This profoundly dispiriting human condition has come about largely due to Australia Post, on whose shoulders much of the problems of the world must rest. And, when I phoned up the sorting office to ask why, in the past 3 weeks, I’ve had exactly no post, I got the rather strange answer:
“I’m sorry, but you don’t exist.”
This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. However when I enquired about the conditions of this existence – or lack of - rather than hypothesizing a human essence, I encountered the natural existential obstacle and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, and alienation. For the benefit of our English speaking audience, that is a slight dose of phone range.
And it’s not as if post for this house hasn’t been arriving – it has, by the bucket load, for The Firm (as they shall henceforth be known) that previously knew it as their address. There are invoices by the sackful, normally addressed to the head of purchasing, or the vice of supply, but as they get increasingly desperate, the invoices sometimes just name the company. You know they’ve lost the will to live when they just address their latest bill to “The occupant”. Indeed, despairing though these letters might be, it would be good to receive them in my box. But, like Godot, the letters never come, and instead get stuffed into my neighbour’s slot.
And that yields something else that existentialists know well - Angst, sometimes called dread, or even anguish which is a term that is common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing next to your postbox, where one not only fears looking in, but where one also dreads the possibility of phoning up the sorting office again, and then throwing oneself off the nearest cliff.
It’s not exactly a hard thing for the postman to put post in the box with the same number that it is addressed to, however after putting ever larger signs on the box, and begging them to put it in the right one, finally I do at least have an answer as to why this is, infact, impossible.
“You don’t exist. There is no registered post point at that address.” Pointing out that I’m calling from somewhere that doesn’t exist didn’t seem particularly helpful, and infact when I did mention it, it was clear that they were talking what I said with a huge dose of salts. Asking to be put in touch with someone who could make me, in fact, exist again, didn’t help either.
“When your house is built, ask your builder to get in touch with the council, and they will be able to get in touch with the land registry, and we will create a post point for you!” cried the Australia Post voice with a touch of glee, clearly having the joy that only getting an annoying Pom off the phone can achieve. “Do you have a completion date when construction will stop on your house?”
“1886”.
I do despair. It is a truly human condition. As Kierkegaard defines it in his Either/or: "Any life-view with a condition outside it is despair." In other words, it is possible to be in despair without despairing. And it’s not the despair I can’t stand: it’s the hope. The hope that I’ll get someone to make me exist.
And finally, at the Land Registry, I found someone who – with amazement in her voice – dusted off a piece of parchment, finally found the house, and even better faxed off said parchment to the sorting office with a map on it, and an arrow marked “post box here”!
As Sartre puts it in his “Existentialism is a Humanism”: Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. Or rather, the joy of the first piece of post: a bill from Foxtel, saying they are increasing their prices for viewers who just want to receive BBC World.
Well, that’s all right then. I can now get back to the main task of making sure the hovel doesn’t fall down.
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