Doing what’s right is good, right? As opposed to doing something morally questionable, like stealing. But what about the person who steals but is honest about his theft, does he get any kudos for honesty? He doesn’t lie to himself and pretend that he’s a modern day Robin Hood. He knows he’s scum, he knows he’s low. He doesn’t bullshit. Is that respectable?
And what about the person who does what’s right? It’s easy to admire a person who, on the outside, seems righteous. Let’s say there’s a woman who runs a nonprofit that feeds homeless people. That’s definitely a good thing, right? (If you don’t think so, my entire essay might not work for you) She’s respected in the community, everybody knows her as a “good” person. But let’s say she lies to herself about what she’s doing. What if she holds herself above other people, like lets say, the aforementioned thief. Or even better, let’s say that she considers all bank executives to be below her, morally speaking. She lifts herself up in her good deeds, and lowers others whom she considers are parasites in society. Is she lying to herself about how great she is? Is it better to do good and inflate your self-importance through telling yourself lies, or to do bad and at least be honest about it?
Obviously both paths are incorrect. That’s where the third way comes in. But for me, I struggle every day with humility. I struggle with it bad. Throughout my life, I have continuously experienced events that knock me down, cut me to a stump, position me in a place that seems lower than I was years earlier. Humbling events are difficult to accept. You feel weak, insecure. You feel worthless, like all your talent is wasting, like nobody appreciates you. You feel lost in a bubble of inward affectations, disillusioned by pain and confronted with the reality that the world is a cruel and bitter place. And in a dog-eat-dog society such as ours, we will not last.
I remember getting fired from a job, then going back to another job I had also been fired from and begging for work. I was hired on, but not in the same capacity as before. Before I had been the equivalent of a sous chef at an upscale restaurant. But now I was a dishwasher. The lowest rung on the food and beverage totem, the place where only immigrants find pride because to them, work is work, money is money.
But for me, work has never been work. For some reason, after World War II, the understanding of work changed dramatically. For eons, work was what you did to support the people you loved, your family and close friends. You didn’t work a job you were passionate about, you worked a job that paid the bills, that enabled you to send your children to college, that provided for your retirement. Now it seems we are all scrambling to find our voice, our calling, our niche in the ever globalizing dynamism of the marketplace. It is now more important to do something important than it is to just do something. Say that ten times fast.
Of course we can say that the blood and sweat of our forefathers has enabled us to pursue more meaningful careers. We could also say that people were angrier back then because they did not derive a sense of personal satisfaction from their vocation, and that we’re better off having the freedom to choose rather than the obligation to just work.
But we could also say that something was lost in the process. During the lightning evolution of labor, the definition of responsibility has changed dramatically. It used to mean that we were responsible for more than just ourselves, that we have a family to look after, elderly parents to care for, brothers and sisters and neighbors in need of a helping hand. But now we consider responsibility limited to ourselves and our household. If my bills don’t affect you, we have nothing to do with each other.
We’re not all like that, but I would argue that this is the general sentiment of our society, and that it will only get worse as the introversion of our social interactions exacerbates through the expansion of technological relationships, or technoships. But I digress.
I remember returning from Ethiopia and going back to work for my stepfather doing construction. I had helped to create an NGO in Ethiopia, I traveled to Italy with my future wife for an international photography exhibition that included my poetry. I had dined with ambassadors and presidents of countries and multi-millionaires, the elite of the elite. I had found my voice. But now I was living in Goochland, Virginia with my parents, working at a job that I never felt comfortable doing.
But of course I had to. I was getting married and I needed to give something to my future wife and family. We needed a foundation, and although I had the time of my life in Ethiopia, it was not an environment conducive to starting a family–traveling here and there, living on couches and barely scraping by. Even with the blessings of the upper class I was still a mere pet to them. A western boy with bright eyes and big dreams, a bit naive and 100 percent lost. Focused, yes. Passionate? Absolutely. But so caught up in how awesome I was I forgot who I really was.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Because people are so caught up in how good they are they forget that they are just like everyone else. Even the nicest most generous people in the world are subject to being proud of their kindness. Like the story of the monks who argued over who was the most humble. Talk about an oxymoron.
But my time, our time in Goochland dragged. It really strained my new marriage, especially when I had no work for a month, no car, no means to even drive to the city for a job interview. Stuck in rural Virginia, waiting to be saved by something, waiting in vain. Eventually I got a job at a restaurant. Here I was, 29 years old, a life of adventure behind me, and I was back working in the food and beverage industry, making less money per hour than I did when I was 21 and in college. My college degree sat collecting dust in the closet–a $27,000 piece of paper in a cheep Walmart frame. I think that was the last time I ever stepped foot in a Walmart.
Eventually I was hired as a stringer for a newspaper, writing little tidbits of mundane community minutia. The people I wrote about certainly were not mundane, but what I wrote certainly was. Finally I was hired on as a full-time staff writer. Even then I thought is was below where I was in Ethiopia. After eight months I learned that I had won two writing awards, but in the same breath I was laid-off. It was surreal.
I took it in stride, saw it as an opportunity to work on other stuff, get refocused on my own ambitions. So here I am, seven months after being laid-off and still nothing. The humbling experience gets increasingly more painful and longer in duration the older I get. Only now I have a wife, giving the sword another edge and another stabbing point.
I even lost my faith for a while. Athiets and agnostics might find statements like that pitiful, or laughable, or justifiable even. I find it sad. I wish I had the lassaiz-faire spiritual mentality of an agnostic or atheist. I wish I could imagine a chaotic world that ends when it ends, a world in which the Golden Rule were the only thing to worry about, a world in which humanism was the epitome of my moral code. I truly do. But shit in one hand and wish in the other, as they say, and no doubt the dookie will win that battle.
But sometimes we have to lose our faith in order to find it. Sometimes we have to set the bird free and hope that it returns. Older? Naturally. Wiser? Maybe. I guess the key is to never lose faith in yourself, even if you lose faith in the divine. Because God is always calling to us, no matter how much we deny God’s existence or how much we ignore the voice of Mother Nature, God is always singing in our ears. But we are not always singing in our own ears. We are our own worst enemy, each of us is our worst critic. If we forget God, God doesn’t forget us. But if we forget ourselves, we are truly forgotten.
So as I sit, feeling sorry for myself, searching for job after job, writing countless cover letters that inflate my persona, trying desperately to attract the attention of a stranger who in all likelihood I will never meet, as I bounce around ideas for making money in my head, people I can go to for help, places I can go for networking, places I can go to just get the fuck away from everyone, as my brain takes it all in and focuses all its energy on doing something, anything that utilizes my passion and my strengths as a human being, I forget what it means to be humbled. As soon as I grab a job, humility is out the door. I am thrust into the world of Darwinist capitalism, and if I don’t swim, I will sink to the bottom and be forgotten to the sea. If I don’t exude professional confidence and surety I will not last. And if I allow my personal ego to supersede my faith, my soul will not last. So where does that leave me?
I have no idea. I want to give, I want to teach and learn, I want to write, I want to play music and travel, I want to help people. If these are selfish ambitions, so be it. As long as I’m honest with myself, as long as I truly stay humble and reverent and thankful, I have nothing to worry about. If I can be at peace in my heart, if I can know that everything I build with my hands and everything I create can be taken away or destroyed in the blink of an eye, if I know that the only true peace is dedication to a life of humble servitude, if I can truly love and cherish my wife and pray for my enemies and help people when it’s inconvenient to me and be kind with no acknowledgment, I will find my way.
I only hope and pray that the bird will stay happy in its cage. Not pacified, not incarcerated, but locked into the Way, chained in pure freedom.
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