Where to begin...?

As a sophomore in college, I had a single dorm room. No roommate. A space entirely my own. And I remember that, after the first ten minutes, it terrified me. I don’t think I ever finished entirely unpacking.

I had no one to tell me where my things were supposed to go.

I know that most normal people – you do realize I’m rather abnormal, I hope – would feel the thrill of freedom and the drive to creativity in deciding for themselves where their own things should go. But I was very caught up in a way of thinking limited to “right” and “wrong,” that had no room for “good” and its chums “better” and “best”.

It was actually the required class on Western Civilization that woke me up, or started to. The prof was describing the ancient and medieval notion that has come to be called “the great chain of being,” essentially that everything in the universe has a fixed place on a strict linear hierarchy, like rungs on a ladder, with “prime matter” at the bottom and God at the top.

It seemed obvious to me that, while a linear hierarchy is one way of organizing and relating the various things in the universe, it’s probably not the most useful. There are different kinds of order, and different kinds of relationship between things. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me when, years later, I discovered that great thinkers in ancient and medieval times held a much more subtle and nuanced view than that simplified and dumbed-down notion.

What did surprise me was how long it took me to apply my insight to my own life and behavior.

Clean your room, young man!

I’ve been living in my current apartment for about six months now, and I’m still not entirely unpacked. I have boxes and crates stacked against the wall, waiting for me to decide where to put their contents. Some of these boxes have remained unopened for the past couple moves I’ve made. This is because there’s a part of me that’s still afraid to put something in the wrong spot.

This fear is, I know, entirely unrealistic. It is stuck in a misunderstanding, or maybe a misapprehension, about freedom and order.

Order is nothing other than the relationship of things to each other. How I decide to order something, whether it’s the files in a cabinet or the furniture in a room or the tasks on my to-do list, depends on the relationships I’m looking at. With files, my goal is quick and easy access to information; the relationships I’m looking for are based on the use of the information I’m filing away. For example, bills and receipts go together, and letters from friends go together, and owners manuals and warranties go together.

Relationships between furniture, on the other hand, is based on the relationships I hope to develop between the people using the furniture. I like open rooms, where everyone can see and communicate with everybody else. There’s a part of me that wants to maximize open floor space, but a friend pointed out that putting some furniture pieces at an angle – even though it cut off a square foot-and-a-half in the corner, provided better sight lines for people sitting in chairs and on the sofa.

My to-do list actually benefits from a strictly linear ordering: first this, next that, third something else, and think twice before re-ordering the list. That’s because many activities, in reality, require something else to come first. It’s linear because the relationships are based in the uncompromising march of time.

Order provides the structure for free action. If my files are organized, I’m more free to find the information I want; if my furniture (and my to-do list) is well ordered, it’s easier to have fun with my friends.

Fear of punishment and fear of chaos

So order is both something that I create from and for myself, because it depends on the relationships I’m choosing to look at, and something that is independent of me, because those relationships are based in something real and objective.

This is normal and reasonable and helpful to me. Why, then, do I have such a fear of both aspects of order? Why am I afraid both that I’ll have to decide what to do, and that someone else will impose a decision on me?

I’m sure there are plenty of psychological reasons and childhood traumas that might explain the origin of my fears. But those don’t matter very much. What matters is, replacing my false view of order with a true one. And that is done one act at a time.

This is not a natural love

I don’t like to talk much about sex, partly because I’m ashamed of my own weaknesses in this area, and partly because any restriction on sexual “expression” or activity is seen as “backward” (and I’m vain enough to want to be seen as progressive), and partly because sex is just plain everywhere already and I don’t particularly want to add to the mess.

But what with the foolish hooplah over Pope Benedict’s out-of-context statement on condoms, and in light of some personal questions from a few different friends, and considering a fascinating conversation over at Just Thomism, I thought I’d toss my tuppence into the ring.

Human nature

The human person is made for love.

That sentence has many meanings, because “love” has many meanings. Love could mean, broadly, fellowship or relationship with others. Love could mean, figuratively, sexual intercourse. Both these – as well as other senses of love such as philanthropy or friendship or romance – have some truth to them, but it is important not to confuse them.

The fact is that individual people are dependent on one another, both physically and socially. Love allows those dependencies to fulfill our nature, to build us up both individually and together. In terms of virtue, love directs us toward a good that is at the same time personal and universal.

Our interdependence can be abused, though. We can treat each other in ways that denigrate human nature, usually by pitting one need against another, or by substituting one kind of love for another. That is what the vices do, and particularly the vice of lust.

Lust kills love

Lust does for sex what all the vices do: it reduces the world to some small, solitary good, and refuses to acknowledge the connections of that good to everything else. It reduces a person to an object of sexual satisfaction. That sexual satisfaction may be emotional as well as, or instead of, physical; but it still “objectifies” a person, reduces him or her to a mere thing to be used.

Now, it’s one thing to become momentarily lost in the enjoyment of some good thing. For example, when I’m savoring a truly fine wine, or a perfectly spiced pasta sauce, I take a minute to ignore everything else in the world and simply float in that fullness of flavor. But such moments are gifts, and I soon return my attention to my companions at the table.

Lust seeks to control and command the pleasures of sexual interactions, rather than receive them as gifts. It treats a companion as an excuse or as a tool to achieve a solitary ecstasy.

Where natural, virtuous sex profoundly unites a couple, lust isolates. It refuses to relate the pleasure of sex to the joy of communion.

Sex au naturale

Now, one of the first things lust ignores is the intimate connection between sexual intercourse and procreation. This is, of course, where all the controversy around birth control and homosexuality and so on comes from. None of those approaches to sex are conceivable until the bond between intercourse and childbirth are broken.

I have a great deal of sympathy for couples who can’t see how they could afford the expense of a child, or for people attracted to members of their own sex. I have very good friends who fit into both those categories, and their longing for affection and understanding and security is both deep and genuine. I mentioned above my own vulnerability to sexual temptations as well, and (without going into any detail) I will admit that I have myself sought to avoid the natural course and consequences of sex.

The temptation makes sense: sexual passion is intense and is rooted in the depths of both body and soul. It is easy to let it take over.

But human nature is not meant to be dominated by any single passion, no matter how powerful or profound. Freedom lies exactly in being able to say both “yes” and “no”, and in knowing the best time for each. Reason lies, neither in suppressing nor indulging our passions, but in bringing those passions to their fulfillment in the whole person, and in each other.

True love lies in welcoming and respecting every aspect of others, including their minds, their personalities, and even their fertility. Love, when it meets another, always creates something new and beautiful.

How much of the world's weight should I carry?

I consider tolerance to be a kind of stop-gap, a second-best, a hand-me-down virtue at most. For example, if I said to my beloved, “Darling, I tolerate you,” I would deserve the slap I would receive. Tolerance is the virtue of bearing with some necessary but undesirable thing. It is not the ideal toward which I strive.

That said, tolerance is a real virtue, even if a secondary one: I would place it as a sub-virtue of Fortitude or Courage, as a form of patience and perseverance. But it is only virtuous when directed to something that is both undesirable and necessary.

It’s clear to me that other people don’t fall into the category of “undesirable.” A human being is, by his or her very existence, good. This particular person may be inconvenient or uncomfortable – or even dangerous – to me at this particular time. But what is undesirable is not that person’s humanity; the inconvenience or danger is what is bad.

What isn’t so clear to me, sometimes, is whether I myself fall into that “undesirable” category.

Tolerating imperfection

My friends know that I’m the annoying sort of perfectionist who lets his fears of failure stop him from attempting good things. It’s a very bad habit, a genuine vice. But on the occasions I overcome it, I tend to swing to the opposite vice of sloppiness or even self-sabotage.

This makes it look like I’m very hard on myself, and so most people usually advise me to cut myself some slack, to be more tolerant of my failures. To me, this always looks like “lowering my standards” or giving in to vice.

But I was talking with my spiritual director the other day, and he reminded me that I should not tolerate evil. He pointed out that, while I was very intolerant of imperfection, I was very tolerant of temptation and of my own acts of vice and sin. This is exactly the opposite of what I should be striving for.

Imperfection is a normal and necessary part of human life: we are all finite, limited, and incomplete in and of ourselves. We depend on one another for everything from the basic necessities of survival to our highest personal fulfillment. Somehow I’ve got it in my skull that I need to be absolutely 100% self-sufficient, that I have to know everything and do everything without accepting any help from anybody, or else I’m a failure. That is a lie. It is utterly false, because it is contrary to human nature. My limitations and needs may be inconvenient or difficult, but they are not bad or wrong.

In other words, they are necessary, even if they are sometimes undesirable. I should tolerate them.

Not tolerating evil

Those imperfections are what a philosopher might call a “natural evil” or an “ontological evil,” that is, something lacking in some natural good of being. If I were blind, that would be an “evil” in the nature of my eyes; it’s an imperfection and a limitation. But it’s not a moral evil; it’s not an evil action, and it doesn’t make me an evil person.

Moral evil is what my spiritual director advised me not to tolerate. This returns to the ancient wisdom of Plato, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit a crime or sin.

Why is this so? The answer I’m discovering is that, while natural evil is unavoidable, moral evil is unnecessary. There is no absolute reason I should do anything bad. I might make a mistake, or I might act out of ignorance, but there is nothing that binds me to do something I know is wrong. Nothing in the entire universe can compel me to choose to harm a fly, much less to harm my neighbor.

In other words, moral evil is intolerable – and most intolerable of all in myself.

So I need to turn completely around: I’ve been tolerating my neglect of friends and of duties, tolerating my “need” for hours of mind-numbing entertainment from TV or computer games; meanwhile, I’ve been intolerant of my ignorance and my lack of control over the impact of my work. I’ve got it backward.

I can’t be sure my efforts will succeed, but I can be sure that I will fail – and be a failure – if I don’t make any efforts. I need to learn to tolerate my imperfections, and become absolutely intolerant of my faults.

I’m worried about an FBI team who contacts an isolated individual who’s failing to make contact with jihadist radicals, teaches him how to make a bomb, helps him to plan and carry out an attack, and chooses a large and public venue to arrest him.

I’m worried about an Attorney General who claims “that if Mohamud hadn’t come in contact with the FBI, he ‘would have made his plans tragically real.’”

And I’m worried about mass media outlets that just repeat the line that this is a plot that has been “thwarted” or “foiled.”

For the record, it sounds to me like this Mohamud fellow may actually have become a threat on his own someday. He very well may have warranted observation by the FBI. But the way the Bureau pursued this investigation sounds very much like entrapment for Mohamud and fear-mongering for the rest of us.

“Look!” says the FBI & co., “here’s a home-grown terrorist you should be afraid of! It could be anybody! What’s a little inappropriate pat-down compared to the risk of being bombed while lighting a Christmas Tree? What’s a little warrantless wiretapping or email surveillance next to, you know, a west coast 9-11?”

What would have been wrong with just watching this kid, and seeing what he does on his own? At least then, he might have actually led investigators to a real terrorist cell, and could have led to some genuine intelligence of real plots to commit terrorist acts. And, when arrested, he might have been guilty of a real crime.

As it is, he’s just become the solitary target of an FBI plot to … to what? boost their own ratings? I hope not. To foil and thwart terrorist attacks? Not very effectively.

I want good security and I want active intelligence gathering on terrorist activities. But that’s not what this was. At best, this was a colossal mistake. If anyone in the FBI is reading this, please, don’t make the same mistake again.

Fiction as a “virtual reality”

We're in trouble now!

This is a little off topic for the blog, but what the heck: it’s only a blog after all. In addition to this blog, I’m a fiction writer as well. Being both neurotic and an introvert, I spend way too much time interrogating myself about whether it’s good or realistic or productive or whatever to write stories.

This is how I justify it to myself. I hope that my justification has some basis in reality.

The reason I am so obsessed with stories – both reading or watching them and writing them myself – is that my whole perspective on the world is profoundly shaped by the stories I believe in. So, for most of my youth, my paradigm for reality was Star Wars. I saw everything through the lens of The Force. Later, I discovered Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which I have found to be a far superior guide to reality than Lucas’ mess. Still later, a friend introduced me to the romances of Jane Austen, which provide a profound counterpoint to Tolkien’s vision.

Light fare, perhaps? Yes, perhaps. But, for good or ill, these are the stories that have largely shaped my understanding of the world.

And I’m convinced that it cannot be any other way. It seems to me that stories are a necessary part of human life, and of learning how to be human.

The plotline of life

The primary way we learn anything, of course, is through direct experience. Ouch! That burner is hot! But what happens in that moment of experience?

I’ve had many friends tell me how their awareness of a particular cause or passion woke up through an experience. They suddenly realized that there are millions of poor and suffering people in the world, or that problems can be solved by engineering solutions, or that someone really does love them after all. As soon as they describe the event, they spin it into a story: this understanding of the world shapes their own character. It becomes a plot twist in their own life.

And what changes in that moment? What is realized, or learned, or discovered? It is a new way of viewing the world as a whole. It is like putting on glasses and realizing for the first time just how blurred your vision had been. Objects come into focus, and distinctions become clear.

And, seeing clearly, you are now free to act.

Virtual reality and vicarious experience

Now obviously there are limits to any one person’s experience. For example, I don’t remember ever burning my finger on the stove top. But I watched my older brother do so, and I learned from watching him. In a way, I made his experience my own.

Learning from someone’s example is a kind of second-hand experience. It may not be my exact prescription, but it helps me see much better than I could before. And it saves me from some of the worse consequences of my blindness.

Now, what’s interesting is that it doesn’t seem to matter a great deal whether that second-hand experience is factual or fictional. Many a child has been inspired to honesty by the story of George Washington’s refusal to lie about cutting down a cherry tree, despite the (at best) questionable historicity of the tale.

What matters is that I am able to make the story my own somehow, that my experience of the story becomes a genuine part of my experience of life. So, as I said, Star Wars gave me a heroic lens to view my own life that appeared to be so far from the “bright center” of the universe. It opened my eyes to powers beyond my ability to understand, and to the requirement for those powers to be used for good.

Problems arose, of course, when I discovered that The Force was not in any significant sense real. I don’t mean the fantasy elements of it; a mere child can see through that. I mean that The Force ultimately contradicts itself: it seems impersonal, yet it has a guiding quality; the difference between the “good side” and the “dark side” seems to “depend greatly upon one’s point of view,” yet it is imperative to resist the draw of darkness.

In other words, Star Wars gave me a better lens than I had, but it still left me blind in some very important parts of life.

The importance of good stories

Reality is the ultimate test of all worldviews, whether gained from personal experience or through the virtual reality of a story. I cling to the lens I found in Jane Austen’s work because she sees aspects of the world that, as a twenty-first century American male, I literally cannot see. She reveals a spot as invisible to me as the back of my head, and enables me to see that aspect of the world in my own family and friends. On the other hand, I find most romances (of page or screen) actually raise obstacles to understanding the people in my life.

I try to be discerning in what I read and watch. I try even harder to be discerning in what I write. My goal is to write stories that draw people more deeply into reality rather than distracting from its difficulty.

"And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood..."

Discernment is the process of seeing something more clearly. The reason to see something more clearly is to know how to act toward whatever is seen.

Pretty simple, right?

It’s one of those “easier said than done” things. There are two obstacles, at least two that I’ve encountered in my own life:

1. Admitting that I don’t see things very clearly to begin with
2. Actually acting on what I’ve discovered to be true

Seeing clearly

In terms of virtues, discernment falls under the virtue of prudence or wisdom: it is the skill of looking closely at oneself and the world to find a clear understanding of what one is to do.

There are other aspects of prudence, too. There is simple education about basic moral principles; there is memory, which allows us to learn from our experiences; there is thoughtful consideration of implications and consequences.

But discernment is, in a way, the act that brings those all together in a concrete situation. Here and now, with these people and in these circumstances – what is really going on and, therefore, what is the good that I should pursue.

As a semi-functioning egomaniac, I tend to assume that I’m the smartest person in the room, and that whatever I think or feel is pretty equivalent to absolute truth. I need to remind myself that there are other perspectives than my own, and that there are significant limits to the information I have. I have to do the basic work of checking things out, asking challenging questions, and making sure that my decisions conform to reality rather than trying to conform reality to my opinions.

It’s not even that big a blow to my ego, if I’m diligent about it. I don’t have to assume that I’m always wrong; I just have to avoid assuming that I’m always right. I have to remember that I have only part of the picture, and that it’s okay to have to work a little to find out the truth.

Actions speak louder than words

As difficult as it sometimes is to figure out what’s going on, and to decide how to act, the real challenge for me is putting that decision into practice. Here, the virtues required are temperance and fortitude, aka, self-control and courage.

I think the reason is that I’m an introvert and a writer. I live in my head, and I work through words. The thing about thoughts and words is that they’re very safe. I can change my mind. I can revise a sentence. But I can’t take back the past. I can’t undo some action I’ve committed, even if it’s so small as saying something out loud. And that incredible impact that even the smallest action can have terrifies me.

It terrifies me into the fantasy that inaction is somehow better or safer than taking some positive action. I flee into the self-indulgent comforts of laziness or gluttony or some other distraction from my cowardice. In other words, my failure at courage leads directly to a failure at self-control.

And it even leads to a failure at prudence: because the only way to really learn from my mistakes is to have mistakes to learn from.

Discernment leading to decision

So I have to be careful both to take the time needed to make a good decision, to gather as much relevant information as I can, but also not to stall or delay in acting on a decision, with the excuse that “I’m still discerning.”

This is true in small decisions (like prioritizing today’s to-do list) and in major life decisions (like whether to marry or what career to pursue). Major decisions may require more time or effort spent in discernment, but the discernment always leads to a decision. A discernment that is meandering toward ambiguity is, by definition, going in the wrong direction.

Like all virtue, discernment is about reality: seeing reality clearly, and acting accordingly.

For me? Aw, you shouldn't have!

I had one of those “a-ha” moments over the weekend. I was thinking about words, as I often do, and I was trying to find a way to articulate the difference between recognizing life (or a friend or a privilege or whatever) as a gift and taking life for granted. And I realized, the phrases look roughly identical.

A grant, after all, is a kind of gift. It is something given to me by someone else.

So I started exploring whether there are any words we use for that sense of entitlement we call “taking something for granted” that don’t in fact refer to receiving something from someone else. Even the word “entitlement” refers to the granting of “title” or ownership of something by whomever has the authority to give it. The only words I could think of are words like “possession” or “ownership”, which really don’t convey the kind of presumptuous attitude I’m trying to describe.

Maybe presumption is itself the word I’m looking for. It literally means “taking something before,” that is, before it is given. It is taking something as if it had been granted, even when it has not. And that’s where the problematic attitude lies: it’s a lack of recognition that something is genuinely a gift. It’s the idea that I am completely and independently capable of getting everything I want or need entirely on my own without any help from anyone else ever. Ultimately, that attitude is founded on falsehood.

Gratitude: recognition of my need for others

I’m concerned about this attitude because it’s one I struggle with all the time myself. I remember as a child needing to be told to say “thank you” at Christmas or on my birthday, and thinking that I didn’t really feel grateful. I felt like I deserved the toys, or maybe even deserved better loot than I’d got. So I went through the motions and held onto presumption in my heart.

But that led me to a bitter and lonely place. I alienated many of my friends. And then something rather odd happened: when a friend did show a kindness to me, even a tiny one, I found myself utterly overwhelmed with gratitude far out of proportion to their act. It was as if all that repressed recognition of others’ gifts to me came bursting out at once. So then I had friends saying, “Enough thank yous, already! It was really nothing!”

Well, it wasn’t nothing. But it also wasn’t the thing I was most grateful for: I was most grateful for the ability to acknowledge my dependence on other people.

My illusion of fierce independence had been (and still is, in parts of my life) a kind of cage that kept me from the real world as it actually is, and from connecting to the real people who live in it. So finding a way to relate – simply by acknowledging the relationship – was a tremendous good that I could never have simply acquired for myself. I am glad my mother taught me how to say “thank you” all those years ago.

Gratitude and justice

It’s interesting that Thomas Aquinas lists gratitude as part of the virtue of justice, while generosity or giving gifts is part of the virtue of charity or love. That is, even though gifts are given freely, the acknowledgment of the gift is something owed by duty.

At first, this seems odd, and a little bit like extortion. But my own experience shows me why it’s a matter of justice. To refuse to acknowledge the gift and the giver is to deny the reality that I have received something I could not have without that other person.

I could not have received life without my parents. I could not have received friendship without my friends. Even in relationships where there is a “business” aspect, there also is a gift; I could not have received my education without my teachers’ willingness to give what they also had received. Gratitude, giving thanks for what has been granted, is simply a matter of seeing reality for what it is.

I've been expecting your call!

The other day, I was talking with a friend from a writer’s group I work with. She was describing how inspiration strikes her, and it resonated with my own experience: it genuinely feels as if someone else is telling or directing the story.

It’s not split-personality – at least, not for myself or any of the other writers I know. But it’s a strong sense that A) I’m not sufficient in myself to write this piece, and B) I’m not alone in writing it. This experience is common enough that the ancient Greeks named goddesses who inspire the various arts and occupations: the Muses. Even the word “inspire” means “breathe into;” that is, the ideas are breathed into the artist or the worker, the words whispered into the ear of the poet.

The collaborative feeling of following a muse can be exhilarating. (The Greeks called it “ecstasy,” literally, standing outside yourself.) I’ve talked to people from all walks of life, ranging from manufacturing to scholarship to service, and many talk about this kind of feeling: a kind of connection, through the work, with something or someone greater than themselves. Some call it “being in the zone” or “going on autopilot” or some other phrase that conveys how the work becomes energizing and exciting and easy.

But that feeling is, like all feelings, a passing thing. Nobody feels it all the time, and some people feel it rarely, if ever. It’s tempting to chase after the feeling or to grow despondent when it’s absent; and it’s also tempting, for cynics like me, to dismiss the feeling altogether.

The truth is, the feeling is one sign among many of something that goes beyond mere feeling. These experiences are signs of vocation.

What’s a vocation?

“Vocation” is a word that has gone through a number of changes over the years. Originally, it literally meant “a calling” – based on the Latin vocare which means “to call”. It came to mean, the work that someone is called to, then it meant a career distinct from the “professions,” and now it seems to mean a technical job or skilled labor of some kind.

The big question this raises, of course, is: who’s doing the calling?

In a family business, it might be Mom or Dad who’s calling. In the military, it’s Uncle Sam. In the Church (where most people equate “vocation” with priests and nuns), it’s God who calls.

The feelings of inspiration or autopilot are important especially because they point toward the source of the call. It’s critical that these experiences are not just emotions that rise up within me, but are genuinely moved by another. That is to say, there really is someone outside my skull who is calling for my work.

And this is not an impersonal call; it depends intimately on who I am and the uniqueness of the gifts and strengths I have. The call is for me to do what only I can do – and therefore what will bring a unique fulfillment to my life.

It is not a call to be a cog in a machine; it is a call to be fully myself, and to take my place in the world I live in.

How do I know?

Now, some people seem born knowing what they are called to do: it’s a profound orientation of their lives, and they have a hard time thinking of what else they might do.

Others just schlep along through life, trying to make ends meet, and having fun whenever and wherever they can. They’re not looking for much else.

And lots of people, including many of my friends, have a notion that something bigger and better is waiting for them, somewhere out there. They just don’t quite know what it is or how to get there from here.

Here’s where that feeling comes in as a pointer. The kind of experience I’m talking about has several traits:

• It energizes without causing agitation or anxiety
• It motivates, showing the meaning or purpose of both life and work
• It generates more ideas, more possibilities, more work
• It radiates beyond myself: other people notice something going on

This experience is far from the last word in discernment; but it’s usually the best starting point. What am I doing when this kind of thing happens to me? What do I do about it?

Knowing what calls my name helps me to ask other questions: how can I put more time and energy into that activity? is it something I can structure my life around? are there signs of who is the origin of that call, who my work is meant to reach?

After all, when one receives a call, the thing to do is to connect with the caller. That’s what it means to answer.

Just keep walking, just keep walking...

I get overwhelmed pretty easily. Sometimes, just looking at the pile of dishes in my sink exhausts me. Other times I’m more ambitious: I figure I can conquer the world but I worry if I’ll make it outside the little pond of our solar system. But the fact is, whenever I face a new task – or a new start on an ongoing task – there’s a part of me that asks, “Can I really do that?”

For example, I’ve mentioned that I’m working on a book about my grandmother’s life. Until the last couple weeks, I’ve been stuck on the magnitude of the project. I talked to one of my uncles about my problems, and he suggested a couple ways to break the project down into smaller pieces, each of which is do-able in an hour or two.

Well, duh! says I. I know how to do that. I just don’t want to.

Why not? Because there’s another part of me, call it the grandiose egotist side, that doesn’t want to do anything that isn’t instantly apparent as brilliant and perfect. Plugging along at little tasks just doesn’t have the same feel as finishing a book, or even a chapter.

Reality check

It’s at this point that I need to pull myself back down to earth. Both my despair of finishing a job and my desire for the feeling of accomplishment are unwarranted. What is true is that every task has some pleasant and some unpleasant aspects to it. That’s just the nature of reality, and it does no good to focus only on the difficult aspects while ignoring the easy or exciting aspects – or vice versa.

Rather, I need to focus on what is directly in front of me: what is here and now. So, for my grandma’s book, I have some research to do and some notes to take today. If I spend my time worrying about how many interviews I still need to conduct, or on the other hand daydreaming about how high it will reach on the New York Times bestseller list, then I will create my own failure.

If instead I do a couple hours of work, and spend five minutes at the end reviewing what I’ve done, then I will see the progress I have made. It may be small progress, but it shows me where I am in the big picture of the job. Moreover, it allows me to know exactly where to pick up again tomorrow.

Life application

Now, the example of working on my grandmother’s book is an application of the virtue of prudence, with a little temperance thrown in for good measure. And even though it’s a book – a book! – it’s still a fairly small and focused task.

The life of virtue is a call to apply virtue to every aspect of my life. I need to be prudent, not just about writing a memoir, but also about cleaning my kitchen and relating to my friends and voting in the election and my attitude toward strangers and…. I need to do this for the next 50 years or however long I happen to hang out on this earth. Zoiks! I really can’t deal with a task that big!

And yet, a life is composed of days, and a day is composed of hours. Every moment is an opportunity to practice some small virtue. Every day is a chance to live life fully – meaning to fully live, though not to live an entire life.

I used to write up a daily inventory on this blog. I stopped that because I was self-censoring, leaving out the parts of my life I didn’t particularly want to publicize. So now I’m keeping the inventory in a journal. This is an old practice. The Jesuits have a form of it called the Examen. Twelve-step programs call it the Tenth Step. The reason behind keeping an inventory is to learn to recognize what is really going on in any given day. It is like reviewing my work at the end of a task: it gives a reality check and shows me where I am in the bigger picture.

Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to see my life – my desires, my relationships, my work – more clearly. Slowly but surely, I’m making progress in virtue, and part of that progress is recognizing my small steps forward as genuine progress.

Wish you were here...

Right now I live alone. It’s a pleasant one-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that reminds a reservist friend of Baghdad. I invite people over, one at a time or in a party, and sometimes they come and sometimes they don’t. Occasionally, I go out to meet with other people at their homes, or at a restaurant or cafe. It’s pretty normal, I guess, for a guy who works from home.

So, needless to say, I get lonely from time to time. That’s no surprise. But it’s sometimes surprising when loneliness strikes. It happens when I’m with friends almost as often as when I’m alone. It could strike when I’m eating, when I’m working, when I’m reading … almost any time. There may very well be causes, but I’m not aware of them. It often strikes me out of the blue.

Dealing with loneliness

I’m not sure I’d deal with it any better if I had warning. It fills me with a deep longing for companionship, like a hunger. It also fills me with a fear that no one would want to be my companion. Since I’m a fairly timid man, that fear often keeps me from picking up the phone or getting out of the apartment, which is exactly what the longing is driving me to do.

Virtue lies in recognizing reality and acting accordingly. So what’s real in loneliness, and what’s illusion?

It’s pretty clear to me that the fear is an illusion. After all, I have a number of excellent friends who go out of their way to tell me that they like me around. I’m sure there are people who don’t enjoy my company, but I don’t think I have anyone who could be described as an enemy.

It’s also an illusion that, when I feel lonely, I need to be with someone else right that exact moment. But the feeling points to a real need, in the same way that hunger points to the eventual need for food, even though I want that steak right now! Loneliness reminds me that I’m not an island, that I’m not an absolutely independent individual; rather, I’m a social animal, and I cannot be fully myself without other people.

The need for society

In case you hadn’t guessed already, I’m an introvert; I spend much of my time alone by choice. Much of the time, I need solitude to think and to work and to rest. But there’s a point at which my thoughts need to be expressed, my work needs a larger context, and my rest becomes restless. The emotion of lonliness reminds me of that need.

There are plenty of practical reasons for needing other people. I’m currently reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and he points out how many people are involved in providing a coat for one person to wear. He considers this a distinguishing mark from the rest of the animal kingdom: that we cooperate (or compete) with one another to supply mutual needs.

However, I think the practical need, like the emotion of loneliness, is a manifestation of the root cause. Even if we can somehow provide entirely for ourselves, like Tom Hank’s character in “Cast Away,” there remains an essential incompleteness to any solitary individual. There’s a need for another human face, even if it’s painted on a volleyball.

There have been times in my life that I’ve wished it weren’t so, when I wanted to be absolutely 100% self-sufficient. Mostly, I think, I wanted to pain and fear of loneliness to go away. But the fact is that other people really have given me the greatest gift of all: the invitation and the challenge to stretch myself. I could never learn if I had no one to learn from. I could never laugh without someone to laugh with – or at. I would never have tried to write if I hadn’t first had other people’s writings to read.

In other words, I would not be myself without other people.

So, when I feel lonely…

So, knowing both the illusion and the reality, I’m working on a habit of keeping in touch with friends, family, and colleagues whether I’m feeling lonely or feeling solitary. The feelings come and go, but they point to an important reality: the need to balance social time and alone time.

For me, the struggle is to engage in the social time. For other people, it may be to set the boundaries needed for alone time. But it’s human nature to be fully ourselves only in the context of a community.