Third in a series of three posts about areas where we can focus to help ourselves, and others.
When life is feeling grim, solitary, and like a tunnel with no end in sight, we have some choices. One is to give in to the helplessness, hide under the covers, stay as far away from the news as possible, and anesthetize ourselves. Another is to adopt a state of denial, and just continue to go about our lives as if nothing were happening – because, for many, that’s still quite possible. We can see this happening all around us in the chatter, the consumption, the focus on celebrities or the latest sports event, the endless pursuit of individual pleasure and distraction that characterizes a lot of our society. Or we can doomscroll and share the gloom and outrage with like-minded people, which makes us feel like we’re doing something, when actually we’re just talking to the mirror.
A different choice is more difficult, more demanding, but ultimately better for us and better for the people around us. And that’s to face the current reality, acknowledge it for exactly what it is, and make personal decisions that help us live vibrantly and helpfully in spite of what’s happening around us, and even to us.
In two previous posts, I’ve offered suggestions about places to focus. The first talks about Radical Hospitality. The second discusses Creativity and the Arts. In this, the third and final post of the series, I want to talk about “belief.” And by this I don’t mean believing in a God who’s going to come down and rescue humanity and smite the unrighteous — as much as I wish that could happen. No. I’m talking about developing a personal philosophy on which to base your life, your decisions, your actions, and which grounds you in a solid place, or gives you a sanctuary of steadiness to return to when you’ve lost your footing or your hope.
“Everything can be taken from a man but …the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
When I was young, during the Vietnam War, with a father and other relatives around me who’d fought in WWII and suffered from its losses, I thought a lot about what it would have been like to be in Nazi Germany, or be sent to a concentration camp. What would I have done? How much courage would I have had? In those impossible situations, how does one cope, how does one keep some sense of integrity, dignity, hope? These questions have continued with me throughout my life.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s in a family with a father who was the son of a Methodist minister, and, while quite clear on “doing good”, rebelled against his religious upbringing, and a mother who was an atheist, an intellectual, and essentially a Stoic. Because Dad and I sang, and because it was the way of my maternal grandparents and our small town, we nevertheless went to the Episcopal Church every Sunday. Afterwards, at the Sunday lunch table, we’d often discuss the sermon and the lessons and how they applied, or didn’t, to our own lives. We talked about politics, Vietnam, government, war and peace, culture, sports, society. My family members read books, and they read the newspaper, and a lot of well-written magazines, and we talked about these things together. My eventual educational path of classics and the humanities, my exodus from the church, my explorations of Buddhism, and eventual return to Christianity — as an extremely liberal and unorthodox semi-believer — all make sense in that context. At 70+, I have a pretty strong sense of myself, the meaning of my life, and my place in the world, but I can see that those values been formed over many years of reading, listening, conversing, and thinking. I’m grateful for that, and for the writers and friends who’ve helped me — it’s been deliberate, lifelong work that never “arrives”, but continues to evolve and change.
I also realize that my beginning and path would be unusual in today’s context. How many families even eat meals together anymore, let alone discuss ethics, religion, society, and what they’ve been reading? These kinds of questions used to be a major part of a liberal education, too, but educational institutions and professors are under increasing pressure to watch what they say, what they assign, and how they teach, and the humanities themselves have been devalued as the pressure to work and succeed in lucrative professions takes precedence. But what prepares us for a time when everything turns upside down? Each of us needs to engage with these questions for ourselves, in order to find a personal framework that can support our life and our decisions.
“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
For me, it has been helpful to read the work of people like Victor Frankl, quoted here, who survived a concentration camp in WWII and wrote about the imprisoned people he observed there and what gave some of them hope and purpose and meaning, even in the direst of situations. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a clergyman who was accused of taking part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, imprisoned, and executed by the Nazis, is another person who chronicled his experiences in detail, and offers an example of the struggle to live with integrity under impossible circumstances. Thomas Merton wrote extensively about the struggles between his silent monastic vocation and being a thinking citizen of a world threatened by nuclear war. Many Buddhist thinkers and teachers survived exile and persecution, and anchored their teaching in the fact that while suffering is a truth of human existence, their commitment is to liberating all beings from suffering — even though that is impossible. The life of Jesus is an ancient but timeless example of how to live selflessly and with love toward all in spite of repression and persecution; the Gospels are quite explicit in their teachings, even if the institutionalized church, as well as immoral people who call themselves Christians, have a history of ignoring them, and distorting and using the religion for their own purposes.
There’s a reason why “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “love your neighbor as yourself” have persisted as ways to consider the most basic questions of what’s right and what’s wrong — and we don’t have to subscribe to any religion to think about and use these concepts. I think what matters is to consider one’s life, its meaning and purpose, and decide if we really believe, for instance, that love is stronger than hate. Then we have to ask ourselves what that means in our life, and at this particular time in history. How are we going to act on it?
The true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system….Human experience is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it…. In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
A friend told me recently that he was making a commitment to kindness. I am committed to that too. It sounds like a simple thing, but it’s actually very profound when it emanates from a deep choice of how one want to be and how one hopes the world can be. It’s not something that comes out of a fake sense of joy or even optimism, but rather out of seeing that a deliberate shift in one’s consciousness and intent can have a profound effect on one’s own life as well as every interaction we have with others.
Another person might decide to believe in goodness, or in love, or in being fully present to others, as grounding principles for their own actions and decisions. It doesn’t matter so much what words we use; the point is to take a stand, an internal stand of your own volition, and say, all right, I choose not to despair, but to live and act from this place.
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
What we can learn from those before us who’ve grappled with humanity’s cruelty, selfishness, greed and violence is that there are always people, often anonymous, who find ways to live with integrity, hope, and purpose that give light to others, even when times seem very dark. It can be hard work to get to that point, and there will always be periods when we lose our way. However, we can each make the choice to try, and live more fully and more helpfully in our own difficult times.