Musings Of An Indie Writer| « | From The Bit Bucket: Pointillist Failures |
»
|
|
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Thorns
This essay has a prerequisite. Before you proceed here, go to American Digest and read this extraordinary piece by Gerard Van der Leun. Gerard's essay is a stunner on several levels: its graceful language, its insight into the sources of interpersonal conflict and the suffering that engenders, and perhaps most of all, its humility and candor in self-disclosure. It's the sort of work that makes one aware of one's own smallness. Go ahead; I'll wait.
Finished so soon? Well, anyway. It's clear from that piece and other things Gerard has written that he's borne some serious afflictions, and that his early response to them was fairly typical of a man of our time:
Nothing good ever transpires in an argument carried past 2AM, and it grows almost lethal as it winds on until 4. It doesn't matter whether or not the argument is with another or just with oneself, let it run that long into the night and you will know -- cold and stained -- the darkest secrets of the self. And you will drink them down as night after night and year after year they are drawn up from the heart's core. And the water will be dank and false and carry an ever increasing taint of poison into your soul. Tasted once, you will have a ceaseless thirst for more of it.I've been drinking my dark bitter glass from my secret well of hate in the dark hours on and off for what is now going on fifteen years. That's a strange measure since it marks just about the same length of time that I loved the woman and was married to her.
But I'm no addict, no alcoholic of hate. No, not me.
It is true that over time I no longer went to this dark well nightly. I'd lost a couple of years to its haze in the early 90s, but I got out of that in time. Say what you will, it did not rule my life, only -- from time to time -- my nights.
But herein lies the thrust of the essay: he got over it. It would appear from other of his writings that he had supernatural help. It's possible that not everyone who suffers a thorn in his flesh is aware that such help is always available for the asking. It's a certainty that not everyone is aware that sometimes the help doesn't wait to be asked.
But help is exactly that: aid, assistance, a supplement to one's own will and power. He who suffers must provide the main drive; God's help, in whatever form it might take, is seldom more than a gentle correction of one's course.
The thorns in our flesh, we fortunate ones of Twenty-First Century America, are largely put there by our own hand. The impetus is usually our arrogance: in particular, our demand that other people be what we want them to be. We suffer because they stubbornly, perversely, maddeningly persist in being what they are.
People are capable of change, but no change powered by the demands of another is likely to endure for long. Beyond that, why on Earth should Smith change to please Jones? In response to such a demand, wouldn't Smith be more likely to feel resentment, defiance, even anger toward Jones? Wouldn't he be likely to counterpunch? You're no angel yourself, Bub. Felonious deeds notwithstanding, which of them could justly claim the moral high ground?
If Jones feels Smith's characteristic behavior as a thorn in his flesh, a demand that Smith change is far more likely to add a second thorn beside the first. Human beings simply don't like to be criticized or corrected. It makes us feel dirty and abused, especially if it comes from someone with whose conduct we're not altogether pleased ourselves.
If you can't match a few bits of your own conduct to that of both Smith and Jones, you're either seriously delusional or a living saint. If you've ever been in love or had a family, the former is more likely than the latter.
Enduring change is the product of clarification of one's own desires. Smith doesn't change because Jones wants him to; he changes, if he does, because he's decided that pleasing Jones is sufficiently important to him to be worth the effort and the sacrifice. In short, he concedes Jones's approval of him to be a priority in his own scheme of values. That priority might arise from affection, from economic considerations, or from the fear of punishment, but it must be there, whatever the cause.
Here we come to the hardest of hard truths: None of us has all that much to offer anyone else, especially as an incentive to change.
Do you think your wife has a weakness that she "ought to" unlearn? Perhaps a careless way with your privacy or a flip attitude toward your prerogatives? Well, why do you think she has it? It must satisfy some desire of hers, or meet one of her needs, right? So what are you going to offer her to give it up? Your approval? Your continued financial indulgence? A promise that you won't hit her? Only a brute would dream of doing any of that.
Do you think your son has a flaw he "needs" to be rid of? Laziness about his obligations or a tendency to associate with persons unworthy of him? Well, why do you think he's that way? It must cater to his desires and priorities in some way, right? So what are you going to offer him? Do you really think he's unaware of your disapproval? Do you imagine that he's unaware of his dependency upon you? Don't you dare think of raising your hand to him; these days, that would risk being murdered in your bed.
Do you think one of your coworkers has a bad habit that he "should" correct? Insouciance about timeliness or quality of work, perhaps? Well, why do you think he has it? In a commercial environment, everything is governed by perceptions of profit, cost, and price; he must have concluded, consciously or otherwise, that his habit is tolerable given the conditions of his employment. He could be wrong, true, but do you suppose you're properly the one to inform him of it? What's his most likely reaction to being called onto the carpet by you, his organizational peer?
Attempts to correct others are almost always entirely selfish. They aim at pulling a thorn out of one's own flesh. And they almost always fail destructively.
In the complete annals of His life, Christ indulged in only one act of correction:
Then Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the temple courts, and turned over the tables of the moneychangers and the chairs of those selling doves. And he said to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are turning it into a den of robbers!” [The Gospel According To Matthew, 21:12-13]
(This singular deed was meant to correct a singular blasphemy: the use of the Temple of Solomon, the center of all Jewish worship, as a profit center by merchants in collusion with the priesthood. The priests of Jerusalem had contrived, by the requirement for sacrifices and the sale of acceptable animals at the door of the temple, to exclude the city's poor from the house of God. They had subordinated God to Mammon.)
At no other time did He demand that anyone alter his ways for His sake.
We humans are a bit looser about our "authority" than Christ was about His. We perpetually measure the conduct of others against our own standards. We frequently find others lacking; we often tell them so. We engender no small amount of discord and hatred by doing thus. We seldom draw our own thorns in the process.
Perhaps the answer lies in cultivating a spirit of forgiveness. Not universal and unconditional approval; that's impossible to us fallen ones. Say rather a willingness to accept others as who they are, as far as possible, and to allow them their foibles, in the hope that they will be similarly indulgent about our own. The Lord's Prayer suggests that we cannot expect God's forgiveness of our transgressions except "as we forgive those who trespass against us." Perhaps Jesus didn't think it was necessary to point out that the unwillingness to forgive is likely to be reciprocal; but even in first-century Judea, "obvious" meant "overlooked."
Now, about those thorns in your flesh: do they hurt more when you clench around them and dwell on the "injustice" of them, or when you relax, cluck at yourself for putting them there, and move on?
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Thanks Fran,
That was timely and much needed.Happy Sunday,
CraigPosted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/09/2006 at 01:06 PMThe operative word is “demand” - He entreats us all to change our behavior, but He apparently respects our agency enough that He prefers to kill us rather than force us to behave.
Odd, that.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/10/2006 at 11:50 AMNothing odd about it Amschat. Even an agnostic such as myself easily sees the point. I’ll assume you’re not trying to avoid it just to flog our curmudgeon (who’ll ban your butt in a nanosec if he even suspects you are).
You choose to be part of the continuum that is life. No life, no history. Choose to mislead others to their demise, and they may still earn to be included as part of the continuum when asking forgiveness, but you will not be so forgiven.
IOW, the smartass gets terminated.
Posted by Pascal (the derivative) on 07/10/2006 at 04:44 PMThanks for this, Fran. Really. I needed to hear it one more time….
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/11/2006 at 01:28 AM
Comment Form
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
