A conclusion but not the end

And then the year was over. It ended and another one started. And now I’m trying to sort through my notes and feelings and still-taking-shape thoughts about what I’ve done in the last year. I believe I’ve learned meaningful lessons. And even though any attempt to “sum it up” will necessarily be imperfect, I do want to conclude by writing a few things that I may not have written yet, or by combining some things I have, or by just plain repeating myself. Because some things stand repeating.

My hope in doing this – in spending a year in a stressful place and doing stressful work – was to quit a rut of self-absorption, and I feel like I succeeded. Of course I haven’t solved all the problems of my own selfishness, but at this point I’m sure I see the world more broadly and see the people in it with greater compassion. I’m sure I’ve found the perspective I sought.

When I left for India, I needed to find balance between indulgence in and gratitude for the abundance in my life; I needed to find reconciliation between my life and my place in the world, and I believe I found that too. Again, I don’t think I’ve “finished” any of these projects, but my vision has cleared and so has my sense of self and purpose.

This year was not an ultimate rejection of the world. It was a time without certain worldly pleasures and indulgences, and a reflection on their absence. It was a time during which I focused on service, spirituality, and art. During this year I made both deliberate and accidental changes in my life, but these changes were not permanent, and were never meant to be. I’m not sure I believe anything is truly permanent, but I am sure that my current perspective is different from what it was a year ago. Which is part of why it feels important to write this now.

(And although I do want to give a meaningful – if imperfect – summary of what I learned, I don’t intend to sentimentalize my experience or focus on specific people and their pain. Because suffering is too much to explain. And it’s impossible anyway – suffering can’t be explained, it can only be witnessed.)

My lessons in India were great and small. I learned how to eat with my fingers. I learned how to sleep in the heat. I learned how to wait for a train, and I learned how to shave another man’s face. I learned how to appreciate simplicity, and I learned how to live with the dying.

And I finally understood mosquito stings.

And car horns. Bureaucracy. Rain. Laziness. Body odor. Dirt. They were the small discomforts that bothered me each day, and while I was in India I learned that small discomforts are just that: small. I learned the difference between those discomforts and life’s real tragedies, but I also learned how hard it was to relax amid little pains and inconveniences, and truly, how hard it was to avoid obsessing over the imperfections in my life.

But after a while… it got easier.

Of course, learning how to accept that life is imperfect was something different than – but dangerously close to – resigning myself to complacency. I struggled with that. It was hard to accept “the way things are” without giving up hope for the way things could be.

(One example that came up over and over in conversation – especially with Westerners – was the problem of poverty. Because there is an idea or assumption in the West that a person who is living in abject poverty has fallen to that level – whether from a great or small height – and that they should be lifted up again; whereas in India it seemed that people more often are born into poverty and are expected to remain there, both by themselves and by the society around them.)

…I met a British nun not long before I left Kolkata. I don’t remember her name, but I do remember something she said about acceptance. As a young woman, she’d been working very long hours, which to everyone but herself seemed plainly unsustainable. She genuinely wanted to help the people she was serving, and could not allow herself to rest as long as she knew that their needs remained unmet. But she was told by one of her superiors that, “God knew how to take care of them before you got here, and he will know how to take care of them after you leave.”

Whether or not God’s providence is a universally meaningful consolation, I think the nun’s broader point was that it’s important to recognize the power we have – and use it – but also recognize our power’s limits. We have to accept that we are a part of something very big, and that whatever that “something” is – God’s creation or just humanity at large – it will always be more powerful than any individual.

I believe now that fantasies of power are most compelling to those individuals who believe themselves powerless. And I felt powerless many times in India. That was one of my great lessons: admitting my limited ability to affect immediate or lasting change on a large scale. I was humbled by an increasingly distinct sense that – despite my frustration or anger or delusions of grandeur – I really was just a tiny part of that divinely perfected or simply unstoppable human momentum.

And yet, I felt compelled to keep doing what I was doing. But it was hard.

*       *       *

Mother Teresa said, “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves.”

The sacrifices I made during the year I spent in India were very small in comparison to those of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. But they did come at a cost to me, and at times they did hurt.

I believe now that sacrifice is a direct path to genuine spiritual growth, but I also believe that sustained self-denial is not the only path, and not the one to which I am called. I believe now that although it can be necessary and good for a time, abstinence creates a dangerous vacuum of pleasure; it creates a deathly seriousness; and a person’s spirit can be crushed under that too-great gravitas.

I believe now that abstinence may be among the greatest acts of self-love, or it may simply be a desire for self-punishment. But in either case, I believe it is unsustainable. It is too rigid. A conscious flow toward and away from attitudes of restraint seems more healthy to me; it seems more human and honest and much more likely to last a lifetime.

And although my year became partwise an experiment with self-denial, and although at times I found it almost easy to show restraint, I struggled to find balance between complete abstinence and complete abandon. And I think I always will.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to struggle, to fail, and to try again. Maybe it’s okay to feel the pain of desire, and even to soothe it with self-indulgence, and maybe a real relationship to the things I want – and don’t want – is a greater teacher than the simplicity of a life without them.

So, a spiritual life – or quite simply, a good life – can be one in which we indulge our desires, but also one in which we resist them. Not because our desires are bad, but because little indulgences can become very large problems if they build upon one another and replace service or spirituality or art as our guiding principles. They can be blinding. And that was the great lesson of abstinence: clarity.

Clarity came with freedom from distraction. It came with the work I was doing and the life I was living, but mostly it came with the fact that I didn’t have to deal with the things I usually do. And when I was able to see clearly, when I was able to see my life in its simplest form and even see the world in its simplest form, things just became… clear.

That doesn’t mean I know how everything works and especially not that I know why things are the way they are. It just means that I learned what matters to me and what I want to incorporate in my life and what I want to avoid. (Of course, the integration of these understandings in “real life” – the life to which I now return – may be a challenge, but I still feel a sense of clarity during confusing times, and I still feel like even if I lose focus, I am able to find it again.)

So what did I learn?

I learned that I can experience and accept emotional, environmental, and even physical discomfort without judgment. I learned that mindful attentiveness leads to compassion. And I learned that compassion – i.e. genuine love for my fellow man and the ability to express it – is a central part of what makes me happy. (And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Happiness?)

I learned that compassion is crucial, and I also learned that happiness is linked to purpose. In my own experience, the pleasure of discovering a purpose in life – of answering a call – was empowering and centering and joyful. It was also exhausting and complex and terrifying, and it wasn’t always easy, but adventure and possibility urged me onward as I realized that I was called to serve and to write. And even though I felt the same ruts and frustrations of routine that I’d always felt, it was rare that I felt the deep sadness of spiritual inertia. Of self-loathing. Or of fear.

Compassion and purpose are the things that make me happy. They make me feel at peace. But happiness is something more than that. It is peace in motion; it is contentment through flux. It is accepting the way things are.

I think it’s clear that all people want to feel pleasure. But I learned that as long as I sought pleasure, I would never be at peace. And that speaks to a greater lesson about accepting life as it is: as long as I tried to alter the ways things were so that I would feel greater pleasure, I would never be happy. I would be happy only when I stopped seeking what gave me pleasure, and started trying to understand the way things are… and taking pleasure in that. It was only when I stopped seeking pleasure – and started finding it – that I was truly happy.

*       *       *

So what do I want to say to the people who read this? What do I want to say to you?

Simply, I want to encourage you to live a good life. And I don’t mean to say that you should change everything and suddenly start over, but instead acknowledge that you are already living a good life. Maybe not a perfect one, but one with good in it.

In my case, I needed to make a drastic change in my life in order to see it clearly. If that’s what you need to do, then of course I encourage you to do it. But if not, I’ll just suggest that you continue living a good life and start celebrating and making a habit of that goodness.

Because habit is truly the key. Happiness and peace aren’t reliant on single actions, and they are certainly not actions themselves. They are the result of good habits over time.

In that vein, it’s clear that every person’s past is littered with accidents and mistakes and failures; they are the common sources of our secret but shared sense of personal shame. Our lives may never be without these things, and we may always suffer because of the greater or lesser folly in ourselves and others. We can’t control this. But the past is the force that both condemns us and supports us; it is inescapable, but also useful. We can control the small goodness in our lives, the seemingly insignificant decisions we make each day to be kind or generous or patient. And these small choices will help us grow; they we be the ways in which we practice strength. And we have to practice.

The habits we cultivate – our daily works – determine the power of the past. If we can look back on our lives and see love and sincerity and patience and compassion, our past can be the sturdy buttress that supports us. It can help us move forward with courage and trust. So we must cultivate good habits – and we must each discover what our good habits are – for our own sake and for the sake of the people we love.

I believe you can make good things an integral part of your life. I believe it can be either incremental or revolutionary, but in every case you can’t passively wait for change. An anticipated expanse of free time may never come, and a flourish of inspiration may never occur; we have to use the present time to cultivate the self we wish to be; we have to practice goodness.

India was a fitting answer for me. It was the right time in my life to travel and the right time to devote myself to charity and writing. But it wasn’t an easy transition, and the financial, personal, and professional consequences remain to be seen. I made sacrifices to do what I did, and I was able to do it because I’ve lived a privileged life.

And service too is a privilege. Saying so may sound like a cliché, but I am certain that the last year was a gift I received much more than a gift I gave. And I did help people; I worked for free and gave my time and energy to strangers; but these strangers gave much more to me. They changed my life.

Of course I can’t say everything about how my life was changed or what lasting impact a year of service will have on my life as a whole. It isn’t finished yet. But at this point I’m not sure that really matters. I think what matters is that my life’s direction has changed. I’ve had to make some deliberate choices – many of which were difficult – but the reality is that I had to stop pretending I was someone I wasn’t. I had to become the person I am. And I did.

I believe you can too.

…Right now, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know why I feel all the things I do. I feel them. And I don’t know why I am called to this and not to that. I guess about why sometimes – with greater or lesser wisdom – but those guesses seem more and more irrelevant to me.

It may not be so terribly important to know why we feel compelled to do what we do. It may only be important that we accept what we feel, that we trust ourselves to be good, and that we move forward with patience and gratitude and grace.

Because I’ve finally started to believe – to really believe – that everything is a blessing and an opportunity. And I’ve started to believe that a life is not measured by any single achievement, but measured by sustained love over time, and by an active expression of that love.

If these things are true – and I believe they are – then every human interaction is an opportunity to cultivate, recognize, redirect, or celebrate love. In every moment we can choose to love. Or love more deeply. Or return to love.

Every moment is an opportunity to be good. So start now.

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