Lately I have been unintentionally reading and coming across a number of books, articles, conversations, and moments of realization about mankind’s innate selfishness. Within all of us, from animals to humans, is an engrained, self-preservation response. In animals it is carnal, bloody, and raw. In humans the response is a bit more subtle. It comes out in those of us who are heartbroken, wounded, angry, abused, wronged. It often shows itself interpersonally…working its way into conversations and interactions with others. On the job, at home, with our friends and family: we spend a lot of our energy protecting ourselves, defending our motives and actions, rationalizing our wrongs, even putting the blame on someone besides ourselves. We are not hateful people, but some of us have more discipline over these responses than others. Yet all of us, at some time or another, react rather than respond.
Over the past few years I limped through a very vivid and painful season with this self-preservative theme. Life hands you lemons, make lemonade, right? Well, for me lately, I have taken those lemons and squeezed them onto cuts, scrapes, nails bitten too close to the skin, any open wound I discover. I am not a hateful person, but my instinct for survival has dominated this awkward and dark season of my life. In return, I have turned my own focus inwards, like a scientist reversing his telescope or his binoculars or his microscope away from his subject and onto himself. I have often seemed to step out of the loving, tender, joyful person who, on most days, I know myself to be. I stood at a distance looking through the telescope at the cancers within me, causing me to loose control of myself and eating away at my desire to look outward rather than inward.
Over this past weekend, Penny and I were cleaning out the trunk of my car (where half of her belongings have sat for almost nine months). We found all sorts of girly treasures: fun hair clips, stickers, love notes, and beads. Another thing we found was rolled up sheet of the material that table confetti is made of…you know those little ducks and birthday cakes and bells people toss on their party tables to add a little color and fun to their decorations. So, we found this and Penny gave it to me to use as a decoration at my upcoming birthday party. I tucked it into an open compartment of my car so I wouldn’t forget to use it.
This morning Ryan and I were riding to Cape Town together, and we started playing with the purple roll of fun. Since it is taped together on the outside of the roll, you can push the tightly rolled inside part out and it becomes a pointed, funnel-shaped thing--something you can push in and out like a toy sword. We went back and forth making props out of it: a light saber, a sword, a dunce hat, and eventually a telescope. I pushed out the center and held it up to my eye saying, “there’s the milky way!!” Ryan responded, “Well, it must be like a trillion miles away cause you have the telescope turned wrong.” I was holding it the wrong way, with the large part to my eye and the small part pointed to the sky. I tried again, only to do the same thing over ( for some reason this self-preservative season has been coupled with a very unfortunate season of forgetting things almost moments after I am told them☹ ).
We laughed and I tried a third time, this time getting it right! Soon after that, we laid the toy down and talked about something else (something more mature I am sure). But the last part of the game stayed in my mind. Three times I tried to make a telescope, and twice I instinctually looked inward. I stepped out of myself and stood on the outside looking in, as opposed to the other way around. It struck me that this mistake represents the season I am experiencing: attempting to be fun and light again, but still fighting through that innate, selfish behavior. It was only the third time, after being told twice of my mistake, did I get it right and actually look out to the world around me, magnifying it rather than minimizing it.
I don’t know about you, if you feel this or have ever felt it before. It just reminds me of my need to be very, very intentional about where i choose to set my focus in life, as well as a constant awareness of how my instincts keep me locked into behaviors I’d much prefer to break free from. Perhaps most of all, a willingness to lay down my own pride when I make this instinctive response and realize how it might affect others. As long as I keep my telescope pointed inward, I loose sight of the needs and opportunities that are around me. I continue to step out of myself in order to see, leaving it to operate out of it’s animal-like behavior--untamed by the sense, reason, and self-control that being a human offers me. And sadly, I miss the chance to care for others, be tender and gentle, be the person I want to be in this world.
I suppose I still spend time floating with the planets and galaxies in a world where I have no control. It is only when I turn the telescope around that I get the chance to put my feet to the ground and walk in the direction of love and compassion—the very things I have known myself to possess.
