Going in Circles Again 8-20-12

Anderson, South Carolina

One of the great tragedies of the modern era is the epidemic of low self esteem we find so prevalent in competitive materialistic cultures. Cultural entrainment over the past six decades has shifted social mores radically in North America and in large parts of Western Europe. We have moved progressively from placing high value on community to making the individual supreme. Those individuals who don’t measure up suffer deeply in their souls. Cultural and financial dynamics reward those who accumulate the most toys. Bumper stickers quip, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” The first thing we ask strangers is, “What do you do?” Blogs extol the virtues of inconceivable spending by rich kids; one just reported a group of sixteen teen-agers spending $132,000 for lunch; with three bottles of rare champagne costing $90,000.

We live in an age where what we have defines who we are. I’ve often wondered what would happen to some of the very rich I know if all of the highly paid jobs, houses, boats, cars, and other assorted toys were suddenly stripped away. Alas, I cannot claim any immunity to this tsunami of secularism washing through the culture with ever increasing strength. As our culture becomes ever shallower spiritually, the waters of materialism, competition, and self doubt pile ever higher on the shallow reefs upon which so many of us shipwreck emotionally and spiritually. I find myself getting slapped in the head at just those times when I think I’ve developed effective immunity to our secular contagion.

By any measure one can come up with, I’ve been granted to live a very large abundant life. Education, travel, finance, purpose, meaning, longevity have been granted to me in large measure. So it’s bewildering when I find myself going back to places I thought I had grown beyond decades ago. I feel inferior by the metrics of our culture. I find myself going in circles again.

Last night I was in a nearby city working as a volunteer in a church-based program providing food and shelter to homeless families. The venue was a very large well-heeled church. Aging soccer mom’s driving Lexus and BMW SUV’s were comparing notes on their children’s success in gaining partnerships in law firms and positions in the big consulting firms. They were all over each other in competing to be the biggest, best, fastest, and richest. I found myself invisible. I wondered what I had to offer in this place. Somehow my ability to drive sixty miles in my ancient Toyota to help out with fixing food and moving furniture seemed almost insipid.

A whole lot of grand food was left over from what ended up being a small event. I suggested it would be a wondrous gift to the eighty alcoholics and addicts I would see the next day. It was kept and given to very well-paid staff in this multi-million dollar church. My passion for the struggling marginalized members of society didn’t matter. A musty wisp of self-doubt crossed my consciousness. Was I just a beggar scrounging for left-overs? I found myself going in circles again.

This morning I was out of the house in the dark and on the fitness track at sunrise. A curious dynamic often plays out for me out there.

A woman long known to me was out there with her boyfriend, going in the opposite direction. At first encounter we shared an enthusiastic greeting and a couple minutes of safe conversation. Next time around I stopped again, and made a bit of small talk, the mutual enthusiasm clearly having died down. Next time around the man suggested I follow the example of a nearby man who was race-walking away at a high rate of speed. In ways only possible in the American South, I was being dismissed and told to shove on. A strong moldy odor of self-doubt seeded itself in my sunrise. Did this old man really think I was hitting on his girl? I was going in circles again.

To be sure I learned the lesson, the whole scenario was soon repeated with a stranger. First encounter - a woman initiated a tiny speck of safe but animated conversation about the sunrise. Second encounter – both of us were uncertain if it was safe to make the first comment, but then we jumped in at the same time. Third time – it was decidedly tepid. Fourth time – I initiated, getting only a single syllable containing a mixture of fear, trepidation, and annoyance. Had I missed a key lecture in Amy Vanderbilt’s ‘knife and fork’ school and crossed an unspoken boundary? Do I need remedial work? I was going in circles again. I went inside.

I knew I was going in circles again because I no longer saw the wonders around me, only consumed with self-doubt about what happens that even the most trivial of encounters on a walking track could so easily degrade. The self-doubt started into a feed-back loop which proved a challenge to pull out of for a while. I decided to make this self-doubt into a world-wide phenomenon.

I’m scheduled to go to Australia over the winter. What happens if I get down there and the people there have the same reactions I found here in the past twenty-four hours? What if there are a bunch of cultural rules of engagement I know nothing about, my having grown up on the opposite side of the planet? Will I be granted the temperance a toddler garners when banging into things while learning to walk or will I be expected to show up as a fully-trained adult? How can I possibly know the rules in a place I’ve never been if I never minimally learned the rules in my own family? I recall all too clearly showing up overseas a couple of times after extended animated correspondence, realizing only too late at the gate I had fallen victim to the big oops of over-zealous expectations. I was expected to be fully trained.

In Western Civilization we’ve suffered a catastrophic loss of community. Acceptance of those differing from us in any way has become taxing. Bigotry, racism, divorce, jihad, and the balkanization of religious groups suggest there’s something ominous and powerful at work out there. What happens if my values, beliefs, nationality and personality are suddenly transmuted by the alchemist of fear from assets into liabilities? I wonder if I might end up spending months in lonely rooms over the holidays ten thousand miles from home, unable to even phone all of the people I presently enjoy in my life. I’m going in circles again.

Have we moved to a place in our Western prosperity where we can afford to not need each other, where any unencumbered beneficence I could offer is obscured by barriers of prosperity or my apparent social sloth? In an era in which we can afford to throw out half the food produced, my attempts to care for it were seen as beggarly. My enthusiasm to greet friends or strangers is seen as suspect in some manner. Anything I could do to add to their sense of community was rebuffed. Surely no one does something without a hidden agenda of some sort? The entrepreneurial competitive spirit has leaked into our daily social commerce. We’ve come to believe most want something from us. I’m going in circles again.

In John’s Gospel there’s a compelling image of widespread darkness overtaking the land. The writer implores the reader to stay in a small circle of light lest the darkness overtake him. Even the tiniest match is enough to guide our feet to a safe place in deep darkness. As long as I stay centered I avoid stumbling into an abyss or slamming into walls. Metaphorically, it’s immensely more important for me to not go in circles in my head, to not go into dark places of self-doubt and second-guessing. The writer is clearly speaking of avoiding the deep quagmires we so often find ourselves in our heads.

A dear friend once said it wasn’t safe to go into our own heads unsupervised. When we let our self-doubt and second guessing run away we end up in the dark, often falling into emotional abysses. As long as I maintain my spiritual connection to the One who doesn’t care about my missed lectures in Knife and Fork school or my own cultural peculiarities which don’t work here in the South, then I’m free to celebrate who I am, one made in His image.

The main reason for going in great circles on airplanes is precisely to celebrate differences. I will be sorely disappointed if I find Australia a clone of my own land; wanting it to be very different. I’m hoping to celebrate the novelty of its newness to me as I hope they celebrate the appearance down under of a curious creature from the American Deep South, even if I do sometimes go in circles again.

Blessings,

Craig C. Johnson