefore cannot save myself. Or, viewed from the other side: that what I reject enslaves me, limits me: it prevents me from being.
“I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself” also seems a call to love oneself in all circumstances and, incidentally, to love all that exists: to become reconciled with oneself and with everything around us, wherever we are and however we are. For whatever circumstance life presents us with, it is mine and, for that reason only, deserves that I say, at the very least, ‘I accept it’.
The circumstance is simply what is. To save myself, then, I must open myself up to navigating it and listening to what it tells me, what lessons it brings me. Otherwise, I waste my time rejecting it, the opportunity to experience it and, with that, to evolve and save myself. “I would rather be a complete man than a good man”, says Jung, because he knows that everything good in a man comes from integrating all that one is, all that there is.
To save oneself, then, one must make room for everything, starting with the body we have been given, our country, family, friends, colleagues, bosses, rulers; virtues and flaws, likes and dislikes, joys and tears. Because everything is, and therefore forms part of my circumstance and of me. “One must climb out of the pit with the pit in tow,” Ortega also said a few years earlier, in a student diary, expressing the same idea.
“Do not be the judge of things, be their lover”, he writes more emphatically. The lover is characterised, above all, by accompanying what he loves. And, indeed, to save myself, I must accompany myself; that is, be my own lover. If one condemns oneself for finding oneself in an adverse circumstance, one becomes a victim of the external world, and separates oneself from oneself. To truly live, one must hold fast to the will to accompany oneself, come what may.
“I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself” can also be seen as the most radical principle of equality; for everything, simply by virtue of existing, must be included, without distinction: what is fortunate what is unfortunate, what is ugly what is beautiful, what is great whatis small. Everything is. Attempting to banish from reality what I do not like is futile and debilitating, because it denies a part of myself. To live devoted to eliminating “the bad” is not to live: it is idealism and, ultimately, as Ortega teaches, fanaticism. “What is accepted is transformed; what is resisted persists”, Jung also says.
“To achieve great things, a tactic of exclusions is the worst possible approach,” Ortega recommends once more. And what greater thing is there than to live? And since living is always in this present circumstance —with this annoyance, this worry, this difficulty, this joy— everything must be included, because it already is, by the very nature of life itself.
“Is this life? Well, bring it on again!”, Ortega quotes Nietzsche. Come what may, I decide to save it because I decide to save myself. “Desire what you can”, he reminds us, quoting Leonardo. And indeed, I can love this present moment, which is all I truly can do. I ask no more of it, nor that it be different; I ask no more of myself. I settle into it, I live it: I save myself.
Texts cited: “Diario de Marburgo” (Enero, 1907, domingo 27); Meditaciones del Quijote (1914); España invertebrada (1922); El tema de nuestro tiempo (1923).
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