Most of us are curious, from time to time, to know what other people think of us and, unless we fancy ourselves rebels – with or without a cause – it’s likely that we hope for positive reviews. In moments of bravado, we may say to ourselves and others, “I don’t care what people think about me,” but few of us really mean it. We do care what others think of us and, even if we don’t necessarily seek applause, it’s likely that we seek approval or agreement … or at least understanding. The purely self-differentiated person is a rare creature, so it matters to us what others think. We hope that people will think the best of our efforts and assume goodwill, even if they’re somehow at odds with us.
If you watch politics at all, you may know that this past federal election was not exactly the high point of my life, although it produced enough notoriety to last a lifetime. Having run a principled if unsuccessful campaign for city council a little over a year ago, I was persuaded to stand for Parliament this year. Although I was a reluctant recruit, I agreed to put my life on hold for a few months and stand as the sacrificial lamb in what was considered a long shot by even the most optimistic observers. Now, to be perfectly honest, I hesitated to even mention this recent unpleasantness this morning, but if I had used my second-best personal illustration of the perils of authenticity, those of you who know me would be sitting there thinking to yourselves, “oh, I know a better illustration he could have used to demonstrate how truly being oneself might lead to public reproach.” So forgive me, but I’m going to talk for the first few minutes about my personal misadventures in politics.
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| Photo - Geralt / Pixabay |
With little more than a month to election day, a senior party official called me and intimated that I should withdraw as a candidate, arguing that every day spent explaining was a day taken away from campaigning. If I would stand down as a candidate, he said, the issue would quickly blow over and the party would be in my debt. So I stepped down.
But the issue didn’t blow over. Later that day, I heard the party leader describe my remarks as having been “totally inappropriate” and I found myself having to take the lead in defending what I had said and countering the innuendo about me. My authenticity and integrity were at stake, neither of which mattered to party officials, who had already solved their problem. I found myself reading media reports, tweets, and comments from people on both sides of the issue who knew nothing about me, but who felt perfectly free to pontificate about my motives, my temperament, my intelligence, and my character.
It was a grueling few days and it wasn’t until the next week, after Gail Asper had written a letter of support to the Winnipeg Free Press, that life began to settle down. Her letter was a lifeline and it served to turn the tide among many people who had been confused. In the days and weeks that followed, I realized that friends and strangers alike had my back, reassuring me that there were those who could see through the innuendo to the person at the centre of the storm. It was as if people were looking into my very soul and understanding my intentions. Still, in the end, the onus was on me to know my own heart and soul, since whatever the world may have thought, it remained me who had to live within my own skin and reconcile myself to my own conscience.
I took some comfort from the words of Louisa May Alcott, who said, “If I can do no more, let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth’s sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.”
Now, lest I sound unduly sanctimonious and defensive, let me acknowledge that I’m hardly immune to making judgments about the inner lives of others. Indeed, the comment that landed me in trouble involved just such a judgment (however well-founded it may have been) and, truth be told, I haven’t given up the practice. Nor do I plan to. However, my experience has reminded me of the importance of humility and caution in assessing the inner motives of others.
Let’s face it, notwithstanding the biblical injunction to “judge not, lest ye be judged,” it is virtually impossible for any of us to avoid judging others, presuming to understand their inner thoughts and feelings while assessing their behaviours and actions. And there may be a certain value in that, since the ability to avoid the clutches of sociopathic personalities and emotional vampires depends, at times, upon our ability to imagine what’s going on inside of others. For that matter, the same ability is necessary for us to form the positive bonds of love and affection with those who are closest to us. Curiously enough, it’s our very capacity for empathy that leads us to look into the soul of another and imagine that we can understand what’s going on in their heart. And just to be clear, I’m using the word soul here to refer to that continuum of thought and emotion that makes up our human personalities. Far more often than not, I assume goodwill and honesty on the part of the people I meet and I am rarely disappointed.
Just this past Friday – on that day which has become known as Black Friday, supposedly because it’s the point in the year when retailers’ books are no longer in the red, but which has become a bit of a double entendre owing to the despicable behaviour of some shoppers – on that very day, a colleague of mine posted a confession on Facebook, which I take the liberty to share because she set it as a public post. She wrote, “So I'm in the mammoth line again at Kohl’s. No hating. I wanted to buy hats and gloves for cold protesters. Thinking I'm super smart for opening a charge account to get 25% off. And I walked out with my Kohl’s bag with 5 pairs of gloves. Unpaid for. No one noticed. #gotprivilege.”
This colleague is a pretty remarkable person – well grounded, hard working, and clearly focused. She’s been a leading figure in her community’s “Black Lives Matter” movement – a community where her witness really matters and where putting herself out there makes her vulnerable – and she was shopping to make sure that everyone who showed up with her that day was properly dressed for the weather. She was self-aware enough to know that if she hadn’t been who she was, with all of its attendant privilege, she might have been arrested while exiting the store because of her oversight. Moreover, recognizing the mistake, she walked back in and waited in a holiday shopping line to pay for the items she had taken out of the store. And then, when she shared her story, she knew enough about her circle of friends to realize that some of them would be thinking, “What? You were shopping on Black Friday?” while quietly judging her and excommunicating her from the circles of goodness.
I responded to her, saying, “anybody who knows you should know better than to judge. And as somebody who works well over half of the Sundays in any given year, and many Saturdays to boot, and holidays like Christmas and Easter that others are accustomed to having off, who’s on call 24/7, and who’s expected to come back from vacation if a parishioner dies, I don't think you ever have to justify shopping on a day that’s convenient for you. And your personal integrity in both understanding that what happened was a measure of your privilege and in returning to pay for the items shines through the whole story.”
As I learned a few months ago, sometimes it’s important for others to let us know that they have a sense of who we are, deep inside, and that they will bear witness on our behalf, even at the risk of their own reputations. But the testimony of others can only reassure us if it somehow resonates with our own deep understanding of ourselves. Otherwise, even the reassurance of others will ring hollow when we hear it. But as Bronson Alcott said, “Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.”
Both my experience during the federal election and the experience of my colleague a couple of days ago, I think, illustrate the importance of knowing who we are as individuals, and what values we stand for, so that we can prevail over the personal challenges we will inevitably face. Few of us lead such charmed lives that our personal integrity will never be called into question, or our authenticity will never be doubted, or our motives will never be suspect. If we’re not grounded and self-aware, it’s easy to be blown away by circumstance. In the end, the person that each of us knows most deeply is none other than ourselves – even though we are often confused ourselves about who we are, what we stand for, and what we long for. If we’re going to find ourselves judged by others anyway, it’s best if who we really are is worth the bother. The Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson captured this in the closing words of his autobiography, when he wrote, “I know what I have experienced and I know what it has meant to me.”
“What can you ever really know of other people's souls,” asked C.S Lewis, “of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.”
Lewis is simply restating and expanding upon the old Greek aphorism, “know thyself.” If anyone knows who we are, it needs to be us. If you don’t know your own soul, the essence of who you really are, it’s unlikely that anybody else can or will know you. As Edwin Buehrer observed, “There is something sublime in the thought that there is in you a being which no other being can enter.” And this presents a daunting challenge to each and every one of us.
One of my favourite Hasidic tales, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with, tells the story of Rabbi Zusya of Anipol at the end of his life. According to the story, he was much loved and revered, being both pious and humble, and if anyone had lived a life that measured up to the ethics of Moses or the wisdom of Solomon, it had surely been him. Yet, as he realized that his life was drawing to a close, Zusya became anxious and inconsolable. When his closest followers pointed out to him that he had lived an exemplary life, and that God would surely reward him in paradise, he continued to tremble in fear, not unlike Shaker the Hare in this morning’s story.
As Harold Kushner tells the story, Zusya answered his disciples like this: “When I stand before God, should God say to me, Zusya, why weren’t you another Moses? I will have an answer for Him. I will say to Him, Master of the universe, You did not grant me the greatness of soul that you granted Moses. Should He ask me, Zusya, why were you not another King Solomon? I will say to Him, Because you did not bless me with the wisdom to be another King Solomon. But alas, what will I say to Him if He asks me, Zusya, why were you not Zusya? Why were you not the person I gave you the ability to be?”
You, my friends – each and every one of you – yes, you are the one soul you really know. It’s helpful to have friends and companions who know you well enough to reassure you when you are in doubt, to defend you when you are attacked, and to give you a sense of stability when things seem unreal; but each one of us is ultimately responsible to know ourselves as best we can and to strive to be both honest and forgiving, self-assured and humble. As Edwin Buehrer aptly observed, “There was never another like you.” And there never will be.
A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg.
Work Cited
Harold S. Kushner, Overcoming Life’s Disappointments (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
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