An Overdue Absquatulation

I was observing the blessing and passing of the sacrament with unusual attentiveness the other week. That guy was blessing it - the one in the wheelchair who speaks and moves as though his motor cortex is always fritzing or as if there's a neuromuscular tangle somewhere. He moves with an erratic tremor and speaks with difficulty. It is hard for him to form words and hard for everyone else to decipher them. So I was watching and listening carefully and thinking. I was admiring the way the other man supported him and helped to make this endeavor possible, because he did it in a way that did not lessen the one he was helping. And I was also admiring Wheelchair Man, because this is a demanding task for him and he is willing to do it anyway. The ordinance is important enough to him for him to put himself in front of everyone while his weaknesses are most exposed. Here, in this, he betrays a humility and dedication that takes me aback. I hate to be seen doing something without any trace of excellence, and so it took me by surprise, this foreign breed of excellence that lives in patiently working through a task which one can only accomplish gracelessly.

Being myself, I was also admiring my own discernment and fairmindedness for thinking to admire both of them. Most pleased with myself was I. How satisfied I became with my lofty perspective. How softly the smugness stole into its familiar camp in my heart. How eagerly I welcomed it.

So far everything here is running along through a familiar track. But this time I took a moment to trace my superior thoughts to their origin. Here is what I found:

Some years ago I read an article in that most honourable and august publication, The Reader's Digest. The author was mother to a child with a difficult handicap. She expressed her exasperation with people who gushed at her about how wonderful she must be, to have so much patience and fortitude. She said that certainly she needed both patience and devotion to raise her child, but her efforts were dwarfed by the struggles of her child, who strained to live with and through her disability. This girl needed to have patience with herself and also with everyone else, because these people didn't know how to react to her. The hardest work, the most exacting virtues, were required not of her mother but of her. No one ever thought to gush about her. The mother wrote the article in protest of this skewed perception, and this article was the well from which I drew my marvellously supernal musings.

I have suspicions that something like this is true in every case where I am pleased with myself for being wise. The best thoughts I can find knocking about in my head were put there by other people. None of the credit is mine. The camp inhabited by smugness in my heart ought, by all rights, to remain permanently abandoned, because I am not my architect. These mental towers were designed by someone else. The best parts of me were shaped by other people through the qualities they showcased, the words they said, the thoughts they wrote. Why do I become so proud? If I have admirable qualities, it is because I am a shameless parasite.

The camp for smugness is hereby being razed to clear the ground beneath. We're building there - an all season cottage for gratitude, who is far better suited to watch over the collection of thoughts and imaginings that is me.