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A meeting I attended last night had an interesting discussion of envy. Some very good things were said about how envy is the one deadly sin that gives no one any pleasure, about how it is the opposite of gratitude and about how it saps the pleasure out of life.
I had decided to pass when my turn came, until the woman who spoke before me mentioned that three women had recently asked her to sponsor them, citing the usual reason: she has what they want. She found that amusing, since she recently sold her house and left her job, leaving her with what most people would rate as pretty much nothing.
That got me thinking, so I decided that I should do some thinking out loud and share. What I realized was that, while I am troubled by envy, I am much more subject to avarice: the desire for things I don't have. I did a quick inventory of those desired objects, jobs, status, whatever and quickly saw that the one factor they had in common was that they were all spiritually bad for me. I am like a diabetic who wants to get a whole lot of ice cream. Many of the things I do have, like love, friendship and the AA fellowship, are great for me, but I tend to ignore my veggies and go for the ice cream.
As anyone reading this blog knows by now, I think that faith and humility are the most important keys to the program and to happiness. Just about everything I desire impedes one or both of those.
I know that faith, an openness to life's possibilities and a willingness to accept and deal with what comes, is essential. A person of faith takes joy in the surprises life offers and accepts the predictable as dull backdrop to the really fun stuff. My instincts, as shown in my avarice, is to demand complete predictability. I want to know what job I will have next year, what the tasks will be, that it will be there as long as I want it and pay the salary necessary for me to maintain my life just as it is. That is to say, I want no surprises, I want complete controllability -- the diametrical opposite of faith.
Similarly, as I said in my last post, I revel in my dependency on the opinions of others. I want their praise, their respect, even when I don't respect their values. Now that is a twisted form of vainglory. I recently read Han Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone, a German novel from 1947 about life under the Nazis. It is based on the true story of a working class German couple who, after their son is killed in combat, decide they must do something, anything, to contribute to the fall of a regime that offers only oppression and death. Their form of resistance is pitifully small: they write seditious messages on postcards and leave them on stairways and windowsills. They knew what they were doing was small, but it was something they could do and if they were caught (which they were) it would cost them their lives, and no one can risk more than their lives. The thing was to do something. Now, clearly they were not looking for respect, not to mention glory. Those who supported the Nazis would, of course, view them as evil and most of those opposed to the Nazis would view them as futile nut cases. But they did what they could because they had to. In an afterward the editor compares the book to Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem noting that whereas Arendt "dissects and analyzes 'the banality of evil,' Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone comprehends and honors the banality of good."
I love that phrase, "the banality of good." At this moment that seems to me to be the essence of humility - to do the small things in your small way that you can do because you should do them. I hope that I can learn to sincerely strive for the faith and humility that will open the path to the banal good I am capable of.
I had decided to pass when my turn came, until the woman who spoke before me mentioned that three women had recently asked her to sponsor them, citing the usual reason: she has what they want. She found that amusing, since she recently sold her house and left her job, leaving her with what most people would rate as pretty much nothing.
That got me thinking, so I decided that I should do some thinking out loud and share. What I realized was that, while I am troubled by envy, I am much more subject to avarice: the desire for things I don't have. I did a quick inventory of those desired objects, jobs, status, whatever and quickly saw that the one factor they had in common was that they were all spiritually bad for me. I am like a diabetic who wants to get a whole lot of ice cream. Many of the things I do have, like love, friendship and the AA fellowship, are great for me, but I tend to ignore my veggies and go for the ice cream.
As anyone reading this blog knows by now, I think that faith and humility are the most important keys to the program and to happiness. Just about everything I desire impedes one or both of those.
I know that faith, an openness to life's possibilities and a willingness to accept and deal with what comes, is essential. A person of faith takes joy in the surprises life offers and accepts the predictable as dull backdrop to the really fun stuff. My instincts, as shown in my avarice, is to demand complete predictability. I want to know what job I will have next year, what the tasks will be, that it will be there as long as I want it and pay the salary necessary for me to maintain my life just as it is. That is to say, I want no surprises, I want complete controllability -- the diametrical opposite of faith.
Similarly, as I said in my last post, I revel in my dependency on the opinions of others. I want their praise, their respect, even when I don't respect their values. Now that is a twisted form of vainglory. I recently read Han Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone, a German novel from 1947 about life under the Nazis. It is based on the true story of a working class German couple who, after their son is killed in combat, decide they must do something, anything, to contribute to the fall of a regime that offers only oppression and death. Their form of resistance is pitifully small: they write seditious messages on postcards and leave them on stairways and windowsills. They knew what they were doing was small, but it was something they could do and if they were caught (which they were) it would cost them their lives, and no one can risk more than their lives. The thing was to do something. Now, clearly they were not looking for respect, not to mention glory. Those who supported the Nazis would, of course, view them as evil and most of those opposed to the Nazis would view them as futile nut cases. But they did what they could because they had to. In an afterward the editor compares the book to Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem noting that whereas Arendt "dissects and analyzes 'the banality of evil,' Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone comprehends and honors the banality of good."
I love that phrase, "the banality of good." At this moment that seems to me to be the essence of humility - to do the small things in your small way that you can do because you should do them. I hope that I can learn to sincerely strive for the faith and humility that will open the path to the banal good I am capable of.
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