I've only just started to notice a particular phenomenon, or rather, just started to put together pieces of what this phenomenon might mean. And that's about the way in which the "inside" of a person matches their "outside". I imagine everyone has had the experience of meeting someone and thinking, "Oh, I like this person a lot," only to realize in fairly short order that this was not the case. Or the opposite, being nervous about not liking someone, only to find that someone was more likable than what was previously imaginable. That's always nice. I'm thinking of a related, but not identical sort of perception-illusion.
There's a scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy when 8 year old Almanzo Wilder's massive milk-fed pumpkin is being judged at the county fair. The author describes the way the pumpkins are judged, and how in this case a long sliver of pumpkin is taken, and held up to the light, and tasted before the final decision is made. Almanzo's pumpkin is paler than the rest, but the same color from rind to core, and he ends up winning the contest.
Some people are like that pumpkin--they are "the same color" all the way through. What you see is what you get and the person they present to the outer world and the inner person "match up" with a great deal of congruity. I have heard persons much wiser than me express a great deal of admiration for this quality. It seems to be that this kind of humility and integrity has to at least be the beginning of something awesome--at the least it is the beginning of real honesty, real humility, real character. To be who you are all the time without changing to please or otherwise accommodate others.
I find another kind of person every once in a while, though, and I like discovering this sort of person much better than even discovering someone really is who they say they are. I like discovering the kind of person who is, for whatever reason, much better than the person they superficially present to the outside world. I have particularly noticed this quality in two people of my acquaintance. One, in a boss of mine, and another in one of my closest friends. Although I have known her for years, I just started noticing this about her.
It took a few meetings with this boss of mine to have it dawn on me--ever-so-incrementally--that I was in the presence of someone of significant holiness. It was not significant in that it was particularly conspicuous, in any case, this person's inner character was not very obvious to me at all. Now this person is someone who is "likable" by nature, but "likable" isn't necessarily a very deep quality, and "likable" and "virtuous" certainly aren't synonymous. Some people spend so much of their energy trying to be "likable" they never end up with much virtue. But as I got to know this particular gentlemen I realized that he combined humility (personal and intellectual), genuine caring and kindness and affection, self-awareness and self-acknowledgement of his own limitations, vulnerability, and some real courage and steadfastness in how he did his daily work and in his dealings with me. After getting to know him, I realized I had presumed that he was just another "nice" person who was mostly surface with no remarkable inner strength or character. He's one of the least outwardly impressive most inwardly impressive persons I have met--which is probably one of the reasons he doesn't immediately strike one as being "impressive"--because he doesn't consider himself that way and isn't spending a significant chunk of his emotional resources presenting the image of his choosing to the public for admiration.
This second friend of mine--we've been close for years--has always been the loyal, steadfast, hard-working, honest type of person. I think maybe now it has begun to seriously pay off in terms of inner strength and inner resources, and wealth in terms of relationships. I imagine it has been paying off for her for some time, perhaps now is when I've started to notice. The last time I got off the phone with her, I remember marveling to myself, "She is just the most damn honest person I ever met. She always tells me the truth about herself, and she always tells me what she really thinks in response to what I tell her about my life." We certainly don't always agree on everything (I, too, am fairly devoted to honesty, and two very honest people can never hope to agree on everything!), but I always respect what she says, and I really admire the effort into telling me the truth all the time. She just has buckets and wells full of integrity and truthfulness and has the strength to really grapple and deal with the truth in her life: the truth about God, about herself, about her life, and her relationships with other people. It's just so damn impressive. I wonder if people can see that about her from the outside. I am sure her truthfulness comes across to some degree. I wonder if her strength does.
But then there are the "hollow men". I think when T. S. Eliot wrote the poem, he was envisioning human beings in general as these death-courting hollow men. But I'm not sure--it was the title of the poem that came to mind rather than the poem itself. There are different kinds of hollow men and women, I am sure. There are the people who for whatever reason are so desperate to be liked or to be seen in a particular way that they invest any time and resources they have on themselves on their appearance. They acquire whatever virtues are needed to fit in, to be liked, to be cherished or admired by whatever group they want to participate in, and they don't bother to acquire any other sort of character, integrity, or inner strength or resources. I think of these folks as being hollow like a globe is hollow--it looks solid on the outside, but when you get to know someone there's virtually nothing on the inside, no knowledge, no strength, nothing to give. Some people are hollow like swiss cheese is hollow--they aren't necessarily concerned with appearance or likability, but they don't necessarily care to invest in their character or inner life either--so they end up with a mish-mash of virtues and strengths and vices, and whole parts of life unexplored and ill-understood.
Swiss cheese people aren't so bad--most of us probably spend most of our lives transitioning from swiss cheese to something far better. Globe people are harder, I think--because they haven't learned how to act honestly yet, and they are still acting out of mercenary motives rather than having learned to love the right things for their own sake. I think "globe people" are particularly frustrating to find (and to be) in Christian communities because it is so easy to do the right thing for the wrong reason. "I will go along with this Christian value because I want to fit in, not because I care about it myself." And some Christian communities encourage such fakery--they would have have pretend good little Christian people than real repentant sinners because faux-goodness is easier to deal with in the moment than honest sinfulness or weakness.
I've made friends with some of these "hollow men" before. I remember being so surprised after penetrating to a certain depth of life (it didn't take that long) to see that the person sitting before me had nothing to say or to offer and that this really was the end of them as a person, either by virtue of lack of reflection, or investment, or both. It is interesting to meet people who "sell themselves" as people of great affection or kindness or love, but who in truth have invested more in appearing a certain way than they have in living it out. Jesus is probably the only human who ever lived who was "solid to the core," but it's so disappointing to find someone who seems beautifully kind or thoughtful or whatever, only to find out that their kindness is mostly for display only and lacks real rootedness in a life seeking the character of Christ.
It's hard to find out people that you have affection for or even Christian communities that you love deeply are in fact "hollow" as I have said. I do not think anything keeps a community of people from taking on these characteristics just as individuals do. Part of the hollowness I have described is dishonesty, and deception (active or otherwise) is a sin I have always found difficult to forgive. Question: "If you were not serious about our friendship, why couldn't have you just been honest about it? Why did you have to pretend like you were interested?" Possible answer: "I was afraid of being alone." Another possible answer: "Because I wanted to be your friend, I just don't know how."
Expectation is a hard thing to relinquish. To accept the present "hollowness" of any given person or place may garner a personal apparent loss. I lost my friend (or some part of my friend), I lost my community (or some part of my community), I lost x because that person cannot give me the kindness, love, or whatever thing that was once offered or advertised, and now I must let the thing go and seek elsewhere for that which I am searching. Sometimes the loss is too drastic for a relationship to be recovered and sadly results in a parting of ways. Forgiveness is always a part of what must take place, even if it is no remedy to hollowness. Grief remains, I think--because men were not meant to be hollow.
No comments:
Post a Comment