It is often easy enough to notice when other people seem to have consented to live in circumstances that are, let’s say, less than they deserve. There’s that guy who remains in a low-paying, dead end job, even though he has the credentials and experience to be a viable candidate for something he’d like better. And then there’s the woman who stays with a subtly abusive man even though she believes she would be better off without him. There’s the person who continues to live in an apartment—or town, or region—that they hate, even though they have the material resources to move on. Of course, it can be harder to acknowledge when it is we ourselves who, far from living our “best lives,” remain locked in undesirable life circumstances. I refer to here to situations that, with just a little reflection, we ourselves would recognize as inconsistent with our own basic values and goals for ourselves, such as peace, happiness, and authenticity. It doesn’t help that, as with the apocryphal frog in hot water, many negative life situations creep up on us so gradually that any instinct for self-preservation, let alone self-flourishing, may fail to be triggered.
Naturally, when it’s pointed out to us that we’re living, let’s say, beneath our dignity, we’re likely to explicitly seek explanations and rationalizations. We humans are, after all, justifying, excuse-making creatures. And of course these justifications often have more than a grain of practical plausibility. For instance: “I’d kick out my obnoxious roommate but I need her part of the rent.” Or, “I’d retire, but the company would really struggle without me.” That there really are lots of material complications and obstacles—the lives of the least privileged often overflow with such considerations—may tempt us to overestimate the legitimacy of such reasons. Often, of course, it is actually a relatively superficial fear or lassitude that keeps us from initiating change that our deeper self may long for. Unfortunately, when it comes to building a case for our own weakness and limitations, it’s usually pretty easy to find folks—let’s call them “friends”—who, in the name of validation and support, will enthusiastically agree with us. And they may be relying on us to return the favor when it’s their turn to recite the reasons they’re selling themselves short. Aren’t some “friendships” rooted in a tacit conspiracy agreement like this?
Such banal, willful, sometimes masochistic, commitments to remain in situations of mundane suffering are so common that I confess I hardly notice them anymore. This human romance with suffering runs so deep that it simply seems to be the way of things. But what’s harder for me to stomach—especially when I notice myself doing it—is when such rationalizing narratives appeal to spirituality. On the extreme end, this is the guy who minimizes his earthly suffering because, you know, in heaven, all burdens will be lifted. Such extremism is easy enough to dismiss, but the same tactic is subtly present any time we suggest that, because physical reality is merely a temporary illusion, why not just suck it up? A more subtle abuse is when the verbiage of gratitude, forgiveness, and acceptance are pressed into service as a rationalization for living small. Think of the person—in sexist society so very often a woman—who decides that it is actually more spiritual for her to remain in a claustrophobic, self-abnegating situation. From this perspective, longsuffering service to others is not only justifiable, but noble. What could possibly be more laudable than to hang bleeding from a cross so that others may be saved? Pile on the usual additional material rationalizations and all of the sexist crap about self-sacrificing mothers/wives and you’ve got the perfect recipe for garden variety sexist self-denial disguised as spiritual accomplishment.
The most subtle spiritual rationalizations for consenting to live small lives, I think, ultimately hinge on perverse interpretations of acceptance, especially the (sometimes willful) conflation of acceptance with resignation. This seems to be an almost irresistible tactic when we’re casting about for lofty-sounding reasons to avoid initiating scary life changes. And, after all, doesn’t the Buddha insist that we should seek to change our subjective orientation to life rather than life itself? Doesn’t he agree with Anáis Nin’s claim that we see reality not as it is but as we are? Haven’t all of the great spiritual masters been telling us all along that the kingdom of heaven is within? When we also sprinkle on a few overly simplistic, puritanically-based psychological truisms about how maturity requires us to constantly suck up our feelings and get on with things, we’ve got an endless supply of noble-sounding excuses for why we can’t —indeed, we absolutely should not—do what the deeper part of us finds to be genuinely brave, authentic, and self-loving. Indeed, we probably shouldn’t even risk quiet contemplation—those internal explorations that would make us more fully aware of such “selfish” longings and desires—because that would just make it all the harder to continue with the familiar grind that we keep telling ourselves is our lot in life.
Here is where I reiterate the perhaps obvious point that there is nothing wrong with any of this. Even if it sometimes feels heartbreaking, surely it is some sort of basic principle that each of us has the right and responsibility to choose our own path. Also, when we are toddlers and fall while learning to walk, it’s not a weakness or a sin or a mistake. And when we are hiking and become “lost,” that is not an error either, not in any absolute sense but simply part of the textured set of consequences resulting from our choices. What I sometimes think matters most is not the content of the choices we make but that we learn to tell the truth—especially to ourselves—that and why we’re making them. Of course, sometimes there are compelling material circumstances that constrain what we do. That much is obvious and not what I’m talking about here. I am, rather, highlighting that egoic aspect of us that may be so enamored of—and maybe even addicted to—self-stories of lack and disempowerment that it will try to keep us from ever engaging in genuine self-reflection. It will keep us dependent, like users desperate to maintain our supply, busily doing whatever necessary to maintain the familiar flow of terrible, delicious suffering. And if we are truly dedicated addicts, we will shamelessly press into service even the most beautiful spiritual values to help us rationalize why we can’t take steps to create the lives that, deep down, we know are worthy of us.
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