Since leaving home and going to university I’ve found myself frequently worrying about achievement and success. Not in terms of financial and material gain but in relation to my faith, spirituality and discipleship. I’ve often taken a step back, looked at my life and thought ‘What have I actually achieved?’ Examples of people who started churches at a young age or spent years committed to campaigning for a worthy cause often spring to mind. I keep wondering about what I could do in order to make my mark, establish myself as a success.
A few months ago I was reading a chapter of Thomas Merton’s book ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’. He explores in detail this kind of mindset, and says about people that think this way,
‘They can only conceive of one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men…. I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take…. I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me; at times this even helps me to forget the other men who have what I have not and who have taken what I was too slow to take’.
For Merton, this kind of attitude is unhelpful and ultimately destructive. The alternative he suggest is,
‘I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God but in other men. I will never be able to find myself if I isolate myself from the rest of mankind as if I were a different kind of being’.
I suppose this would mean to view the success of others as my own success, and to view my own success as the success of others. Not easy in reality, when all the messages we receive from our culture point in the opposite direction.
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15 comments:
I think I know what you mean - the worry of not fulfilling potential or making the most of a short life can be pretty heavy sometimes.
I've got a friend who says, "You may not be able to change the world, but you can change someone's world"; encouraging another to reach their potential is just as valuable and important as hitting your own mark. You probably can't separate the two.
But that's what you said.
I'm with you Jon.
I defo wanna do good stuff but subconsciously I also want people to notice I'm being good.
sometimes i think that idea of changing the world for one person isn't enough,
gandhi said "be the change you want to see in the world"
I think that's much closer to the right idea,
rather than changing someone elses world change your own, Gandhi was convinced that if everyone in India belived they were free and didn't recognise the legitimacy of British rule then they would have a peaceful revolution and be free immediately.
I don't know what my point is now....sorry
This very week I had a failure crisis: I am a failed writer, a failed housekeeper, a failed dieter.
Looking at yourself in these terms is inevitably destructive but can be a cycle that it's hard to get out of. A small success (in my eyes being acknowledged by others) simply lifts me up briefly before I crash again.
I know about finding myself truly in God (I'm not sure about others?) and also about it not being about emotions but if I don't find that satisfaction, I am left dissatisfied. With myself, with God, with the world!
But if we were to find our identity in God, would it make us stop searching? Would that be a good thing? Now I've confused myself!
"Look for my identity in other men" - doesn't this mean the way you have influenced, encouraged and supported other people, playing a part in their success? Finding ways to impart success to others instead of yourself?
Am reading a self-help book (don't have the acadmic bookshelf you have, Jon) which says we should depart from the 'Personality Ethic' and instead of working on things we do, work on the things we are.
You can be a successful person, I think, without becoming a millionaire or getting your name in the papers. My mum is one of the most successful people I know.
Dan Lovell, I like your quote.
Kiera, that's exactly what Merton is talking about. We want to achieve so that other people can recognise that we are different to them, better than them. It becomes about separating ourselves from others not growing together.
Hannah, I think that sums up what I was trying to get at. Success is something to be celebrated as something we have all achieved together.
Liz, I'm confused too.
Anna, I like your ideas about success. From a Christian perspective, our categories of what constitutes success and failure probably need to be rethought. Jesus, was homeless, penniless and executed as a revolutionary, not a millionaire businessman who gave his cigar money to charity.
Daniel, I really like Roosevelt's quote. You're right about success, it would be easy to go to far in the other direction. Who controls and owns are success is very important.
i think what we are ambitious about is another way to be part of God's people. to express a different identity in our culture.
i appreciate this may well change in the future, but at the moment i can't think of anything much worse than being rich enough to have to worry about locking my door every time i go outside. however, like you said jon, i do want to grow in understanding of faith and God. i wish there was an easy way of measuring it... learning alongside others is one of the only ways i can think of. though i do struggle as it really does not tally up with what my culture tells me and i do get panic attacks that i am "only" doing youth work, that i'm "only" doing part time work instead of a having a career, that i'm going off to volunteer in scotland instead of getting a "real" job - despite the fact that i love what i'm doing and in some instances has been the only thing keeping me going. it's a funny world.
I think it all comes down to motivation. Daniel's Roosevelt quote captures the questions of our motivation pretty succinctly. What do we want to achieve? Why do we want to achieve? We perhaps need to be more self-aware: what is the end result we are looking for?
I remmember feeling mildly irritated a few years back when the fair trade bandwagon started rolling. People like Chris Martin became figureheads. It was quite cool to be part of this subversive sub-culture and suddenly it was all over OK and HELLO magazines!
I had enjoyed wearing the T-Shirt and making my token contributions of buying fair trade teabags, bananas and chocolate more than wanting to see positive, lasting change in the way global trade was handled.
Like Daniel I don't think achievement is a bad thing per se but we need to acknowledge that achievement and recognition are separate entities.
I can really relate to what you are getting at Jon and I think we've all been there, are there and will return there!
I believe our desire to succeed is positive and I'm not actually sure the motivation to set ourselves apart as greater achievers is ultimately destructive. I think the problem comes when we are focused on the worng type of success. Jesus significantly set his 'targets of success' apart from that of the culture and society he was in. Jesus flipped it upside down and showed that what society deemed as failure was actually success. Do you think Jesus' thought process was 'how can I do better than them?'?! I think he might have!
I'm not explaining myself so clearly so I'll stop babbling but I hope I make some kind of loose sense here!
I guess thats kinda my thought process Kiera. In so many senses we're better off for competition. Personally I'm very competitive so I could be biased but if I'm pushed to achieve more and be more then surely thats good even if the motivation isn't the purist?
Tim, I disagree. Any motivation that seeks to set ourselves apart as greater achievers seems to run counter to the ethos of the gospel as I understand it. I think that is what Merton is getting at.
Rather than setting himself up as a 'greater achiever' Jesus lived the life of a servant.
Competition and achievement make plenty of sense from the perspective of a capitalist darwinian society. But is that the perspective that we should have? I think motivation has a lot more significance than you give it credit. Jesus was very concerned with what went on 'inside' us, this was one of his major problems with the Pharisees wasn't it?
Craig Borlase says something about success and individualism in this article.
'Pope John Paul II got it right when he commented that “faith leads us beyond ourselves.”'
Listen Jon! Surely you'll agree that Jesus was one of the greatest servants our world has seen and that is why I was talking about the importantance of what our goal is. Jesus was aiming to be the best and to out do the other religious leaders around him but he set his targets in the right place - giving, humbleness etc. Surely you can agree that Jesus was out to prove a point by being distinctly different?
Tim, I just don't whether i think that Jesus was trying to 'out do' the other religious leaders and be a better version of them.
Daniel, I agree (I think).
Kiera, to take the aid organisation example a little further, wouldn't the emphasis more likely be wanting aid to be provided in the best way possible. So whether your aid organisation or another makes that provision doesn't matter. We aren't in it to be better than all the others, we are in it so that aid provision as a whole gets better. As we share ideas with each other, they may become more successful for a time, but our emphasis wouldn't be on us being the best. I think that is what Merton is getting at, we can see the success of others as our success.
Just give up Jon. I'm right and you're wrong!
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