MYOPIA/UTOPIA

“If you love yourself, no one else will have to,” the Jude always said. And, by and large, I agree; unbridled narcissism tends not to breed what I recognize as “love.” However, the constant self-dismissal I was raised to cherish has become somewhat of an issue. Frankly, I’m just me and one of the many reasons I loathe discussing my past with strangers is because there is the inevitable moment when I run through my litany of experience when the person’s eyes get big and I cease being human and start being larger than life. I always feel like “I” must be such a let down. I don’t have any particularly fascinating stories to tell and I really, truly did Forrest-Gump my way through most of my life. I have been incredibly lucky to be given the gifts I was given and those gifts just seemed to compound themselves. To me, the true delineation between myself and “interesting” people is the day we September 11, 2001 disaster relief workers sat in a conference room and had a frank discussion about why we came to work every day. Clearly, it was not the paycheck, so our leaders wanted to understand what our motivations were so we sat around and discussed it.

“No one would come to this job out of pure virtue. No one would come back day after day simply to help people. We all get something out of this. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like you’re a better person than most for doing this work.”

I sat in that room full of bobbing heads and thought, “No, I really just want to help people because I know that no one else will do it. When people leave this job, no one comes to fill in for the missing.” My whole life, the most powerful poem I ever read goes through a long list of “They came for the Jews and I said nothing, They came for the gays and I said nothing. They came for the…” and so on and so forth. It ends with, “And then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me.” After two weeks in the recovery efforts, it was clear that they had come for some of us but most of the rest of us were not about to take a stand.

Frankly, the thought the job might make me “better than you” struck me as odd but I was fascinated to be surrounded by a room full of people all in agreement. The idea that you might want to be above humanity while toiling at its underbelly seems odd to me. That mixture of motivation is fascinating. Virtue born of vice; it’s truly complex and interesting. I’m just pretty nakedly obvious; I’ll carry the load that must be carried if no one else will do it because I’m part of a community and to be so is to have a responsibility to something larger than yourself. I am very cut and dry. I don’t know why that would be of even the slightest interest to anyone. I’m certainly not the thing of revelation or revolution. And I’m certainly not a person of weight.

However, it would appear that my self-dismissal needs to be reconsidered.

Recently, I was given a gift at extreme cost to a close friend and little cost to me. The friend merely asked that I never reveal it, and that I will not do. The act of faith, the leap, the trust that the gift took to give was beautiful and it has made my life a better place. And really, the gift while it had the nice element of feeling good about doing something for someone else, it really was about the act of make this sacrifice for me. It wasn’t done as a gesture of self-sacrifice for my happiness either. It was truly a gift.

For the first time in my life, it was a clean, loving, profound gesture from a friend whose singular motivation was my happiness.

And it has forced me to reevaluate my own sense of self-worth. If this friend, capable of this kind of gift, that kind of selflessness, has deemed me worthy of such a gesture, perhaps I should reconsider how I see myself. Not that I will ever (or would ever want to) be above humanity but that perhaps I should accept less toil. Perhaps I should draw the line sooner and show myself more respect.

I’ve always considered the notion of karma to be a valid one and perhaps it’s visibly manifesting itself. That gift was a bit of a watershed moment. I am surrounded by people I adore, love and like (all together) and I’m infringed upon by very little.