Week 6: Me, Myself, and Irate Ramblings

Ever since getting back my first paper on spirituality – wherein we were to discuss the history of our relationship with God – I’ve been fixated on one question: Do I have an ego problem?

In my paper I explained that I don’t need to know one way or another if God exists, because as long as I am in control of my life then it doesn’t make any difference. In the margin next to this, Fr. Dziak wrote, “This is not a God issue but perhaps an ego issue. Focusing on yourself and abandoning anything/anyone is self-focused, self-ish perhaps.”

To read that was truly upsetting, not because I felt offended, but because I felt he was absolutely right. I don’t trust anyone to be in charge of something I can take direct control of.

Group projects? If it’s a collective grade, then I’m either checking in on everyone or (most often) doing almost all the work myself. Organizing events? I make clear what I am responsible for, and that if anything else falls short I cannot be held accountable. Many of my life goals exist so that I can better control the variables responsible for my livelihood and happiness. So yes, I admit that I may have an ego problem.

Of course, Ignatius also had an ego problem when he was young, to the point of vanity, and I don’t think I’m vain…I don’t think.

Even after his convalescence, he largely considered himself as the conduit between Earth and Jesus. His vision at La Storta told him that he would be a servant to Christ, not he and all his friends.

Heck, Chris Lowney, author of our Heroic Leadership text, even says that those leaders are best who lead themselves. So being self-sufficient can’t be all bad, right?

Ignatius preached that we should pray as though everything depends on God, and work as though everything depends on us. But how does one achieve that? How can one wholeheartedly push oneself to the limit if she or he believes that it’s ultimately out of her or his hands? I’m sure you’ve all been in a relationship where the love grew increasingly one-sided. It’s just not the same, going through the motions without any heart.

To paraphrase one of my peers, egoism is implicitly bad but inherently neutral. At least, that’s my opinion. And there we return to the problem! It’s my phenomenology class all over again. We can only really know what we know – unless you’re a skeptic, in which case you don’t even know that much.

Who can say that I have an ego problem unless I think I have an ego problem? And if I do think I have an ego problem, then what if I actually don’t, but my ego won’t let me believe it?

Maybe I’m overanalyzing this. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m overanalyzing this (as I am wont to do), but it bugs me. Like one of those splinters you get from decrepit wood, the ones that break up into smaller pieces so that even if you can grab it with forceps, there’s something left behind. 

Sorry. I know this post was a little longwinded (definitely over the 400-word range) and, at times, nonsensical, but when you’re sitting around with nothing to do (read: nothing that doesn’t involve drinking, spending money, or both), this kind of stuff bubbles to the top.

I hope everyone had a great Mardi Gras/Presidents’ Day. Y’all know what I was doing.

Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler

Week 5: Remembering What Was Lost

Death is scary.

Can we all agree on that?

True, human beings appear to have a strange fixation on the subject, what with the numerous slasher movies, half the stories on the news, murder mystery novels, and the way in which humans glorify dying for whatever we consider a “righteous” cause. But when we’re forced to put our own lives under the microscope, it’s often a very different story.

For all the dangers of the world, we find it difficult to imagine that death could ever reach our friends and family. It’s always the crazy, lone gunman, the reckless driver, the neighbor’s son – our children would never be so irresponsible to try such a thing. All the same, Chuck Palahniuk’s words ring true: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

This past fall marked the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, a time which forced every American to acknowledge not only that there are people out there who hate us, but also how vulnerable we really were. Yet it also made us realize the bravery and camaraderie our species can have in a time of great crisis.

Stories abound of courageous men and women, firefighters and citizens alike, who risked their lives to save others from the burning buildings and subsequent collapse, and I don’t feel like I would do them justice by even attempting to describe the scenes. Father Ted sent us a video about a man he knew at Boston College. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It’s just a glimpse at the amazing feats of humanity that came out of that horrible time in our history.

I hope I never find myself in such a situation. To be frank, I hope I never have to face death, period. Unlike most I’ve spoken with, I’d be perfectly fine with growing decrepit if it means I could live forever. But the questions in that video bring up a good point. What would my death look like? The way I see it, there are two schools of thought: the slow, calm slipping away, surrounded by loved ones, and the big, boisterous ending with a bang.

Me? I’m more inclined towards the former. Lying in a soft bed, with those I care about there to see me off, and one last opportunity to tell each of them how truly special they are to me. Then I would have a nice, modest funeral, with everyone sad for the loss, but happy in recounting my life. I’d get a paragraph (maybe even a whole page) in the family history logs, and whenever my great-grandchildren wanted to know the kind of man Papa McCormick was, my children or grandchildren would recount the stories with a tear in their eye and a smile in their heart.

And if another tragedy of such magnitude were to strike, and I found myself in the thick of it, I’d like to think that I would have the presence of mind and fighting spirit to be even half the hero that Welles Crowther was.

Imagine what they’d say about me then.

Week 4: A Sailor's Finest Ship

I have to admit that I've been rather blessed in life. Not only am I a Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon male, but I’m also a part of the 1% of the world that gets an opportunity to attend college. I can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, claim that life has been easy for me, but at the same time I realize that, simply by the status of my birth, I don't need to work as hard as others to achieve the same ends.

It’s easy to forget this fact, and sometimes, when I feel lost among a sea of incomprehensible information or crushed under a barrage of tests and papers, the simple existence of a village in the deep recesses of Vietnam seems increasingly appealing.

Luckily, it’s at times like these that I can turn to my greatest blessing of all: my support group. I have teachers and counselors who (I hope) are concerned with my well-being, a family who loves and supports me, and, perhaps best of all, a tightly-knit collection of friends with whom I truly believe I can discuss anything.

Yes, my friends from high school and I still hang out when we can, and all my college friends are loads of fun to be around, but within that larger category are perhaps three or four individuals whom I feel a spiritual (as well as intellectual) connection with. When we talk, it’s as though our brainwaves are in perfect harmony, and it’s not uncommon to find ourselves effortlessly shifting from mindless banter to the deeper questions of life, the universe, and everything.

In all honesty, I’m not even completely sure how we all became such close companions. I like to think that we all knew each other long ago, and it just took until now to meet. But whatever the explanation, I’m definitely glad to have them in my life – for those times I feel alone in the world, want a shoulder to cry on, or just need to be told an answer I already know to a question I’m too afraid to ask.

On that note, I’d like to give a big shout out to my buddy, Palvin! You matter a great deal to me, my friend, and I’m honored to be sharing in the experience of Ignatius Loyola with you.