It wasn’t always that way, but over the past 20 years or so he has become unsure of himself around me, and therefore afraid, and in that state of insecurity his choice is to protect himself with a wall of words. At a picnic a few years ago, I deliberately brought up issues in my life, just to see if I could raise any sort of authentic response from him, toward the actuality of my presence and my personhood. As expected, I could not. Any subject I tried to broach he immediately used to completely ignore me by turning the subject to himself. If I mentioned a child’s recent bout of bronchitis, he spoke to the air about nearly dying of pneumonia; when I mentioned a sudden opportunity to visit Vienna, he had a long cruise to think and talk about.
It was a little like playing tennis with someone and having every serve volleyed back, over the head, with no possibility of engagement.
Eventually, I gave him the serve; I stopped talking about myself — thus offering him no chance to lob a topic out of reach — and instead just flat out asked, “So, what’s new with you?”
He simply said, “Nothing.”
Nothing. Game incomplete. There was absolutely no way he was going to directly respond to, or acknowledge, anything about my life, and he certainly wasn’t going to give me any sort of opening by answering, as he might to another, “Nothing, what’s new with you?” I understood — probably better than he did — that he had made a choice to block me, until I was effectively absent from his presence.
Another friend had watched the whole exchange and said to me, later, “Wow, he really hates you.”
“No,” I disagreed. “I think he actually loves me a lot, which is why he can’t bear to be around me.”
“That makes no sense,” he said.
“It does. Once I told him something I thought he needed to know; it turns out he didn’t. He thought I was trying to be cruel. Now, he can only feel bad around me, so he does that thing you saw.”
He looked at me askance: “Were you cruel? Intentionally?”
“No, I really wasn’t, not intentionally,” I said, sadly. “I was just very, very stupid, and stupidity made me cruel.”
That, of course, was my own prideful mistake, and guess what? It was born of excessive self-interest. The self-help movement of the 1990s, which I had bought into, taught me to focus excessively upon myself, and to “honor myself” — like a little idol — by burdening another with an offering of truth best left unshared. Everything that followed came from my own terribly grave and destructive little sin of me-ism, taken to an unhealthy extreme.
Here be monsters. In the case of that relationship, as no opening to ask forgiveness will be permitted, what healing may come between us, at this point, I leave to God’s discretion, and to the prayers of good friends.
And I impugn no sin on the one unwilling to engage with me. I think his unwillingness may fall under Just War guidelines, as a necessary means of self-preservation. Like the Catechism says, “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor…. The one is intended, the other is not”1 (n. 2263).
I indict only myself, a witless and self-interested aggressor.
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What Does Catholicism Say About Excessive Self-Interest?
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
— John 15:13 (RSV)
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…. Love is … not boastful; it is not arrogant.
— 1 Corinthians 13:1, 4-5 (RSV)
Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
— 1 Corinthians 10:24 (RSV)
It is always the secure who are humble.
— G. K. Chesterton
Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter…. Do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself.
— St. Charles Borromeo
The only reason why the Immaculate permits us to fall is to cure us from our self-conceit, from our pride, to make us humble and thus make us docile to the divine graces.
— St. Maximilian Kolbe
It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.
— St. Augustine
It is better for you to have little than to have much which may become the source of pride.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
There never can have been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.
— St. Augustine
We put pride into everything, like salt.
— St. John Vianney
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How Do We Break Away From the Sin, or Habit, of Excessive Self-Interest?
Listen: “Listen” is the first word of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, and it is the word whose application can speak to a multitude of sins, because if we are listening, we are not talking. If we are listening, we are mindful not of ourselves but of our surroundings. When we are listening, we are hearing and being present to the person who is before us. When we are truly present to others, we find ourselves relieved of the burden of ourselves, and often we discover that our own thoughts need adjusting, thanks to what we have heard.
Limit time on social media: Nothing so trains us to obsess over ourselves, and how others perceive us, or to stew over our own musings, as social media. Twitter encourages us to think of a brief, under-thought pronouncement delivered w/unpunctuated wrds like dis as something so wise and witty that we feel comfortable barging into the conversations of others to share it. Facebook tells us that our every thought is a likable one, our children are, at all times, too adorable for words, and our “friends” think we are absolutely brilliant, for as long as we agree with them. The temptation to remain agreeable, keep your thoughts in the acceptable box, and keep serving up the praise-fodder is enormous and seductive. How can you emerge from spending a few hours, every day, in such an environment and not develop an excessive sense of your imprint on the world, and the wonderfulness that is you?
Learn to make a daily examen: The Ignatian practice of a daily examen is an antidote to the superficial uplift we find on social media; it allows us to still focus upon ourselves, but in a more analytical and balanced way. It is brief spiritual exercise devised by St. Ignatius of Loyola that can help you become refocused on what matters, and spiritually refreshed and renewed. Sitting quietly in a comfortable (but not nap-encouraging) position, you work your way through five steps:
1. You bring yourself into awareness of God’s presence by thanking him for what you noticed during the day that made you aware of his grace. Perhaps your attention was captured by birdsong, or a beautiful sunrise, and you have a momentary sense of God’s grandeur. Perhaps you wondered at your children and realized that they all are precisely the people you met at their birth, personalities already intact, and you saw God’s design in their individuality. Whatever touched you, remember it, and express thanks to God.
2. Go over the day, asking God to make you aware of where he had especially been with you.
3. Consider how