Gain the Whole World and Not Lose Your Soul

Some weeks ago, I talked about GAINING YOUR SOUL, AND LOSING THE WORLD. And some­times, we can live in clear cut dual­i­ties of: “the world” vs. “not-of-this-world”, or “love” vs. “hate”, or heaven vs. hell. But life is often­times gray more than black and white. And many times we are made to choose not between good and bad, but between bad and worse or good and bet­ter. That is when things get more com­pli­cated and not so clear cut. That is when DISCERNMENT becomes very important.

Today, let me talk about this in more detail.

When you have found your hap­pi­ness, iron­i­cally that is when the real trou­ble begins. That is when the real bat­tle, as it were, for your soul starts. Life is not as easy and as sim­ple as for­sak­ing the world and gain­ing your soul any­more. Our life in the mar­ket­place and the world of work points us to the pos­si­bil­ity of great suc­cess and the poten­tial to do great, life-giving and mean­ing­ful work.

But we’ve heard of good politi­cians get­ting eaten up by the sys­tem, or of doc­tors gone bad, or of ide­al­is­tic lawyers giv­ing in to a cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tem. These sto­ries abound. Because just as there is suc­cess, there is also the pos­si­bil­ity of los­ing integrity, and com­pro­mis­ing your values.

So how do you gain the world and not lose your soul? How do you remain vir­tu­ous with­out los­ing your dreams for a bet­ter, more finan­cially sta­ble and com­fort­able life? How do you pre­vent your­self from get­ting cor­rupted by the “sys­tem”? How do you assure your­self that you sleep well at night and face your­self in the mir­ror dur­ing the day?

Here are some of my thoughts:

Work-Life Bal­ance. One of the most dif­fi­cult things to do when things start becom­ing really busy is bal­anc­ing work and life out­side work. I am con­stantly guilty of this myself.

But it is true; work can eat us up that we start los­ing per­spec­tive; and los­ing per­spec­tive is the first step to los­ing your sense of who you are and what is impor­tant for you. Some­times, the promise of finan­cial rewards can become the be-all and end-all of our lives that we lose sight of what is really important.

But the oper­a­tive word here is BALANCE. I’m not say­ing to put fam­ily, enjoy­ment, exer­cise ahead of our jobs. I am say­ing to put these ALONG with your job. Because all these other things place your job in per­spec­tive. They make work more mean­ing­ful. They make life more enjoy­able. They give you the impe­tus to work harder.

Which brings me to my sec­ond point.

Under­stand Your Pri­or­i­ties. I think one of the most impor­tant things we can learn to do in life is pri­or­i­ti­za­tion. I am talk­ing about pri­or­i­ti­za­tion at two lev­els here: 1) Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of the major facets in your life (i.e. fam­ily, work, health, etc.); and also 2) Mak­ing deci­sions about pri­or­i­ties in your work so you have direc­tion and you expe­ri­ence less stress.

“Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant when time is lim­ited and demands are seem­ingly unlim­ited. With good pri­or­i­ti­za­tion (and care­ful man­age­ment of depri­or­i­tized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, mas­sively reduce stress, and move towards a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. With­out it, you’ll floun­der around, drown­ing in com­pet­ing demands.”

From Mind​tools​.Com

I have said many things about pri­or­i­ti­za­tion in this blog. These posts might help: Keep­ing Stress From Your Job, Seven Secrets to Stress Man­age­ment.

Stop. Pause. Lis­ten. We also need to step back once in a while and take stock of life so that we’re able to see life from a “longer” and “wider” per­spec­tive. By longer, I mean hav­ing the per­spec­tive of time—seeing life from begin­ning to what it is now. When we see life as the jour­ney it has been; we become more grate­ful. We see how deci­sions we never saw as impor­tant before actu­ally led us to where we are now. Suc­cesses are not as impor­tant. Fail­ures are put in per­spec­tive. Suf­fer­ing becomes optional.

By wider, I mean hav­ing the per­spec­tive of space. You do not just see life from begin­ning to what it is now; you see life from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple you have touched and the lives you have shared with. You begin to see how your own story melds into the sto­ries of other peo­ple; and even into the story the world. When we see life from a wider per­spec­tive, we become more hum­ble. We see that we are not the cen­ter of the world. The world is not look­ing at us and peo­ple are not out to get us. We live life a lit­tle more lightly. We can laugh at the world. And we can laugh at ourselves.

You get this wider and longer per­spec­tive by doing many lit­tle and big things: read­ing a good book, watch­ing a good movie, doing a review of the day before you go to sleep at night, going on reg­u­lar retreats, climb­ing a moun­tain, hav­ing inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with some­one you trust. I have found walk­ing aim­lessly inside a mall, a sur­pris­ingly relax­ing expe­ri­ence. And for the past month, I have also swam reg­u­larly late at night. The exer­cise is not just phys­i­cal, but men­tal and spiritual–it has kept me in per­spec­tive, and has made me reflec­tive. Basi­cally we all need time to pause, and take stock of our lives and lit­er­ally catch our breath.

from octeen​min​istry​.com

Integrity. The word integrity comes from the word inte­ger. An inte­ger is a whole num­ber (as against a frac­tion). To have integrity there­fore is to be whole. To be whole means to do what you say. To act on what you promise. To have integrity means not to be fragmented–a frac­tion of your­self. When what you think is inte­grated to what you feel, and what you say is what you really mean, then you have integrity.

In a sense, every per­son is mov­ing towards or far­ther from his/her own integrity or inte­grated self. Because the jour­ney towards whole­ness and real peace is a jour­ney towards your very self.

Find­ing God in All Things. Fr. Arrupe, SJ says, “Noth­ing is more prac­ti­cal than find­ing God, that is than falling in love in a quiet absolute and final way.” In a more and more mod­ern (post-modern?) world, we have become very adept at keep­ing God out of the con­fines of our lives. We have become very good at com­part­men­tal­iz­ing our lives into “God” and “not for God”. We have lost the capac­ity to find God in the world.

And while I talk about God, I do not talk about reli­gion here. Rather, I talk about spir­i­tu­al­ity. In a world full of hate and pain (often­times caused by reli­gion), I think Spir­i­tu­al­ity is the way to go. We could use more spir­i­tual people–people in touch with the divine and radi­at­ing it to peo­ple around them; peo­ple wag­ing PEACE and not war; peo­ple whose arms are big­ger than their own reli­gion and will­ing to embrace human­ity; peo­ple in touch with their own pains and the pain of the world.

Peo­ple who see God or the divine, or That Which Is Big­ger Than Myself are peo­ple who love more truly. They are able to see fleet­ing­ness of life, and are able to for­give more will­ingly, while not for­get­ting the lesson/s learned from the expe­ri­ence. They’re able to see that a bless­ing is not what hap­pens to you–but what you do after what hap­pens to you hap­pens to you. They’re able to accept (while not negat­ing the doubt, anger, bar­gain­ing, denial) that God can work in any sit­u­a­tion. Even in suf­fer­ing; ESPECIALLY in suf­fer­ing. I do not say this lightly. I say this with the per­spec­tive of expe­ri­ence and the knowl­edge that while pain is very dif­fi­cult, we all have the capac­ity to be stronger than our pain.

Love. There are mil­lions of cit­i­zens who refuse to give in to what their more cyn­i­cal neigh­bors call “real­ity,” who insist with their lives that there has to be a bet­ter way. Won­der­ing about this, the study lis­tened to sto­ries of edu­ca­tors, entre­pre­neurs, home­mak­ers, youth work­ers, artists, attor­neys, writ­ers, sci­en­tists, reli­gious lead­ers, and physi­cians who are work­ing to improve schools, health, busi­ness prac­tices, race rela­tions, eco­nomic con­di­tions. The study even­tu­ally came to be known as Com­mon Fire: Lead­ing Lives of Com­mit­ment in a Com­plex World. The study strived to find the pat­terns that char­ac­ter­ize their lives.

They found out sev­eral things. But the thread that links all the major rea­sons is Love.

They found out that peo­ple who try to do it on their own often­times fail. Love is what brings peo­ple together in com­mu­nity. In our highly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic cul­ture, we tend to uphold a roman­tic vision of the hero– a lone, iso­lated indi­vid­ual who stands against the tide for what is right, not car­ing about what oth­ers think. And yet few if any of the peo­ple stud­ied rep­re­sented this stereo­type. Rather, they cared about what oth­ers thought and felt, and were char­ac­ter­ized by a par­tic­u­lar capac­ity for con­nec­tion, an abil­ity to draw oth­ers around them into com­mu­ni­ties of com­fort and challenge.

They also found out that peo­ple need to feel love in order to go on. When Valerie Rus­sell, a vet­eran civil rights worker was asked how she man­aged to stay the course, espe­cially when it got dis­cour­ag­ing, she responded imme­di­ately: “Meals and music.”

Oth­ers spoke sim­i­larly. Meals shared together with a few friends and col­leagues pro­vide the nour­ish­ment for body and spirit that comes from a com­bi­na­tion of good food and good con­ver­sa­tion –con­ver­sa­tion that gives per­spec­tive, heals, and helps us to say “yes” all over again. And music can help us hold it all together – the suf­fer­ing and the won­der of life itself –in a way that anchors and re-energizes the soul. How we are together and what feeds our souls is what finally makes the dif­fer­ence in a world hun­gry for hope and love.

How we are together, and what feeds our souls is what will make dif­fer­ence in a world hun­gry for hope and love. In a world hun­gry for peo­ple who will not lose their souls. In a world hun­gry for peo­ple who will leave the world a bet­ter place than when they found it.

“There is much talk these days about all the choices we have, and about how it is up to each one of us to choose our own lives, but more often than not they seem to choose us. Our best laid ten-year plans are inter­rupted by life’s own plans for us: by sud­den ill­ness and sur­prise babies, by aging par­ents and the econ­omy. Ter­ri­ble things hap­pen and won­der­ful things hap­pen, but sel­dom do we know ahead of time exactly what will hap­pen to us. Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me or no, I will not.

If you decide to say no, you sim­ply drop your eyes until you know the angel has left the room. Then you smooth your hair and go back to your spin­ning or your read­ing or what­ever is most famil­iar to you and you pre­tend that noth­ing has happened.

Or you can decide to say yes. You can decide to be a dare­devil, a test pilot, a gam­bler. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose. It does not mean you are not afraid. It just means that you are not will­ing to let your fear keep you locked in your room.”

–Bar­bara Brown Tay­lor, writ­ing about “the Announciation”.