Chasing the Ball
Like a flock of birds, the cluster of children in the image above darts across the grass, pursuing the ball as it careens toward the distant goal. For the parents and other adults standing on the sidelines, the sight awakens memories of their own childhood, when all that mattered was the excitement of the chase, when abandoning oneself to the joy of pursuit was the norm.
But for the young athletes above, the abandonment is still all there is. There is no sense of the need to step back from the moment, to subdue emotion and discipline the impulses, to rein in the sheer delight of action, to slow down and think. These lessons will come later.
So too with life in the larger world, as we mature and leave behind the playing field, and find ourselves in the more serious arenas of adult life. Most of us are able to exercise self-control, to be less driven by impulse, not perhaps in every area of life, but certainly in those areas we deem practical.
But once we enter the world of ideas, especially those grand schemees that promise to heal the world, we often lose our discipline and self-control. We may find one idea that draws us close, that strikes us in the heart with force. Is this idea to be our North Star, promising to heal deep injustice, or perhaps to protect us from that which we fear? Our eyes and mind fixed on our distant goal, we abandon the discipline of thought and self-control, giving in to the wildest hopes as if pursuing a dream. Like the children above chasing the ball, we run pell-mell after the promising idea as it skips and dances in front of us, leading us on, we hope to Paradise – or at least to a much better world.
People caught in the grip of an idea often say “I will do anything for the cause” – be it the latest call for social justice or some other political or social movement. That word ”anything” can range from ringing doorbells and sending emails to ending the career of someone we disagree with. Taken literally, it can run all the way to murder and mayhem.
Of course, most of us, when speaking this way, are not being literal. Yet when we find this phrase – “I will do anything for the cause” – echoing in our mind, it is a sign that we have surrendered our autonomy, our independence, to something outside ourselves. We are in the grip of an idea that might have served us and others well, had we only reined it in a bit, but that has instead become our tyrannical master. As psychologist Carl Jung said, “We don’t have ideas. Instead, ideas have us.”
When powerful emotions are harnessed to such a magnetic idea, we can find ourselves driven blindly forward, our eyes fixed on the distant goal. At such times, few tasks are more difficult than finding moderation, subduing emotion and disciplining the impulses – in short, to slow down and think.
Severing the blink-of-an-eye connection between the sighting of a worthy goal and the mad rush down the field creates a space in which we can practice the discipline of thought and reflection. Here the classical virtue of prudence, with its counsel of caution and care, offers help. This virtue teaches us to make wise decisions, to carefully examine an idea from all angles, not just the perspective we are driven to by emotion or by the limits of our own vision. In short, to remember that neither strength of feelings nor certainty of vision can ensure a good end.
The Fortress On The Plain
You travel across an unbroken plain, flat as a tabletop. In the distance, against an empty sky, stands a squat box-like structure, sitting in isolation. The walls, perhaps made of heavy stone block, are the color of slate, much like the walls of the castle depicted above. As you travel on, turreted towers become visible at each corner. Closer still, you notice that between the tooth-like projections that run along the tops of the walls, stand human shapes and silhouettes, peering out at you. Some of these barely visible figures are armed.
Clearly meant to defend, this is obviously a fortress.
Of the many kinds of structures that humans have erected, none is more hostile, more unfriendly, than the fortress. There is no warm inviting air here, like what we might find at a roadside inn or a small farm holding or any of the other buildings scattered across the kingdom at the time the castle, pictured above, was built.
Instead, the intent of the fortress is to protect from a danger that lies outside the walls, perhaps from the hostile army of a neighboring baron, or a marauding band afire with hopes of easy pillage and plunder.
Hundreds of years later in America fortresses are still with us, but today these protective structures exist in the mind and heart, not in the physical world. Our enemies are no longer the armies of alien powers, or bands of wild and reckless souls searching the world for easy prey. Today, the enemy carries the banner for a political party we oppose, serves a cause that we fear, or believes in a religion we hate. Many of us have responded to these dangers by fleeing behind metaphorical walls of stone.
It’s no surprise that the phrase “fortress-like mentality” is used to describe thinking driven primarily by hostility and fear.
Authors who put our social and cultural lives under the microscope, like Robert Talisse, argue that there is more to this than the rising levels of hostility between groups and factions we have all observed. In his book, Overdoing Democracy, he documents how the enmity and suspicion between groups has penetrated beyond the surface, beyond the domain of politics, and worked its way deeply into our society.
We are divided by where we live, what church we go to, indeed whether we go to church at all. Where do we buy groceries – Whole Foods or a big chain? Do we get our coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks? Do we favor a hybrid or a pickup? Do we bicyle to work or do we see this as something only for lefties? Who do we hang out with? Do we ever talk calmly about what divides us, not with our allies, but instead with people on the other side? Or do we get 9ur back up at the mere thought of an opposing belief?
In short, more and more of what used to be our common life is being drawn back behind fortress walls. For those who retreat into this shelter, the world outside is no longer seen as inviting, as a world to explore, a space in which to learn, but instead has become the stalking ground of the dreaded enemy. The open ground, the place where we used to mix and mingle with one another, is becoming increasingly empty.
The greatest tragedy of living in the fortress is that it not only keeps the enemy out, but that it also keeps us locked inside. We’re not made for this kind of life, cowering behind walls of stone, lobbing volleys of hate at our enemies. Aren’t we meant instead to lead a freer existence, to walk among people of many beliefs?
Three questions for us all.
How do we ensure that we aren’t cowering behind fortress walls? If we suspect we have, then how do we break free? And finally, how do those of us still venturing into the wide world, coax those in hiding to break down the barriers that imprison them, and to step out into the open once again?
Suggested Reading
How To Know a Person by David Brooks
Overdoing Democracy by Robert Talisse
A Fly Trapped in Amber
The fly above, trapped in amber, was caught on the trunk of a tree in an outflow of sap. The image carries with it a sense of disaster; an insect alights safely, finds in a few seconds that several of its legs are immobilized, then fights briefly to pull away until the sap completely encloses its delicate body. The fly is somehow preserved, only to be found millions of years later, encased in a beautifully colored but deadly casket of amber.
A living being becomes a statue, fixed and immobile.
This condition resembles nothing as closely as it does the psychological state traditionally known as catatonia. Most of us, upon hearing this term, will think first of a patient in a mental hospital, frozen and immobile in a rigid posture, someone whose response to the world, to other people, and to events has shut down to almost nothing. They appear dead to the world.
Yet there is a less literal sense in which the fly trapped in amber can tell us about the human condition. Imagine a person who lives an outwardly normal life, yet internally has reached an impasse, a point in life where there is no longer any forward momentum. In every sense but the external, they are at a standstill.
It’s tempting to ask, “Can’t a person in this state have a good life? Perhaps they’ve achieved a life of success and have merely stopped moving forward. Maybe they’re just resting in place.”
Yet the metaphor of the fly immobilized, when we apply it to the human realm, suggests a broken and even failing life, the life of a person unable to live fully, prevented from the flourishing that is their due. Perhaps they have surrendered to the forces that are dragging them to a standstill. They may have come into the grip of depression, a depression that has destroyed all motivation.
A person in this state often feels hopeless, trapped, and helpless. As they go about the everyday affairs of life they may appear fairly normal, except to those who know something of their inner life. On the other hand, we may find them among the homeless and all the others who wander through the world but struggle to fit in, to conform to the lifestyle and customs of society.
Perhaps this state of being without flourishing has become for the sufferer a survivable state of existence. Yet it is a life that, from the inside, often holds no hope of escape.
Observers often grow frustrated and impatient with people in this plight. We may wonder why they don’t get moving. Why don’t they get a job? Why don’t they break out of the funk that not only holds them down, but can drag down the people close to them?
Perhaps they long to do just that, but don’t know how to get from where they are to where they want to be. Even worse, they may have lost any hope that such change is possible.
Those of us looking from the outside must balance our impatience with the virtues of compassion and patience. And of course thankfulness, that such a fate has not befallen us.
Suggested Reading
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
This book (and the movie by the same name) tell the story of neurologist Sacks’ pioneering work with patients trapped in the outward state of catatonia, the state of physical immobility. This is not the inner state of entrapment discussed above, but still, it brings the metaphor life.
The Solitary Voyager
Imagine, in the emptiness of space depicted above, a small craft carrying a solitary human streaking on a journey, traveling among planets, asteroids and even distant stars. Each of these heavenly bodies exerts the force of gravity, pulling the hurtling ship first one way, then the other. Sometimes these forces are faint and subtle, other times great.
Yet the lonely space craft, carrying its single passenger, manages to avoid being captured by any of these huge objects. To be captured, to fall into the orbit of any, would constitute failure. Instead, the voyager hurtles onward, heading who knows where, intent on never becoming a captive of any of these overpowering objects, all of which threaten the traveler’s independence.
We all travel, as we journey from birth to whatever end awaits us, through a world filled with beliefs of all kinds – religions, ideologies, political movements, social causes. Each seeks to draw us into its orbit, each evangelizes for its own view of the world and of life. “Come and join us,” its followers say, gesturing to all the people who have embraced their particular belief, hoping that we too will join.
Yet for some autonomy is a great prize. They may feel the pull of a distant faith, of a nearby ideology, and even recognize its virtues. Yet they refuse to surrender. They resist the entreaties of those who proclaim, “You have to believe in something,” or “You’ve got to have a cause.”
“But what of the dangers?” the solitary voyager asks, knowing that beliefs, even the best-intentioned, can be the occasion for terrible events. Combined with humanity’s native intolerance, with our frequent hostility toward the outsider, any idea that gains a following can at times produce a toxic mix of prejudice, fanaticism, and occasionally even violence.
It is a form of skepticism, this desire to remain uncommitted, to live independently of the many ideas that surround us in our journey through life. The philosopher Friederich Nietzsche, one of humanity’s most famous solitary voyagers, laid out the choice he believed we all face. “If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire”.
Few choose Nietzsche’s lonely path of inquiry where truth is elusive. Most of us settle into orbit around an idea already established, a truth already revealed, one that offers community and peace of soul. For those who follow Jesus, that way has been set out by Augustine in his Confessions. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
