I love competitiveness, but is "goodness" a competition? Do I get my reward from being good the same way I get it from outsmarting a brainteaser? Do I get my reward from anything from the beautiful inner joy of feeling wonderful, or only as I compare to others - or some imaginary scale I made up? Even if I'm only comparing myself to myself, is my happiness only from how I measure up?
Then my teenager, when I'm least expecting it, when I'm not tired and judgmental and thinking "he should!" thoughts, stops in the middle of an online epic battle and asks my mom what he can do to help.
Is the beauty of a moment like this worth it's rarity? Is it worth waiting for? If I had raised my kids differently, I could have coerced him into helping all the time. Is this one true pure act of helping because he truly feels it inside and wants to, worth a hundred kind acts he might have otherwise performed out of the pride of "being good"?
To me it is.
Is it really about how "good" he is, or about how happy he is? Being good IS being truly happy. Not a superior feeling of being better than some idea of how things "should" be, but a happy glow inside. The word authentic comes to mind.
| Zuko | Why can't I do it? Instead of lightning it keeps blowing up in my face... like everything always does. |
|---|---|
| Iroh | I was afraid this might happen. You will not be able to master lightning until you have dealt with the turmoil inside you. |
| Zuko | What turmoil? |
| Iroh | Zuko, you must let go of your feelings of shame if you want your anger to go away. |
| Zuko | But I don't feel any shame at all. I'm as proud as ever. |
| Iroh | Prince Zuko, pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame. |
When we think our happiness is dependent on how we measure up on the "righteous scale", we not only rob ourselves of the subtle and underlying taste of true happiness, but we judge others as we judge ourselves. Pointing our fingers and mocking at their lack of righteousness, we hold out a barbed hand to rescue them. But if they truly followed our idea of perfection, would we enjoy it? Would we enjoy the lack of someone to ridicule? The lack of someone to "help!"
"And it came to pass that I beheld a atree, whose bfruit was desirable to make one chappy.
And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great ajoy;
And I beheld a great and bspacious building
filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the aattitude of bmocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
And after they had atasted of the fruit they were bashamed, because of those that were cscoffing at them; and they dfell away into forbidden paths and were lost.
And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of ascorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not."(I Nephi ch. 8)
One Sunday as I opened the heavy soundproof door of the Chapel, my toddler spun across the room as only a three year old can, and made sound contact with the edge of the door. I hadn't pulled it open very swiftly, and I hadn't realized how fast she must have been spinning, so at first I didn't know how badly she had been hurt. Her ear splintering screams, however, immediately testified as to how mistaken I was!
I rushed her to the kitchen where I desperately tried to get her to let me put ice on it, closing the doors as I knew only too well that she was all anybody could really hear as the meeting started.
Seeing my friend in her car just outside the door, I took my child in my arms and went to see if she had anything that would help calm my daughter enough to endure what I deemed as the necessity of ice.
Just outside the door I bent down again to try to hold the ice against the rapidly growing lump on her forehead, hoping it wouldn't split open. And that is when a concerned lady stuck her head out of the door and said in all the splendor of her concern for the insult of the child, "Did you ever consider that she might be crying because it's cold outside!" and then disappeared with a humph (I had previously always wondered what this would look like in real life, lol, but she really did it!) before I would have time to dare respond to her exceeding wisdom.
Sugar, as any drug, is wonderful when used appropriately, and calmed with a chocolate coin, my daughter got her head iced and her concussion eventually wore off. We were very worried at first, but then I had time to worry more about my feelings towards this lady. I so wanted to forgive her, but I didn't know how.
Wasn't I a freedom fighter? Would giving her some slack lessen my stand against judging people. We never really know what is happening when we look in on a situation, from the outside.
So many times I have discussed with like minded friends online the importance of standing up for children. That is all she had really been doing. But my bitterness towards her wasn't just for being grossly misjudged. (Did she really think I was perhaps punishing my wildly protesting child by making her stand out in the cold?) But what if I had been? What if I had been that evil and bad? I have seen less than kind parents in public places like the grocery store, and I have known very well that it was the parent more so than the child, that needed my love. If I drew attention to the judged inadequacy of their love for their child (which we all can unquestionably tell by a persons parenting skills), I knew very well that child would be beaten and blamed for the embarrassment later on. So I had no illusion that this lady was really trying to help. Perhaps she had that illusion, though.
Then it hit me! I could only feel greater sorrow for her circumstance than for mine. Her response was ignited by a true belief way deep down in her soul, that her self worth was inseparably dependent on how "good" of a mother she was. A deep scar that I knew only too well myself. A battle I fought desperately in the dark hours when the state of the house was such that I thought I deserved for CPS to take my children away. A thought that nagged at my sanity when I had just recycled all the library books because circumstances I felt helpless to control ended up resulting in a bleeding head because they had become airborne in the hands of an unsettled toddler. I knew this feeling to the depths of my toes, to the back of my throat where tears reside. If there was one dark cloud behind which the monsters of my life reside, it was my inadequacy as a parent making me know I was not worth being loved.
Thankfully I have a husband who believes in forgiveness, imperfection, and trying again and again - not in the beauty of succeeding, but he beauty of trying. Perhaps this lady had no such person in her life. Perhaps her judgment of me was merely an outlet for the pent up tenseness that had built inside of her her whole life. I could only feel horror at how decisively I had judged someone drowning from prejudice, so incredibly like myself.
I laud Christ for waking the religious world up to their reliance on pride in their actions of righteousness. He gave the world a taste of true joy from authentic kindness - without caring what the judgment of ones self or others was of the action. Now I look at my warped idea of following him, and need a wake up call to authentic joy from good. Good is what makes us truly happy inside. And I need to somehow lay aside my piety of self righteousness that makes me like or hate myself depending on how I judge myself on my scale of righteousness.
It is like the cotton candy parable. I love cotton candy! If I went to the fair and didn't get any cotton candy because I couldn't afford it, and then upon returning home, learned that the cotton candy had been free, would I be sad because I was "bad" for not having gotten to eat cotton candy, or would I be sad because I wanted to eat cotton candy and missed out. Sin is not happiness. It is it's own punishment. We don't need our own, or anybody elses opinions to make us embarrassed or sad for causing our own sorrow by sin.
And true happiness doesn't come from recognizing where we measure on a scale of righteousness, only from feeling happy deep inside from following our inborn love of doing good.
No comments:
Post a Comment