Your Anti-Hero

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In October of 2022, Taylor Swift released her album Midnights, which contains the hit song “Anti-Hero.”⁠1 Part of this musical poem’s brilliance is that it’s a personal confession of a universal truth, namely that there’s an anti-hero in all of us. 

That’s not a very comfortable truth to admit, as Swift does with endearingly playful and sardonic honesty. It’s a lot easier to listen to someone else sing about her emotional struggles and relationship-sabotaging behavior than to face our own. The song is a hit because it hits home for anyone with some self-awareness.

We’d rather see ourselves as the hero of our own story, not the anti-hero; entire marketing programs⁠2 are built on this principle. But the truth is not so simple. The paradox is that we’re both heroes and anti-heroes, or if you will, there’s a hero and an anti-hero within each of us. It’s why Swift can lament getting older but never wiser; why she can identify the prices, vices, and crisis associated with her own devices; and why she can ultimately confess that she’s the problem.

Why do we stare at the sun but not in the mirror? Looking in the mirror can be scary, but perhaps the more powerful reason is that looking in the mirror is lonely. The beginning of a new year, which you may have celebrated on a midnight not long ago, is a natural time for reflection and resolution to change. In 2023, I hope you’ll decide to get to know your anti-hero better, and I hope you’ll also find a trustworthy, empathetic person—a therapist, mentor, counselor, coach, or just a true friend—to be a living mirror for you. 

Best wishes for this new year!

1 https://digital.umusic.com/taylorswiftmidnights

2 https://storybrand.com

Love in 3D

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Conscious of Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement, “the medium is the message,” a friend recently shared these thoughts with me:

We are about to enter into a new phase of virtual technology. The iPhone 13 mini is supposed to be the end of the line. What is next is goggles. Someone from my high school reunion wrote me that she is “hooked” on OCULUS II. In keeping with the insight that “the medium is the message,” I think we can say that we become what we do. If we spend our time doing virtual things, we will become virtual people. If we spend our time doing things in the physical world, we become real people in that world. 

There is no better time than Christmas to reflect on our use of digital media, for Christmas (at least in its original, non-commercial meaning) is the commemoration of the earthly birth of Jesus Christ, whom His followers believe to be God—timeless and bound by nothing created, able to alter created matter instantaneously by His word alone. From a faithful perspective, the birth of Jesus transformed the world. Even from a secular perspective, it altered the course of human history in a profound way—not instantaneously like a “viral” but ephemeral GIF but slowly and enduringly over time, person to person.

The myriad bits and bytes zipping across cyberspace supported so many relationships and so much work during the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Digital media were a gift in so many ways, chiefly in helping us avoid infection while maintaining relationships. But in what ways are digital media detrimental to us? How is a remote relationship different than a local one? What dimension do we lose when a relationships shifts from 3D to 2D? What are the human limits for remote relationships? How many can one maintain before the time they take negatively impacts one’s local life? Who gets to define what “community” means and how? Lots of questions, but these are questions of our time.

Along with Jesus’ passion, His Nativity is for faithful Christians one of the greatest expressions of love in 3D—and a paradoxical “scandal” of particularity—local, yet drawing magi from afar and angels from above. As we gather during these days—whether at a church or a home, whether for a dinner or a party, for Christmas caroling in our neighborhood’s streets or hot cocoa in a cul-de-sac—we convey the message of these days in the truest way: in the medium of our flesh.

Bridle the Beast

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Over the past few years—a stressful period during which a contentious presidential election, a coronavirus pandemic, and the death of George Floyd all occurred—you may have felt some anger from time to time, beyond your normal experience of the feeling. Even if you wouldn’t call it “anger”, increased levels of impatience or frustration certainly count.

My interest in anger began a few years ago, when—to my shock—I found myself resembling this masterful description of the wrathful:

When some word or deed or suspicion causing annoyance has roused this disease [of wrath], then the blood boils round the heart, and the soul rises up for vengeance. As in pagan fables some drugged drink changes human nature into animal form, so a man is sometimes seen to be changed by wrath into a boar, or dog, or panther, or some other wild animal. His eyes become bloodshot; his hair stands on end and bristles; his voice becomes harsh and his words sharp. His tongue grows numb with passion and refuses to obey the desires of his mind. His lips grow stiff; and unable to articulate a word, they can no longer keep the spittle produced by passion inside the mouth, but dribble froth disgustingly when they try to speak. 

Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 2 on the Beatitudes

Not my proudest moment. But because what I’ve learned from this experience may be helpful, I write to share a few thoughts about anger.

First of all, anger is a gift. It’s a natural response to a threat and a motivation to protect what needs protection, a sign that something needs to be confronted. Moreover, it’s the energy to get things done. Without anger it’s difficult—if not impossible—to achieve certain goals.

But for all the good it can do, anger is a double-edged sword with enormous destructive potential. It needs to be managed. Here are three principles by which to do that:

  1. Bridle the Beast—Sometimes you’ll be fuming. Unless you’re an extraordinarily virtuous person or surrounded with relationships of exceptional trust, it’s generally not advisable to blow your top. Practice self-control, the ability to pause between stimulus and response—at least for that moment if not forever.
  2. Look it in the Face—Once you separate yourself from the anger you feel and objectify it, you can examine it, which will enable you to state at whom or what you’re angry and why. Very often, just hearing yourself articulate these facts can reframe or refresh your perspective. Sometimes you’ll find your anger justified, many other times not. Once you can say why and at whom or what you’re angry, you can engage in confrontation much more constructively.
  3. Relax the Reins—Sometimes the anger will stick around and move you to action. Sometimes it will trot away after being identified as selfish or unjustified. But if it remains, you must let yourself take appropriate action and engage in constructive confrontation and conflict. Without this final step, you run the danger of repression, resentment, and even physical illness. 

A more difficult spiritual path by which to manage anger is to purify it through detachment and the uprooting of self-will. Desire, particularly when it’s thwarted or its object is threatened, drives anger. The more we sacrifice self-will in favor of a desire for something greater, the less problematic anger will be.

That’s all very philosophical, and there’s a chance we could still blow our tops from time to time. So finally, humility and asking forgiveness are indispensible for those moments when our failure to manage our anger turns it into a bucking bronco instead of a well-trained racehorse. 

The Tree and the Cancer Cell

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Reflecting on an unexpected growth in business revenue during the pandemic of 2020, a client sagely quoted the naturalist Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Or of a coronavirus, one might say these days.

If my client’s business were a tree, one could say that it is producing more fruit than he expected. He’d probably say the unexpected quantity is even weighing down the branches as he’s looking to hire new team members to relieve that pressure. As long as his motivation is to care for his overburdened employees or serve his clients better, he’s avoiding the “ideology of the cancer cell.” It’s growth for the sake of a higher value.

But when growth becomes the highest value of a company, all sorts of dangers lurk in justifying this good-sounding end by potentially harmful means. At what human cost does the acquisition of the fast-growing tech startup come? How do you know when to stop? Does the market (perhaps the ultimate limiting force) have a conscience?

Whether it’s a dogwood or a redwood, a tree will only grow so large. After it reaches its limit, its only growth is by multiplication, by creating seedlings. A single tree is limited by its environmental context. Perhaps that’s the most important difference between the tree and the cancer cell. The tree is limited by the other elements in its environment. The cancer cell’s ability to exist in a system with other kinds of cells is compromised by an operational defect that makes it—to anthropomorphize—an idiot, caring only about itself and its perpetuation through uncontrolled, destructive proliferation.

Unlike the tree and the cancer cell, living things with consciousness can choose the kind of growth they seek, both for themselves and for the conscious systems in which they work and live.

A Cure for Instability

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The deadline for mailing gifts to arrive in time for Christmas is quickly approaching. If you’re lucky, you may receive a very personal gift during this holiday season. Even if you’re not so fortunate as to get a hand-knitted scarf from a friend who took up yarn-wrangling during the pandemic, you’ll probably receive something. You’ll probably give too.

Most of us know intuitively that something has been lost in our post-industrial, technologically advanced world. In the midst of unprecedented wealth, power, and knowledge, there is a tangible disconnectedness. Add to it political tension, a coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting economic disruption, and we live in a world of profound instability.

In the midst of this, I was lucky enough to give a gift to someone who understands gifts the way ancient people do. Nearly every time we speak by phone, she reminds me of the gift I gave her and how meaningful it is to her. And she recently gave me the “meta-gift” of understanding gifts the way she does, a book that taught me that there is a cure for this instability in which we live, for which the holiday season presents a golden opportunity: the giving and receiving of gifts. 

In The Gift,º Marcel Mauss presents a stunning survey of gift-related practices in ancient societies from every corner of the globe. His observations and conclusions provide us with a few precious principles that all of us can apply to create stability in an unstable world:

  • A gift is a living thing: It carries with it the spirit of the person who gave it. To give it is to give part of yourself, and to receive it is to receive a part of someone else’s essence. When we give and receive gifts in a truly personal way, we revivify our experience of life.
  • Giving is a good cultural norm: “In ancient societies, people were anxious to give. There was no occasion of importance when one was not obliged to invite friends and share the produce of the chase or forest; to redistribute everything at a potlatch; or to recognize services from chiefs, vassals, or relatives by means of gifts. Failing these obligations—at least for the nobles—etiquette was violated and rank was lost.” The social pressure to give gifts is not a bad thing.
  • It’s in our best self-interest to give: There is an old Hindu teaching that the secret of fortune and happiness is to give, not to keep, not to seek but to distribute it that it may return in this world and in the other. According to this teaching, self-renunciation and getting only to give is the real source of profit and the law of nature. It is in the nature of food, in particular, to be shared; to fail to give others a part is to “kill its essence”, to destroy it for oneself and for others: “He who eats without [this] knowledge kills his food, and his food kills him.”
  • Giving and receiving gifts creates a sense of reciprocity and connectedness: The person who receives a gift does not merely recognize that he has received it, but realizes that he himself is in a sense “bought” until it is paid for.

Mauss concludes with a few suggestions for modern societies: “The rich should come once more, freely or by obligation, to consider themselves as the treasurers of their fellow citizens…Meanwhile, the individual must work and be made to rely more upon himself than upon others.” Ending with the famous image of King Arthur’s round table, Mauss asserts: “The mere pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and peace of the whole, to the rhythm of its work and pleasures, and hence in the end to the individual.”

These ideas have implications on many levels, from the individual to the national. In a time of instability, giving and receiving gifts may be the most deeply human way to cure it and the disconnectedness that fuels it. 

º https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Gift/

The Most Effective Response to Pain

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In the school of adversity,ª you sometimes get your knuckles rapped. Sometimes it’s your fault. Sometimes it’s another person’s fault. And sometimes, it’s no one’s fault; it’s just life. 

In any case, the pain is real. And sometimes those knuckles can throb for quite a while. The big question is: how will we deal with our affliction?

In his commentary on the psalms,º Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra writes:

It is natural to consider [the feeling of affliction] as something negative, as something to be avoided, or to pretend that we are the kind of people who are not affected by such things. However, the experience of affliction is at the center of the life of every soul…

The truth is that afflictions are not the signs of God’s absence or abandonment but rather of His presence. Afflictions are like the kneading of the dough in the making of the bread…without them the soul is left unformed, cold, and alone. It is affliction alone that can tear us away from our isolated, individual existence and transform us into something much more whole and open…

From my affliction, I called upon the Lord, and He heard me and brought me into a broad place (Psalm 117.5). It was while I was in the midst of my afflictions that I remembered the Lord, and so I cried out to Him, and in response He transformed the narrowness of my heart into a broad place…He opened my heart and enlarged my soul and so enabled me to accept suffering…

He taught me how to live in this broad place, with an open heart that is able to contain all things. My heart has become like a vast reservoir: no matter how much water you pour into it, you’ll never be able to fill it, and no amount of troubles or afflictions can overcome me, since God alone can fill my heart. I called out to God in my affliction, and what did He do? He opened my heart, He made it so large, so wide, that now it can contain God Himself. Before, the littlest thing was enough to drown me, but no longer, for my afflictions proved to be but a preparation to receive God.

While this commentary may be more meaningful to people of faith, it contains a principle that applies to everyone, regardless of belief in God: the most effective response to affliction is to express it in a safe conversation, to a person with empathetic care for you.

What the wise monastic wrote won’t always happen to you, but sometimes it will. Sometimes it will happen when you hear yourself express aloud what you’ve never before expressed. And sometimes it will happen when the person who is listening—whether divine or human—responds in a way that transforms the pain into a soul-expanding force.

ª https://allaxispartners.com/the-school-of-adversity/

º https://www.indiktos.gr/ασκητικα/576-psalms-and-the-life-of-faith.html

The School of Adversity

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It’s human nature to take the easy way, to watch a movie rather than go for a run. To avoid that difficult conversation rather than to initiate it. To present the set of numbers that makes us look best rather than the metrics that are actually most important. Deep down, we know it doesn’t do us any good, but we’d rather feel comfortable than the opposite.

In his classic Book of Pastoral Rule, Gregory the Dialogist encourages his readers

to love adversity for the sake of truth, to shrink in fear from prosperity, for it often defiles the heart by vainglory, but adversity cleanses it by sorrow. In prosperity, the mind becomes conceited; in adversity, even if on occasion it becomes conceited, it abases itself. In prosperity, man forgets who he is; in adversity, he is recalled, even unwillingly and by force, to the recollection of what he is. In prosperity, even his past good works are often brought to nothing; in adversity, faults, even long-standing, are wiped away. It is a common experience that in the school of adversity the heart is forced to discipline itself; but when a man has achieved supreme rule, it is at once changed and puffed up by the experience of his high estate.

There will be times when adversity finds us, when we won’t need to go looking for it. But in those other times, what will we do? Will we choose comfort or the school of adversity?

Fear’s Function

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If you were walking through the woods and saw a bear, which then turned to look at you, I hope you would feel some fear.ª The function of fear is to protect us from threats. 

Those pursuing power and greatness sometimes come to believe that the greater or more powerful they are, the less they have to fear. But this is a dangerous error.

When a man grows inwardly and increases in holiness, he is something great and marvelous. But just as the elephant fears the mouse, so the holy man is still afraid of sin, lest after preaching to others he himself “should be cast away” (1 Corinthians 9.27).

Saint John of Karpathos

If the saint fears sin, what does the person aspiring to worldly greatness fear? The lawsuit alleging racial discrimination or sexual harassment? Being convicted of theft or fraud? He often doesn’t seem to fear them before they happen, too late for fear to protect him.

In his first inaugural address,º President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the famous line, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It was meant to exhort his hearers to progressive action and away from the fear of paralysis and retreat caused by the Great Depression.

But please don’t quote President Roosevelt’s line out of context. Only a fool would aspire to be fearless.

ª Unless, of course, you were Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

º https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/froos1.asp

Intentional Humility

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It was perhaps in the 7th century that John of Karpathos wrote:

It is most necessary and helpful for the soul to endure with fortitude every tribulation…We should recognize that our sufferings are no more than we deserve, and we should never blame anyone but ourselves. For whoever blames others for his own tribulations has lost the power of judging correctly what is to his own advantage.

In the 21st century, Jim Collins wrote:

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

Perhaps in the 22nd century, someone will write, “Check for a bug in your own algorithm first.”