Radical Spirit

by Joan Chittister

  My false self, on the other hand, is extremely unhappy and works to hide its fundamental smallness even from my own consciousness. To present an image of success and stature, I spend my life building and buying the camouflage that makes me look like more than I am and even what I’m not. I buy for the sake of display. I posture for the sake of special attention. I check the internet to see how important I am. I race from thing to thing, from place to place looking for the proper respect, the right amount of adulation. But in the end, it never comes. There is never enough of that kind of thing to satisfy an ego inflated on importance. Which means that, in the end, real freedom is bartered for the glitter of nothing because freedom is not about being important. Freedom is about not needing to be important.

  At base, the sixth step of humility brings us to confront the struggle to understand the distinction between arrogance and authenticity. It’s the search for authenticity, for the true self, the self without expectations, that frees us to be happy wherever we are. Because when we don’t expect anything, we can’t be disappointed.

  The need to have more trinkets, the need to be noticed, the need to be thought to be more than I am entraps us. And that, I think, is when the sixth step of humility cries for attention.

  It is the humility that comes from practicing this step that frees me from the glut of things, the obscenity of pretense, the expectation of special attention. Then I discover authenticity, the true me, for which no amount of social camouflage can ever substitute.

  What is the underlying issue?

  There is nothing in the sixth step of humility and its call for simplicity, authenticity, and self-effacement that speaks of attractiveness to a modern world.

  “Getting ahead,” at least in a modern culture—if not in most of the high-end economies of the world—smacks of getting things, getting power, getting status, getting noticed. Of the four, the trend is definitely toward getting status and getting noticed. Being seen with the right people, going to the right places, getting the right parking spots, and being ushered to the head tables is premium.

  But the sixth step of humility instructs us not to want any kind of special treatment at all, which implies, of course, that special treatment has nothing to do with genuine freedom. In a document far removed from the average personal advice column, we’re told to be “content with the lowest and most menial treatment.” So what are we to think? Where does happiness lie in a consumer society if not in consumption?

  There are two great intellectual divides in the happiness discussion today. The first lies in the history of the struggle to define happiness. The second lies in the emerging science of happiness.

  The first deals with the musings of philosophers, poets, and artists down the ages as they struggled with the role of pleasure, the ever-present specter of disaster despite all happiness to the contrary, and the meaning of life. Aristotle taught that happiness requires “being involved in virtuous activity.” Doing something, in other words, that is good for humankind.

  The second lies in the newly founded science of happiness. Happiness, social scientists say, is a matter of our natural disposition, the circumstances we’re facing, and the way we normally deal with life. Some people are naturally positive under pressure, some circumstances are more demanding than others, some of us simply respond better or more effectively to life’s natural difficulties.

  Both theories of happiness are sound. Both are helpful. Both are good. But neither of them has anything to say about what happens when life’s circumstances are outside our control. What happens to our happiness when the sky darkens and the path through a hard time is not clear? What happens when even the will to do something about making ourselves happy is absent? Then, the sixth step of humility has a great deal to say to a world that looks outside itself for happiness.

  The Rule gives us three criteria by which to assess our likelihood of ever being truly happy. Not simply satisfied, that is, but genuinely contented with life. Happy.

  First, if you have not attached your sense of self to having the best of everything, you won’t be crushed when you see someone with things that cost more than yours. You’ll be happy to simply have what you truly need to function. Like a decent car that can get you across town, maybe. Or a small yard to plant a few flowers, maybe. Or a good dog to keep you company in that small apartment and a good book to read.

  Second, if you don’t need to be the center of attention, you will be happy just to be part of a group of good people who do good things together. The thirst for attention is a toxic brew. If it comes—in athletics, in government, in public activities—you will be scrutinized to the point of depression. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be depressed, too.

  Third, if you don’t expect a constant deluge of privilege and preeminence, then not experiencing those things will not disturb you. You will be just as pleased with general admission tickets as you’d be in the box seats. After all, it’s the same show.

  The Rule is straightforward: If you do not depend on exemption, advantage, and personal prerogatives to measure your happiness, your success, your bliss in life, life will become its own reward. A walk by the lake at night will dilute all the pressures of the day. An appointment for supper with friends will be enough to get you up happy in the morning. Then whatever the turn of the social system around you, your love of life unadorned and unaffected will sustain you.

  The Rule strikes at the heart of the kind of pride that can be healed by the kind of humility that makes the ego invulnerable. If we do not need the adulation or attention of others to give us a sense of self-worth, then to be treated as a commoner becomes an uncommonly significant and unconscious blessing.

  The sixth step of humility gives us the opportunity to come to know ourselves in the raw. What we are without masks and costumes to protect us from the eyes of the world is where real happiness lies. Even more, humility allows others to know us stripped down to the bone. It is a moment of clarity. It tells us that we are enough for ourselves. It gives us the opportunity to become everything we are, everything we can be, rather than find ourselves pinioned on the false opinion of others.

  Humility punctures all the definitions of happiness a world made of plastic and glass has to offer. Instead of glitter, it’s about authenticity, simplicity, truth. It’s about being exactly who we are, no more, no less. It’s about being satisfied with enough rather than being intoxicated with the dregs of excess. It’s about being open enough to be insulated from the breakdown of the false impressions we’ve spent a lifetime fabricating.

  Humility spares us from having to put on airs, to keep up, to impress, or to mask. We don’t need to pretend that we are anyone we aren’t. We only need to become the best of what we are.

  In retrospect, then, they are all correct about happiness. The philosophers, the social scientists, and this ancient spiritual document all take us beyond the superficial to the essentials of life. Happiness, they show us, is about more than things, more than prestige, more than somebody else’s opinion of success. To know how to cultivate happiness ourselves rather than simply wait to get it prefabricated or prepackaged is the essence of what it means to be free, to be authentic, to be real.

  Aristotle says that happiness is about living well and doing well. It’s about avoiding excess and devoting myself to the highest dimensions of life—moral, spiritual, cultural, and social. It means living with a clear conscience. It means living a rich spiritual life. It means immersing myself in the best of the arts, the best of sports, the best of people. Because these are the things that make me a whole person, a person of good heart and clear mind who lives to benefit others as well as myself.

  Martin Seligman, father of the Positive Psychology Movement, says that we are each born with a natural capacity for the positive in life. We’re each born with a predisposition to optimism or pessimism, in other words, and we can learn to think our way out of the debilitating aspects of what we label the negative. We can shape our understanding and our desir
es and our attitudes in ways that are more life-giving than destructive, both of us and of our world.

  Finally, the Rule of Benedict tells us what at least some of that shaping involves: We must be willing to accept who we are. We must avoid becoming seduced by the accoutrements of false identity. We must be willing to be “content with the lowest and most menial treatment.” Then, we will never spend our lives waiting for more than that.

  The sixth step of humility is the antidote to social rejection, to fear of public exposure, to jealousy, to false expectations. The sixth step of humility steeps us in authenticity and frees us to be enough for ourselves.

  What are the spiritual implications of this step of humility?

  I remember so well, too well perhaps, my invitation to speak at a very prestigious university. I had packed my own doctoral gown, for the occasion which is the custom for such academic events, and was carrying it. But in the car on the way to the lecture hall, they told me that they didn’t allow any gown but their own to be used. I said, “Well, in that case, I won’t wear a gown at all. I’ll speak in my suit.”

  After all, I figured, if my gown wasn’t good enough for their stage, why invite me in the first place? After all, it was the gown I earned at my own university that had gotten me there. And this was no time to begin to pretend that I was something I’m not.

  It is precisely to the acceptance of the real in our lives—the authentic, the honest—that the sixth step of humility calls us.

  The circumstances in which we find ourselves are the material out of which we must make our lives. To avoid what is, to want to be someone or something we are not, is the ultimate abandonment of the life in which we are meant to grow to full stature. Otherwise, when we look back at where we’ve been, what can we ever see except masquerade? Who and what will we ever know ourselves to be? When we ask ourselves what we have done with our lives, what will we list: the awards, the trophies, the money, the things we’ve bought, or the people we’ve cared for, the ideas we’ve promoted, the truth we’ve told? Will we ever be able to say, “I became myself by being myself and doing everything I could do for others”?

  The key to choosing what is authentic in life and keeping our own integrity at the same time lies in tending always in the direction of simplicity. It is a cry to develop a sense of enoughness. To learn to be happy with enough money, enough attention, enough success, and enough comfort takes the senseless striving and accumulating and hoarding and competing out of life. It leaves us with more than status. It leaves us with a life worth living.

  The problem is that modern culture itself encourages us to play at who we are long before we’re it. In this age, families are long gone from homesteads. Outside our own small worlds, we are anonymous now. Old friends, even brothers and sisters who know us best, are spread across the country. We’re suddenly far from the people who knew us in grade school or lived down the street from us. And therein lies the struggle.

  We can be anyone we choose to be now. Anyone but ourselves. Which makes social charade—the little lies, the tiny but impressive diamond, the manufactured educational or professional history—so alluring. The truth is that impersonation—the ability to be who we are not—is simply so easy to do now. Which makes the sixth step of humility more important than ever before, perhaps.

  To just be ourselves is not so easy anymore. Television and the internet tell us where to go, what to do, what to buy, what we must own, where the action is. To stay common and honest with everyone is not easy anymore. Tattoos tell us who and what kind of person we’re talking to, perhaps. Clothing signals a stranger’s state of mind and even their status in life. But how much of it is real?

  In fact, how much of myself is real anymore? Hoarding things and hiding things in order to create a public image smothers life before it ever starts. When enough is never enough, happiness is always just out of reach and unrest is pervasive.

  The truth is that too much of anything erodes its essential power. Too much partying leads to a loss of concentration. Too much travel leads to exhaustion. Too much makeup distances us from the glow of the natural. Too much self-talk identifies us as narcissists. Too much posturing, too much affect, too much drama leaves us clown-like and alone on the stage of life. There’s no one to talk to because few are really sure enough who this person is to risk the interaction.

  Indeed, too much of anything robs us of the rest of ourselves. It also cuts us off from others. It separates us out of the crowd, yes, but it can also separate us from the arena of the normal, the nice, the simple people of the world, who mean no harm, who hide no face, who are themselves sterling enough to assure the rest of us of their quality.

  The point is that only simplicity can save me from burying myself away from the world in layers of pretense so thick that I, most of all, have no idea of who or what I really am.

  The effect of this kind of simple openness to the world is electric. Jesus said of Nathanael that he was “an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” He was a completely honest man who did not play at being anything he was not. He was simple, direct, clear. He was what we all set out to be.

  The spiritual implications of life lived honestly, openly, simply are overwhelming.

  If I am content with less than the latest of everything, I cannot be frustrated by the fact that others have the newer, better version of anything. If what I have does everything I need to have it do, why bother to want it to be bigger and better—unless, of course, it will make me look better than I am.

  If I am content with “the lowest and most menial of treatment,” I can’t be insulted by anybody. Nor, then, will I begin to doubt or despise myself. I know who and what I am. I know of what I am and am not capable. I know what I do well, what I can’t do at all. Those who do it all better than I do nevertheless, have no reason to try to humiliate me because I have never pretended to be able to do more.

  If I am content with what I have, I can never be ashamed of my clothes, or feel obliged to apologize for my car, or try to hide my house or my furniture again. My mother had this step down to a fine point. When, as the new arrival in town, I was suffering the taunts of children in a new school, she taught me the lesson of a lifetime. “As long as your face is washed and your hair is combed and your clothes are clean,” she said, “you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  The demon of self-aggrandizement smothers the rest of the truth in us. We lose contact with what we really are and try to substitute for it what we wish we were.

  The sixth step of humility, to be “content with the lowest and most menial treatment,” frees us from our false selves. Now we can take life as it comes, full of the personal peace that comes with being relieved of the burden of the superfluous, the inauthentic, the masquerade. It is this kind of humility that is the ground of our growth, the height of our spiritual selves, the best we have to give to the world.

  The seventh step of humility is that we not only say but really believe that “we are inferior to all and of less value, humbling ourselves and saying with the prophet: ‘I am truly a worm, not even human…’ (Ps. 22:7)…And again, ‘It is a blessing that you have humbled me so that I can learn your commandments’ (Ps. 119:71, 73).”

  What is the challenge here?

  During our novitiate year, the one totally unrelated task, it seemed, was the requirement that we each memorize and be able to recite the entirety of Benedict’s Chapter 7, “Humility.”

  For some reason, we could grasp the fact that this year of almost total cloister—with the exception of four visits from our families—made sense. After all, we were beginning another whole kind of life. Of course, we would need to break ties with the world we’d each come from as daughter, friend, blooming young adult. Yes, the concentration on prayer and domestic duties rather than study and professional preparation was necessary. Being able to spend time on domestic tasks would sharpen our sense of community responsibilities and force a new kind of interior life as well. After all, what else was ther
e to do except clean, pray, and reflect on the magnitude of our decision to seek admission to a religious order that was almost fifteen hundred years old?

  Nevertheless, the memorization of the longest chapter in the Rule, with its dense structure, its numerous scriptural citations, and its seemingly unrelated and foreign ideas, was daunting. We struggled through it a line at a time. But if truth were known, it was a dull and dreary task with very little insight gained for all the effort. If anyone really knew what all of this meant, nobody was saying.

  To young women of a century fairly exuding sophistication, some of this chapter was at best esoteric. What, for instance, was a passage about laughing doing in something tradition called one of the great spiritual documents of the ages? And worse, why would anyone want us to memorize a passage in which we declared to ourselves, “I am a worm, not even yet human”?

  The very thought of memorizing something like that appalled. And, I have learned over the years as I worked with others as eager as I had been to be “spiritual,” it appalls at least as much—if not more—today. If nothing else, we had been taught our uniqueness, our potential, our human worth all our lives. And now we were to memorize “I am a worm, not even human”?

  Women, in particular, had been living this kind of inferiority in the name of God for generations. Patriarchy, after all, is nothing more than institutionalized pride. Men learn young that they are superior, that women are lesser. That they are leaders and women are to be their followers. That they are the last answer in everything, that women’s gifts of mind and soul are to be ignored. So, for generations, the West, which prides itself on its rationality, has ignored both the concerns and the resources of half the population of the world. How healthy was this in an age that had discovered self-esteem?