2 - 7 - 19 What's life not about? (5 minutes)

I turned 21 yesterday and it got me to thinking, as birthdays will do. That thinking was spurred by my new favorite laptop sticker which I got from SEEK conference. There’s a line sketch of St. Maximilian Kolbe (who volunteered to die in another man’s place at Auschwitz) circled by the words “Your life is not about you.” I appreciate the reminder every day, and I’m trying to live it. But that also reminded me of the various things I’ve realized life wasn’t about in the past four or five years. I think I’m still pretty far from understanding what life is about (I just turned 21 yesterday) but here’s a non-exhaustive list:

Your life is not about fun.

Your life is not about what you want.

Your life is not about you.

And that’s the order I, and I think most people, will experience them in. Given that these negations require an assertion this naturally creates four periods I can see in my life.

My life is about fun.

My life is about what I want.

My life is about what’s best for me.

My life is about others.

Fun:

I want to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Comfort is an imperative. Whatever will make me happy is what I’ll pursue. I might try not to hurt other people when it’s clear it won’t be worth it for me too. i.e. I’ll steal a toy from a kid smaller than me in the sandbox, but not the one who’s twice my size.

Your life is not about fun: 

I’d say I realized about Junior year of high school that this way of life wasn’t very sustainable. It had led me into infidelity, addiction, and laziness. I began to realize that if I wanted to be sustainably happy I couldn’t just do whatever I felt like.

What I want:

This one can get you pretty far. Once you start to prioritize your desires the concept of discipline can enter into your life. Being at this level is a prerequisite for achieving anything meaningful. I had this mindset for piano, athletics, and school starting in late Elementary (fun dominated in my interior / social life) and it led to me being quite “successful.” I was able to prioritize things I wanted and work for them. But I would still discover at reaching these things that they weren’t really worth the effort.

I’d save up money (or really put the hours in pestering my parents) until they got me a new game. I’d wear out the batteries in my PS3 controller for a couple weeks before realizing that I really wasn’t any happier. I began to think that not only is it worth putting off the small pleasures for the big ones, it’s also worth trying to figure out which “big” ones really matter.

Your life is not about what you want:

I realize that I presented these sequentially but there’s a lot of play in them depending on the arenas of life. In my social / interior life I’d say I realized this one right before my sophomore year of college. My girlfriend of three years had just broken up with me, and I’d just quit the Michigan Football team. I realized that even though those things were “big” and “good” and seemed to make a lot of other people happy, maybe what’s best for me isn’t what makes me happy. And maybe what’s best for me isn’t what it seems to be for other people, or what other people think it is for me.

My life is about what’s best for me:

This realization is what started me on a deeper and more sincere faith journey. After losing so much of what I thought was giving me meaning I started to question what my most fundamental desires were. I want to be loved. I want to have some purpose, some utility. I began to find these things in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ which was very one-sided the first 18 or 19 years of my life.

Memento mori. Given the grace and courage to start examining the things that terrified me: that I will die, that I most likely won’t be famous, that I won’t be as important and respected as I want to be; I began to understand how I could begin to understand a purpose within my life.

This place is a good place to be. I started treating people well because I realized that not only could they help me materially, but also that my life would be diminished without loving relationships. This is the first of these four places I’ve been that I was able to love myself.

Your life is not about you:

I saw this sticker only a month ago and it still haunts me, in a good way. It is such a radical thing to say in a Western, individualistic, do-whatever-makes-you-happy-as-long-as-it-doesn’t-hurt-anybody-else society. It’s such a negation of everything we’re taught that it’s shocking, and perhaps offensive, at first blush. “Who are you to tell me my life isn’t about me?”

Well, a Jesuit might.

My life is about others:

One of the goals of Ignatian spirituality is creating “Men and women for others.” Not in any uppity, paternalistic manner akin to: “I’m obliged by my good fortune to care for those who can’t care for themselves, because aren’t they so deserving of my pity?” That sentiment goes quite against any idea of humility or the recognition that we are all equals, and furthermore siblings.

I’m still trying (struggling) to understand this worldview but it’s what opens us up to true love. While your life is still about what’s best for you, even if you have a religious life, it’s tough to give yourself fully. You feel called to, but it’s an act of willpower. I’m sure Maximilian Kolbe didn’t do the math in his head and figure out that if he sacrificed himself for another man he would definitely go to Heaven and it would therefore be worth it. His own lot in life, or afterlife, must have been the farthest thing from his mind.

How else can we love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us? If your life is about what’s best for you, you’ll be absolutely saintly to people who will appreciate it and try to avoid the less pleasant folks.

But if your life is for others, if you dedicate yourself to being with others in their suffering, weakness, and addictions, if your life is not about you, well, you’ll live like Jesus did.