One Step From
Eden
Doing your own thing is "where it's at" these days. It is especially "in" for women, who recently have been revealed to be the largest oppressed group in the world. Everyone needs to express themselves, to have a little elbow room to discover new dimensions of their personalities. Affluence allows it. The climate of permissiveness encourages it. A contagious fever rages. The voice of selfishness is heard in our land.
No, I can't really take a church school class. You see I've got a season-pass at Summit Ski Lodge, and I go there every weekend I can . . . Well, skiing really does no more for me than teaching wiggling sixth-graders on Sunday morning, don't you think? I find it more fulfilling.
Could my son be in your Cub Scout den? . . . No, I can't help. You see, I work . . . Yes, I wanted to use my training instead of letting it go to waste. And I just love it. The only problem is that it takes me away some evenings . . . No she's only two, but I drop her off at a babysitter . . . Why yes. Would store-bought cookies be all right?
The Retirement Home? Well, I'm no good with old
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people at all. I'm afraid I just couldn't. Besides I'm spending all my free time making a new wardrobe for my trip to Greece this summer . . . Yeah, Marge and I are going. It's our third summer abroad . . . Well, I really am sorry I don't have time to help.
I just couldn't take it any longer. After all, being confined with two pre-schoolers gets pretty dreary. You get so you just long for adult company . . . Well, Tom helps me with the housework in the evenings, and it really works out quite well . . . Sounds interesting, but I don't have time to read. I hardly ever find time even to read to the kids.
Well, the weeks go by fast. On Monday nights I wash my clothes, on Tuesdays I wash my hair. Wednesdays I usually go home and have dinner with my parents so I don't have to cook a big meal. Thursdays I clean the apartment and on Fridays I go home again. I usually sleep in on Saturdays and then go shopping for clothes with my mother or my aunt.
No thanks. We just enjoy being by ourselves. We don't like the inconvenience of having to entertain others back. We usually spend the early evenings watching television, then have a glass of milk and go to bed. It's peaceful and quiet with just us two.
I watch our kids being neglected, and I can't do anything about it. I want to finish my degree and she's determined to finish hers. She asks what right I have to do it if she can't. Actually, we're very competitive. She won't give in and let me be first, and I won't give in and let her be first. It's kind of a stalemate in leadership, and our children suffer for it.
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Conversations like these are as varied as the people speaking. And none of them are really wrong, morally I mean. Couldn't good motivation prompt their point of view, factors we don't know about? I mean, after all, it's their decision.
But we are also "deciders," and we need to ask ourselves if there is something eccentric in today's freedom to do your own thing.
Responsibility has become almost a dirty word. A bit Puritan and repressive. Freedom and responsibility seem to oppose each other. Hardly anyone asks, Am I free enough to be responsible?
Significantly the Bible says little about rights, but much about responsibility. Freedom is a dominant theme, but it is the freedom offered by Jesus Christ — freedom from sin, from self, and from unworthy choices. In fact, a potent warning says, "You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love" (Galatians 5:13). That's biblical freedom — freedom to love and serve someone else.
Freedom is a staggering concept — easier to talk about than to experience. Its counterfeits are many. How many enticements to freedom have led people into a grim kind of slavery rather than into the adventure they sought! Genuine freedom is the great adventure, because it links us up with God who is prime Innovator and Creator. It is quite different from doing "your own thing."
Personal freedom demands that we choose the quality of our adventure. In fact, we must decide what our adventure will be. We cannot give ourselves to two adventures at the
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same time. We must decide what is worthwhile. Too many people live with divided hearts and their lives are fragmented with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. None of it fits into a meaningful pattern, and the person, having made no decision and no commitment to what is worthwhile, wastes years — or a lifetime. An ironic tragedy is to aim at nothing and hit it. Or perhaps worse still, to aim at the wrong thing and hit it.
I have sometimes thought that I'd like to be a dozen different people. One of me could be an interior decorator and I could spend someone else's money as an exciting outlet for some flamboyant ideas I'd like to try out. I'd like to be a professor. I'd like to be a foreign correspondent or teach overseas. Whenever I go into a restaurant that has an extra touch of charm, I think it would be fun to run a cozy place that is not run-of-the-mill.
I'd like to be a partner in a business with my husband because I think he is clever and it would be fun to dream and plan together. I'd like to write a column for a newspaper. I'd like to sail around the world in our own sailboat. You name it — I'd probably think it would be fun to try. But alas, I am only one person. And with my one life I must determine the most valuable way to spend it in the will of God.
Deciding on what is worthwhile demands having a standard, a measure outside ourselves. On what basis will you judge what is worthwhile? The principle of pleasure has proved an unreliable guide. "But I enjoy doing this" hardly passes as a statement of value. The principle of success has seen more than its share of catastrophes. Paul Tournier says, "Every one of us feels that there is a hierarchy of choices, that a person can succeed in many things without believing his life worthwhile."
What is worthwhile must have meaning in an
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ultimate sense, in God's sight, so that all the small pieces of each day, though they be trivial, will fit in with that meaning. Existence is not absurd, as Camus would have us believe. It forms part of a coherent plan laid down by the Creator. Our personal choices or adventures are only significant as they are in harmony with the adventure or plan of God.
Furthermore, every choice of what is worthwhile necessitates that we reject some other good possibilities. Robert Frost reminds us of that.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth...I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.1
What is good is not necessarily worthwhile for me. Good can crowd out best. A profession, a mate, a course of study seem to be critical roads to us. But the same principle applies to the small choices in life. They must fit into a larger picture.
Skiing is a good thing. But going every weekend may not be worthwhile. Intellectual interests outside the home are commendable, but if they cause neglect of the people I love most, they are not worthwhile. With mobility and affluence, some people live at such a fast and hectic pace
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that they have never discovered life's other possibilities. Possibilities like peace and quiet for meditation, family sharing, and listening to God. The question is one of long-range goals that fit into the will of God, of thinking beyond our present experience so that life is not haphazard, but meaningful.
Women have never had so many choices, but that has not assured that their lives will be more worthwhile than when they were imprisoned to home and hearth. We may just be rushing to get the front seat on the bus without knowing where the bus is going. The outcome can resemble a woman let loose for the first time in a fashionable store; a bit of this and a little of that, but none of it fits together to make an outfit. An orange floppy hat with pajamas! Like a small girl trying on her mother's clothes; it's only funny when you are little. Because when you grow up and make irresponsible choices it hurts others besides yourself.
Furthermore, we tend to ask such small questions about our role in life. For instance, students ask me, "Do you like housework?" I suppose they ask that because they seem unaware that any commitment has its less exciting moments. I never ask myself that question. It is irrelevant. It is akin to asking a student if she likes to study, or a man if he likes to drive to work. Housework is only a small part of a larger picture I am painting with my life. Does an artist like cleaning her brushes? I don't discuss the pleasure of housework — I do it. And yet questions like these often mark the small talk of women. Are we that confused?
Do I like housework? And who will be influenced by my life? These are two different kinds of questions. If I answer the latter, I may more gladly accept the former. Our problem is that we often do not even know when questions are not of
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the same value. Hence, we have difficulty fitting short range goals into long-range satisfactions.
Discovering what is worthwhile changes our orientation to life. We can feel called or appointed to a role in life, instead of chafing at the bit or feeling used. Less consumed with being fulfilled, we are free to fulfill our calling. But this necessitates the kind of acceptance of personhood that we have been discussing. It requires real freedom.
The confusion and tragedy of the Women's Movement may be that women are being led to think that children or the confines of marriage are the cause of their personal frustration when the root cause lies deeply within their own personhood. The diagnosis is wrong and the result is wasteful and destructive.
"The victim of this confidence game believes with all her heart that her only satisfactions are going to be those earned by leading an independent life, remaining loyal to abstractions, and doing her own thing. She cannot allow herself to believe that these misty ideals may actually be substitutes for the give-and-take of intensely personal relationships and extended personal commitments — where love is not something you go around talking about but something you do."2
On the other side of the fence stands the single woman who believes all her problems would be solved if she had the love of a good man, children, and a home in which to express her creative talents. She may be unaware that she longs for this man and these children, not to share with them the richness and satisfactions of her own life, but to make up for all that is empty inside her. She, as well, may reveal an incapacity to give of herself in interpersonal relationship.
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Many of the illnesses people suffer express this kind of dissatisfaction with life. It is a cover-up for lack of commitment and the freedom to see beyond immediacy. No decision about what is valuable, what is meaningful, no commitment to God or to others is paralyzing.
Fulfillment is not so much trying something new as it is coming to terms with your present situation. God, who is creative, may add a splash of color here and a new experience there, but it will always line up with your responsibility to fulfill the commitment made.
A little boy once said to the housemother of his boarding school, "You are kind, but you do not love us." Not only little boys are perceptive about the loving ones. When someone is living for self, disinterested, limping along without commitment, she announces it to the whole world by her priorities and behavior. The common expression "Her heart is not in it" comes to mind. When a person commits herself to what is really worthwhile, she becomes part of the flow of the love of God. And her heart is in it.
How do we get our hearts into it? We begin by going to God.
". . . Faith, far from turning us away from the world brings us back to it. That is why it awakens in us a new interest in the world, in the concrete reality of every day, hard, laborious, difficult, often painful as it is, but wonderful nevertheless. The joy of living, of making an effort, of having a worthwhile goal to aim at; the joy of moving a finger — of looking at something, of hearing a voice, of learning something and loving someone."3
Loving others puts our hearts back into the stream of life.
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It is worthwhile and valuable. It is full of fresh surprises and new discoveries. Loving is our responsibility. We have the example of God who commits Himself, who is not passive in His responsibility but charges Himself with our personal care. This kind of godliness on our part marks our fulfillment. It gives us enthusiasm (the feeling of God inside us) for living. It changes the mundane, the trivial, so that in all circumstances of life goodness reaches out to others.
If this is your thing, do it with all your might.
