On Saying Goodbye:
An Application of the Phenomenological Method
Jose Tale
I have said goodbye so many times. And perhaps will be saying goodbye many more times. It is not just the goodbye one says to somebody he has just met. Nor is it the “so long” that one says to another when both go their separate ways for the moment. Not that such goodbyes are really goodbyes. But that I am referring to the one I say to persons who I will be geographically away from for a considerable stretch of time – two weeks, a month, a semester, a year, or perhaps, forever.
When I was three years old, I said goodbye to my parents when they left me, for the time being, in the care of my lola in Iligan City. My father then was just appointed Justice of Peace in Valencia, Negros Oriental. Two years later, our whole family moved to Valencia, and so, I said goodbye again, this time to my lola. Later on, I said more goodbyes as family usually went on vacation trips. Then, right after graduating from high school, I said two goodbyes that were the hardest to say yet. I left home for a foreign land thousand of miles across the Pacific, to be away from my dear parents, brothers and friends for a whole year. After that year was over, I said goodbye to that same foreign land, which in a sense, has become another home for me, but whose wide expanse I may not hope to visit in a long time. And then, right now. I am in college and away from home. As such, I say goodbye to my many friends here when I leave for home during the vacations.
Yes, I have said goodbye so many times that somehow, I have succeeded in taking a parting scene for granted. Oftentimes, I say goodbye, as a matter of course, as a habit, as a mere word that one usually says when he or the other leaves. Just that, A word for formality’s sake, Nothing more.
But is it nothing more?
I wonder. I don’t think so…Or is it? If it is not, what else could it be? Or rather, what really is behind my saying goodbye?
To move further, I must now therefore set aside all my preset notions, my usual attitude towards saying goodbye. I suspend all my judgments, neither affirming nor negating, and view the act of saying goodbye with a certain detachment. I go back to the experience itself and ask, “What is goodbye?” A goodbye is utterance of the word, is a handshake, or the wave of the hand, is misty eyes and a faint smile, or perhaps, a tight embrace and heavy sobs and buckets of tears. It is “adios”, “sayonara”, “arreviderci”, or “paalam”. A goodbye is all these. But it is not just all these. The above are only the externalizations, outward manifestations of some mixed inner feelings, anticipated or advanced feelings of nostalgia, of longing, of missing the other. Anticipated or advanced because the persons involved do not really feel the actual longing as yet, before or even at the very moment of parting. Mixed as these feelings are, there is a certain unity in them, in that they stem from the idea that one will be apart, will be away, will be “absent” from the other.
It is then understandable why one who feels this advanced state of being absent to the other, is apprehensive for that exact moment of the goodbye, of the parting. He is so uneasy. He knows that the moment will come, but he does not want to it to come. As much as possible, one postpones and postpones. The waiting can take so long. And the longer one tarries about it, the more he becomes uneasy, the more he prolongs the “agony” of the apprehensiveness. One continues to delay as if one dreaded it.
Why? What is it that makes one “dread” goodbyes? Most often, perhaps, it is because of the anticipated feeling of “absence” from each other. Absence involves a certain loss. One is here, the other is not. The other is far away, and one misses his company, his actual physical presence. Perhaps it is a loss of a sense of togetherness. Perhaps. But is it entirely a loss? Some situations seem to indicate otherwise. The absence might even be looked upon as a way of strengthening the sense of togetherness. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” as some say. When the persons involved are apart from each other, one realizes how much the other means, how strongly one is attached to the other. One also gets a better perspective of the relationships when the other is not present. Perhaps, it is also true that, “When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain” (Kahlil Gibran).
What is it then that makes a goodbye a goodbye? Is it the anticipated loss of the other brought about by the absence, or is it the gain one can hope to achieve from the same absence? Or is it both? Or is it something more basic? Why does one anticipate the loss or the gain, or both gain and loss that is brought about by the absence of the other? I must now therefore come to the eidos of a goodbye, to what precisely gives the same meaning, and not just as a mere word that can be said matter-of-factly and without significance.
Going back to the very experience itself, I notice that I say goodbye only to persons I know, and more than that, to persons I know fairly well, those with whom I have grown some attachment, to those persons I have learned to give a damn about. In short, my goodbyes can have significance only if I say it to a person I particularly care for in some way, great or small. I cannot, in other words feel the anticipated loss and the hoped-for gain the absence of a person will bring me if I do not even care about the person, if he does not even mean anything to me in the first place. A caring for the other person, a giving a damn, is therefore the essence of a goodbye that is meaningful. How meaningful the goodbye is corresponds to how strong the caring for, the giving a damn about the other is.
It is the at this point that I become conscious that I am a part of the experience itself. As such, I reduce the experience of saying goodbye to my own view of it. It is myself who gives validity and significance to my idea of what it is to care, and consequently of whom to care for. This point of view is personal, is subjective. However, it is also intersubjective. How much I care for the other is affected by how he accepts the care I give and how he reciprocates. Thus, it is not only my own concept that gives goodbye its validity and significance.
But then, some questions arise. Is the care I give to a person lessened when I have become so accustomed to his being away from me and I from him? Is to care for this person and for another, like cutting a piece of cake, that when I give one piece, I necessarily deprive the other of the same piece?
But this is another set of questions.
And to consider them, I must start all over again.
A caring for the other person, a giving a damn, is therefore the essence of a goodbye that is meaningful.
hahaha..wla lang.. phenomenological method... *aaw, 4th year speech, k2miss*:c
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