Truth from the Heart: fulfillment

Happiness 101

6:00:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Robert Putnam recently made an eye-opening discovery: That while bowling leagues, and group bowling are experiencing a downward spiral of popularity, solo bowling is on the rise. The significance of this discovery, I think, is fairly self-explanatory.

The modern man is slowly eliminating himself from his community and becoming a mere floating individual. You can float around from place to place without any rhyme or reason. You can do what you want, whenever you want, as long as you don’t harm anyone. Of course each man was created as a unique and irreplaceable being, but that does not eliminate man’s need for another. True community is essential to the perfection of man’s destiny.

There’s a distinction between the way a floating individual views community and how one ought to see community. Floating individuals view community as a mass of people unintentionally thrown together. For example, let’s contrast a crowd of people at a local park with a family. Unlike an authentic community, like the family, the people at the park do not have clear roles. Each individual is equal and does not participate in another’s personal growth. Attendance to the park does not birth particular rights or responsibilities. The group is merely a gathering people with no intentionality.

The tendency of individualism is to view community in a selfish manner, namely to act as a means to an end, pleasure. If community is recognized in its fullest sense, one comes to understand that the individual is actually made for community. Dietrich von Hildebrand highlights that,“Community can never be understood if the individual person is not grasped in the full depth of his being, nor can the individual person ever be fully understood if his capacity for sustaining communities and his fundamental orientation to community are not grasped.” (2) True community is a direct participation in man’s fulfillment.

When man is closed off to others, isolation sets in. Believing that you can do everything on your on and avoiding weakness creates a tainted view of oneself. In reality, everyone has weaknesses because humanity is flawed. The truth is I didn’t make myself, and I cannot do everything on my own. Communities also create an awareness that individualism ignores. It makes you more aware of particular issues that may affect yourself and others.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival.” (3)

Community provides man with a necessary space to flourish because it speaks to our own humanity. We were not created to be alone.

Each day we experience an array of societal pressures. We are promised with happiness if we are to become a certain size, dress a certain way, and attain a certain wealth status. With the strong emphasis on me, the collective we is often overlooked. The unhealthy elevation of the individual is projecting a false understanding of community. In its fullest sense, when the truth of the person is recognized and understood, community is an avenue to man’s fulfillment. Isn’t it much more attractive to be a flourishing whole rather than a floating fraction?

Are you bowling alone?

------------------
1. Image One
2. Dietrich von Hildebrand, My Battle Against Hitler, 388
3. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
4. Image Two

Dating dietrich von hildebrand featured

He has a Great Personality

6:00:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Image One

“Well, he has a great personality.”

At one time or another, we have all been in that situation. A friend asks you about another person and you try your best to come up with something nice to say. This back handed compliment is one that we liberally give to others but you certainly never want to receive yourself. But why not?

One could certainly say this aversion to the compliment of one’s personality is due to modern man’s limitation of attraction to the merely physical realm. But, I think it reaches further than that. The modern understanding of personality is really what gives this compliment such a negative connotation. Amidst a plethora of personality tests, we have allowed personality to be rigidly defined in hopes of total self-knowledge. We restrict the backbone of the person often into four letters of a Myers-Briggs test, two words for their temperament, and so on. We seek to define ourselves and others in terms easy to understand and fit into. I am not trying to say all personality tests are bad. There are situations when these tests can be quite beneficial. What is dangerous is that we abandon our individuality for socially constructed definitions. Who wants to be as simple as a textbook definition? Our fulfillment as individuals cannot be in these group stereotypes but only in an individual understanding and appreciation of our own personality.

A definition I find more integral in its understanding is that presented by Dietrich von Hildebrand in his book “Liturgy and Personality”. He says, “A personality in the true sense of the word is the man who rises above the average only because he fully realizes the classical human attitudes, because he knows more deeply and originally than the average man, loves more profoundly and authentically, wills more clearly and correctly than the others, makes full use of his freedom; in a word- the complete, profound, true man” (20). That definition is well-worth being read twice for its abstract and profound character. To Hildebrand, to say someone has a great personality means much more than they have no attractive physical attributes as it does in the modern conversation. Rather, to have a great personality means to be fully alive in one’s humanity. From this point, Hildebrand works to break down what exactly this means.

Image Two

Evaluating this idea of personality first in a negative sense Hildebrand says, “The average man, the inoffensive, colorless, ordinary man without a clearly expressed individuality is not a personality” (19). Having a personality does not mean to merely go with the status quo. It means to come alive to receive and defend values. To this defending and receiving only an individual can respond for their self. Thus, the person must be content with their own individuality within society. Someone with a personality sacrifices any humiliation and shame that may come with fulfilling their individual call to respond to truth, beauty, and goodness.

The next mark of personality for Hildebrand is acting out of freedom. This is not the modern notion of freedom often understood as license, that is to be able to do whatever you want. Rather, this freedom is one that allows the person to choose good without reserve or enslavement to one’s appetites. Hildebrand says of the person having a personality, “A person is a being who ‘possesses himself’, who does not simply exist but who actively achieves his being, and has the power to choose freely” (19). This does not include the person that impulsively asserts himself over others out of fear of not being seen or trivialized or the person who remains inactive amidst the chance for greatness. Rather, this man reaches outside of himself to those transcendents: to that which promises him fulfillment. The man who fully possesses himself can experience truth, beauty, and goodness in a wholly receptive and present manner. This reception then shapes him into a personality.

Image Three

Finally, Hildebrand says the man that has truly flourished to the point of having this personality possesses a unity of style. By this he means, “rare harmony between the inner and the outer being in those men whose speech, expression, movements, external style of life are organically molded by their inner attitudes” (23). What happens in the heart of this person transfers to the exterior with organic authenticity. This person does not “fake it” to create a faux self-image but rather naturally reflects his or her interior life. To this, I think of the mother so overwhelmed with love of her child that she cannot help but kiss his sweet face. Or, the viewer of nature who cannot help but gasp in awe. Personality brings with it an incredible ease in the connection between one’s internal and external lives.

This harmony is certainly very attractive. Who does not want to be able to trust another’s exterior intentions and motives as pure? But Hildebrand says there is a qualification of this unity still, it “must be the expression of the true, authentic atmosphere of a life rooted in the metaphysical situation of man, of an attitude open to value and responding to value, and permeated by the supernatural world” (23). Thus, someone who displays their reservation to values and closed off nature does not meet this virtuous unity of style common to those who possess a personality. It excludes the person who cannot help but gossip in spite of their neighbors or who fills up with rage to the degree that they are physically violent. The person of personality reacts to the world in freedom, responding to what is good.

With these marks of personality in mind, I find it very hard to be offended by the compliment of having a great personality. In reality, I find it to be the most attractive of qualities a person can possess. There is nothing backhanded about complimenting someone on this basis of personality as someone who is fully alive and able to respond to values with this unique unity of style. I think what is most tragic in this situation is not how many people we give this compliment to but how so few people possess this personality. As I read Hildebrand, I found so many ways in which I am lacking on these fronts and even had a hard time thinking of others who possessed these characteristics. In its scarcity, personality becomes all the more attractive and important. After all, it is only the true personality that finds fulfillment of their humanity.

experience featured fulfillment

Laziness or Leisure?

12:23:00 PMCatherine Yanko

Image One

A few days ago someone asked me what I do with all of my free time this summer. My response was something pretty similar to this:

Image Two

I realized that the amount of free time I have had this summer does not correspond to how rejuvenated I feel. Yes, I have plenty of time to rest but I still don’t feel alive. Honestly, I have been more exhausted this summer than I ever was during the school year. Idleness became my highest ambition in response to a previously busy school year. By being asked this question, I realized I have abandoned my aspirations of true leisure for what is really mere laziness.

An idea of leisure advocated for by Josef Pieper in his book “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” has been one that I have since found incredibly fulfilling. Pieper says, “For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation” (41). Not exactly the “Netflix and chill” kind of mentality that so many (me included) savor. This view of leisure arises from the innate capacity of fulfillment on account of the humanity of each person. “Because wholeness is what man strives for, the power to achieve leisure is one of the fundamental powers of the human soul” (44). This destiny of wholeness is what calls man into leisure and also helps shape what exactly can qualify as authentic leisure. To achieve this wholeness we strive for, Pieper says that man cannot give consent of his own will to his being over that of existential reality (38). Man will never find wholeness within his mere self. Leisure responds to the existential reality of our person and achieves the wholeness spoken of by Pieper.

The problem of the scarcity of leisure is not that opportunities do not present themselves, but rather that man is not capable of leisure. For such an incredible experience of leisure, this certainly requires a respective mentality.Leisure as advocated for by Pieper is not just one’s spare time but has to be a constant mental and spiritual attitude (40). In this view, leisure becomes the center of every human life. Persons must learn to be still. In stillness, one can foster the capacity to receive the reality of the world. It is not a kind of busyness but a form of silence that allows reality to impact one’s being. A leisurely attitude has the ability to overstep the boundaries of the workaday world and live in the reality of existential forces that have the ability to refresh and renew us (44). One must work in order to have leisure instead of living to work (20). This mindset capable of leisure has no room for a narrow egocentrism, shallow busyness, or dedicated workaholism.

Image Three

This laziness, also known as acedia, is said to be the antithesis of leisure by Pieper. In “A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart”, Pieper says that acedia is the spiritual attitude, “that he closes himself to the demand that arises from his own dignity, that he is not inclined to claim for himself the grandeur that is imposed on him with his essence’s God-given nobility of being” (51). At first this to be a dramatic over-statement on Netflix binging tendencies. But, really I do not think it is that far off. When I spend my day watching Netflix am I finding any sort of fulfillment? I do not finish binging on Netflix or scrolling through social media for hours and exclaim, “I AM SO GLAD TO BE ALIVE!”. Yes, I have something to do and am somewhat entertained but the contentedness does not compare with the exhilarating nature of leisure. When acedia becomes a habit, Pieper says that man becomes incapable of leisure (52). Habitual acedia leads man to forget what it means to be truly alive, what it means to be fulfilled in his/her existence as a person. Personally, when I go on a Netflix binging and sleeping in all day streak I find it harder and harder to respond to things that can fulfill me. I do not look at the beauty of the sunset with the same wonder I do when I am living in a spirit of leisure.

As abstract as Pieper’s view of authentic leisure sounds, I really believe it can translate to daily life. It starts in a contemplative attitude: one that seeks to be aware of their surroundings and allow them to impact their being. It is so easy to pass by a mom kissing her child’s wounded knee, the leaves changing colors, or brother’s playing basketball together, without taking a second to simply appreciate the beauty of the sight. For Pieper, “leisure draws its vitality from affirmation” (42).This means that in beholding those sights previously listed, we should take a moment to simply recognize them. To be thankful for their beauty and for the virtue that the sights enkindle. It is in simple affirmation of what is beautiful, true, and good that man can learn to be leisurely again. Seeing the “amber waves of grain”, “purple mountain majesties”, or “fruited plane” and declaring to oneself, “this is beautiful” or “this is good” is what Pieper means when he speaks of affirmation. In regards to my exorbitant amount of free time, I have learned that I can spend it doing activities that seek out encounters that have in them this quality of leisure. I can go on hikes and behold the beauty of nature. I can hang out with my friends at brunch on Sunday morning and revel in the glory of friendship. I can read a book that helps me to delve into the human experience or that enlightens me of a truth that in turn enkindles wonder. It is in this spirit of leisure that I will find fulfillment this summer.

Happiness 101

From Floating to Flourishing

He has a Great Personality

Laziness or Leisure?

Tags

recent posts

Popular Posts

Search This Blog

Contact Form