Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, er...

As I crossed the busy road in front of our office at lunchtime without waiting for the traffic lights to change, I started thinking about the negative consequences of being hit by a car and killed, and then realised that they were all about other people being upset or inconvenienced. It didn't occur to me to think of things that I want to do with my life. So then I thought I'd try compiling a mental list of "Things I really want to do before I die", and I couldn't actually think of anything. There's lots of things I'd like to do, some of which I will do and some I'm pretty sure I won't, but I couldn't think of anything that would make me think "I really really want to do that", other than "Have my family grow up to a point where it's not going to be a complete disaster when I die".

I wonder if it's selfish to live in such a way that people are very upset when you die (as you must), or if there's some kind of balance between bringing good things into the lives of others and their inevitable grief when you're gone. Me, I hate upsetting people; better stay alive.

My life as a to-do list

Image via WikipediaA week or so ago I was talking about all the things I had to do for the rest of that day (I think it was last time we had lunch at church) and I finished up with "and then I've got to go to the quiz", which was met with a general sarcastic response along the lines of "Oh gosh, that must be awful, fancy having to do that." Of course, that was the right thing to say to my rather silly remark - there are probably few things more tiresome than someone telling you how much they have to do, especially when the things they "have" to do are in fact pleasure and leisure - but I have been thinking since about the extent to which (a) I bore people by repeatedly telling them how much I have to do and (b) I actually think of my life as a long list of things I have to get done. To anybody who reads this who has had (a) inflicted on them: sorry, I will try and be more mindful of this in future; (b), on the other hand, is altogether more serious and scary. Am I really going through life looking at the wrong end of a never-ending list of stuff that has to get done? Do I really think of time with my family as just another thing that has to be done, so that I can then get on with something else? The answer to this one is, no, I don't - but I do often spend time doing stuff I enjoy while simultaneously thnking of the other things that I have to do that need doing. What's scary is that if my life is a list, I will never ever get to the end, will never tick everything off and feel pleased with myself for a job well done. Not today or tomorrow or next week, not when I retire or on my deathbed; I will never get to the end of the list, because the list isn't real, it's just a way of looking at life that actually robs me of opportunities for joy and leaves me overwhelmed with the crushing weight of twenty or thirty or forty years of endless bloody stuff to do.

Procrastination

I'm becoming increasingly fed up with myself for not getting things done. There are lots of reasons behind this, which is one of the things I've been talking about in counselling sessions recently (which may be why I'm getting more frustrated about it), but more often than not it comes down to a simple choice not to do something. There may be all kinds of payoffs for inaction (or alternative, displacement action) and there may be complex and longstanding learned behaviours at work; it may well be the case that I choose not to do something that will be boring or unpleasant; still when the moment comes when I could do something, I make the choice not to do it.

Maybe I should use this blog (or now that I'm into microblogging, use Twitter) to record some successes - things I actually get done - and give myself some positive reinforcement.

Sandwiches saltier than crisps

I learned several things from reading this article. One is that sandwiches may contain high levels of salt. Another entirely more surprising fact is that there is such a body as The British Sandwich Association. They have a website at www.sandwich.org.uk which also contains the definition of a sandwich and a chance to subscribe to International Sandwich and Snack News. I was, however, slightly perplexed that 'The British Sandwich Association also stressed that it was "it is not the sandwich industry's job to dictate to consumers what they choose to eat".' Quite apart from the BBC's mangled grammar, if the British Sandwich Association represent British sandwich makers, then what they choose to put in or leave out of sandwiches has a pretty profound effect on what people choose to eat. Of course, people want to buy unhealthy sandwiches (all day breakfast is tasty) and these will therefore make money for members of the BSA. Conveniently, this fits nicely with the myth that all people should have choice about all things all the time, so that the willingness to take people's money while raising their risk of a heart attack is made to sound as though your friendly neighbourhood sandwich maker is your last bastion against the Nanny State.

WWJD

I think that one of the problems with asking what Jesus would do in any given situation is that we often don't know. For one thing, Jesus was a little unpredictable. People were surprised, even scandalised by his actions. So what we usually ask is "What do I think Jesus would do?" which comes down to our perception of Jesus and our own morality. I think that the honest version of the question is to ask what I would do if I was more like the person I think Jesus wants me to be. And that is what's been occupying my mind: moving away from asking how I can become different or better or nicer or holier, and moving towards asking what might happen if I allowed Christ to form me into his planned version of me. There's a whole lot of other stuff too about God wanting us to be ourselves, not some kind of holy clone; and what being made in the image of God is all about. But I'll try to put down those thoughts more clearly another time.

Choice, identity, Kingdom

Some quick and not necessarily coherent thoughts. C.S. Lewis, in The Problem Of Pain, says “There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a ‘self’, can exist except in contrast with an ‘other’”, which is a much better way of putting some of the ideas in my previous post. Combined with the idea that a choice-driven society, by reducing frustration of desires, reduces our ability to relate to or even conceive of the ‘other’, it’s not an enormous step to suppose that living in a consumer society leads to the erosion of the self, and that such erosion is shown through features of contemporary culture such as identification with celebrities in an increasingly cultic fashion, a makeover culture that focuses on constant renewal and reinvention of the self through possessions and environment, and a paradoxical presentation of violent and erotic objectification as both abhorrent and universally pervasive.

The other idea that I’ve been thinking about, motivated partly by discussions on Luke in our small group, is the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven. What does this mean? How does it differ from ideas about heaven as a place we go when we die? Well, the Kingdom of Heaven is a phenomenon that produces both an affective and a behavioural response – like someone finding treasure in a field: they change what they are doing with their life (they go and sell everything they have to buy the field), but they do this related to an emotional response. This isn’t a business decision, made with an eye to the balance sheet. This is a sequel to an emotional response, to a feeling that is literally life-changing. Lots of parables talk about rejoicing and throwing a party as the normal response to the Kingdom of Heaven impacting on your life. And just as an aside, how often does evangelism try to reason people into Christianity, as if the response to finding a lost possession was to sit down and think “Hmmm… I reckon that this is worth throwing a small-to-medium sized party”? And how often is joy the defining characteristic of Christians?

Crucially, it seems that the Kingdom of Heaven is something that changes us profoundly, at an identity level, yet also remains separate from us. It is a “present-but-not-fulfilled” entity, an essentially ungraspable fact. Living in the Kingdom requires that we be perfect, as God is perfect – that we strive for the unattainable. Living in the Kingdom means that I am made in the image of the Other; that my identity is derived from that which is ultimately unknowable, that I find myself as I grow closer to the Other, rather than finding the Other as I look more closely at myself. Living in the Kingdom requires that we love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, forgive those who hurt us; not because these are sensible things to do, but because they are precisely the things that are most likely to produce a response of “It’s not really me”. It means that the more intimately I become involved with and connected to that which is not-me, the more I discover myself, until one day I become one with all that is not me, and I become truly who I am.

Choice

Walking past Burger King in town today, I noticed that their current slogan is "Have it your way" (an article on that here - including interesting reading on targeted advertising for BK's demographic; "more important to be provocative than pleasant"). This reminded me of an ongoing conversation with Nick over choice, sparked by me reading Rowan William's "Lost Icons", which discusses the importance given to choice in this culture from a psychoanalytic perspective. As far as I understood it, the argument was that in analysis the analyst stands in for the "unattainable Other", the ideal that we measure ourselves against or wish to become. The Other must always be unattainable, or else there is no desire, no process of becoming, no development (personally or socially). The task of the analyst is to avoid becoming the Other, to resist the urge to satisfy the analysand's needs, and in the transference relationship to enable the analysand to engage with the process of growth through frustration.

Walking past Burger King, I was reminded again how dangerous a culture is that minimises or removes frustration. Rowan Williams suggests that sexualised or violent behaviour is a result of the loss of identity caused by the absence of the Other; I'm sure that there's a good argument for the idea that when there is no frustration of needs to promote my growth as a person, I'm more likely to engage in behaviour that both connects me with another person and which objectifies them, which establishes them as "not-me", something compared with which I can know myself. There's probably a good link here too with racist and xenophobic behaviour. I wonder if a society that promises choices - of goods, lifestyles, bodies - to its members is also inevitably going to be a society that demonises outsiders, such as asylum seekers and those judged to be sufficiently different to be classed as "not-us".

I'm not sure how this fits with the fact that choice is an illusion for many in this culture; that a consumer society promises more than it delivers. Perhaps it is the illusion that's important here; the quaintly old-fashioned notion of "knowing your place" is distasteful to those who believe that everyone can make it to the top, but when the truth is that only a few make it to the top, the many are fed on celebrity gossip dreams, identifying on first-name terms with "ordinary" people who have made it big. When "knowing your place" meant having a realistic assessment of the world and your place in it, frustration, recognition of the unattainableness of the Other, was a key to genuine growth. When everyone believes that they should have whatever they want, and frustration is replaced with over-identification with (fallible, ordinary, destroyable) celebrities, there is nowhere to go to seek the unattainable other except in violence and xenophobia.

I'll try and post more thoughts on this, especially how it fits with my current understanding of the Kingdom of God, sometime soon.