This I Believe

Sherwood Anderson wrote that people tend to become “grotesques” of themselves. The ungenerous become miserly; the talkative, garrulous; the proud, vain. I believe this happens to me when I lose the central virtue of childhood, by failure to continue to reach out, to explore, and to perfect, in all possible directions.

I believe that a fulfilling life is one that persistently reduces the unknown and the unmastered. It is one that compensates in adulthood for the loss of unselfconsciousness by replacing the child’s charming egocentricity with a knowing selflessness. There is more than one way of knowing and more than one way of mastering. Obviously the unlettered often know more, without always being able to put what they know into words, than the highly educated. Even more frequently, they are better masters of themselves and of their relationships with God and with people. Among all people, literate and otherwise, the differences in understanding are great. It is not the difference between individuals that should matter to any given individual. The difference that counts is the difference between himself as he is, and himself as he was.

I believe there is a connection between the process of maturing and the riddle of existence. The impulse towards selflessness is too strong and too contrary to the law of the jungle to be explained otherwise. I think that I—I think that all of us—were put here for a purpose and that the purpose has to do with advancement to a higher order of life. The precise goal toward which I move is not always clear, perhaps purposefully. For this reason I believe the courage to endure is the minimum ransom demanded for my salvation as an individual, and too for the salvation of humanity. There are any number of life-enhancing things to urge me forward—not grimly or puritanically, but with good cheer. The key to them is love, and the key to love is freedom.

I do not believe that the objects of my love—whether they be people or their works, the face of nature, its laws, or all of these—can be truly embraced unless they have been freely chosen. If this is so, then there is imposed upon me an obligation to further the climate of freedom. That which limits my freedom of choice from the outside must be resisted, regardless of whether the bonds are fashioned by political trend or by some individual wearing the guise of love. Yet the battle must go on, on two fronts, for I can even more easily be enchained by that within me—by shallow thought, by albescence to false standards, by heeding the clamor around me rather than my own unique voice.

I believe that those who carry the banners of freedom will necessarily stumble at times, retreat at others. But I also believe that they will constantly find themselves on new and higher ground, from which the grandeur of life becomes ever more visible. They will see as a child sees, clearly and joyfully; respond as a child responds, spontaneously; but will love as the adult should love, selflessly. Such people will surely become not “grotesques” of themselves but rather the embodiment of what humanity itself must become in order to elect and achieve survival.