“One day you finally knew
what you had to do …
determined to do
the only thing you could do ––
determined to save
the only life you could save.
––Mary Oliver1
I sat eating with an old high school friend, sharing a lunch at our local bookstore. We had reconnected in recent years after decades of not seeing one another –– not because we were indifferent to the other; life just got in our way.
In our reconnection, we have found genuine affection for each other, affection that was always there, but what I am only now able to truly appreciate. This connection is rooted in a shared history of not only how things were but also how differently we view what was. Back then, I always found her to be the “cooler” –– I was only a wannabe –– while she saw qualities in me that I could not. She then said something that gave me pause.
“The older I get, the less likely I am to do what I don’t want to do,” she said. “I simply say no. I don’t want to do that.” She gave examples of saying no to a friend wanting her to go shopping, something my friend had no interest in, and no to a family member who wanted her to “fix” his relationship with another family member.
(Here I must insert that in sharing my friend’s sentiment as I do above in no way is to imply that she does not care about the interests or needs of others. She is a nurse, and her whole life has been about service.)
Sometimes I do as she says, for example, leaving a family party when I am tired, even though I know my sister would prefer I hang around, or saying no to a neighbor that I am not interested in learning to play mahjong. Still my friend’s words surprised me because I do not see doing as I please as paramount in my life. Instead, the older I get, the more I think all that matters is service. Why else are we here if not to help each other “get home,” my unoriginal metaphor for helping each other along the way.
OPPOSITES OR NOT?
That sent me wandering down a path: what is my life to be about? Am I to be true to myself, only doing and saying what is in keeping with my own desires, or am I to focus my attention on the needs of others, that is, service? Are these two approaches truly opposites or could there perhaps be room for both?
Audrey Hackett, last month’s respondent to “Three Questions,” recently wrote to me that “part of aging is to gain (enough) self-insight to know when ’no’ is needed,” to know “what work is ours, what is not.”
Audrey reminded me of how I often forget what I already know. One of my morning prayers is that I “do the work that is mine to do.” This prayer evolved out of decades of trying to “fix” others’ lives, usually those of family members, when it was essentially none of my business. I was interfering, inserting myself in places that I was not needed and certainly not wanted.
WISDOM OF RECOGNITION
Yet here I am committed to the idea of service to others. As I write these words, I find I agree with Audrey, that much of wisdom is recognizing when a helping hand is needed and when none is called for –– not so much so others can give (as I explored last month) but because it is not what I am to do.
So I think now that perhaps the “priorities,” if they can be called that, of my life and that of my friend’s are not incompatible. Yes, there may always be tension between the two, or rather a call for discernment when I need to do what is best for me and when I do what is best for others.
As is true when driving in a heavy morning fog on an unfamiliar road, the way is not always clear. I wish it were. I wish there were an easy map that always showed the way. But that is not my experience of life.
What I do see as simple is kindness, not only for others but for myself.
Underscoring this insight is a passage I recently read in Tim Tingle’s novel, House of Purple Cedar. The main character, Amafo, refuses to retaliate against a sheriff who unjustly brutalized him in a store saying, “When with people be kind, but take care of yourself.”2
That’s a good lesson for me.
FOR REFLECTION: Are you able to easily distinguish when you are to follow your own interests and when it would be better to step outside of yourself for the benefit of others? Or, do you struggle with which approach is best for all concerned? What are the ways you are able to come to a resolution?
1 Mary Oliver, “The Journey.” Dream Work. NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986.
2 Tim Tingle, House of Purple Cedar. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press, 2014.
Top image: Pixabay/Pexels
Midtext image: Pixabay/Joe Plenio
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
