Clearing the Way

Two Saturdays ago, my family and I broke with our usual routine to attend a special event on campus. Biographer Charlie Goodyear was speaking about his research on President James A. Garfield. On display in the next room was the historic 15’ x 26’ flag that a group of Hiram women made when he won the presidential nomination in 1880.

Garfield is pretty significant around here. In case you don’t know (and why would you?), he was a student at Hiram back when it was called the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, or the Eclectic, for short. Paying his way by working as a janitor, he excelled in school and soon became one of its teachers. In time, this poor farm boy raised by a single mother grew into a polymath, polyglot, and well-liked and highly-respected statesman, among other things. He remained connected to the Eclectic and at one point served simultaneously as U.S. Congressman, Presidential Nominee, and Principal (i.e., President) of the college.

After explaining how he had come to study this little known, fascinating, and incredibly productive person, Goodyear confided how he felt while doing this work:

Lazy. Jealous. Inspired.

We all laughed. I wondered if others got the joke as viscerally as I did. For me, this lighthearted comment held something more serious to explore.

It was comforting to hear another person describe my sometimes reactions to seeing the accomplishments of others working in the same general spheres I do.

Each of us has a unique combination of experiences, knowledge, skills, gifts, and perspectives waiting to be developed and put to good use in all kinds of ways. One of them, it’s often said today, is in getting equipped to do what our troubled times are asking of us, in the particular ways given to each.

When we take up this task in earnest, we discover multitudes of others working in tandem. On our best days we might feel a kinship with them and a sense of being shoulder to shoulder in the effort to nudge things in a better direction.

We might feel encouraged, emboldened, inspired.

From the Latin inspirare “blow into, breathe upon” and enspiren “to fill (the mind, heart, with grace)”

This inherently relational energy propels us forward. And thank goodness! We have important work to do.

On our not-so-best days, more self-centered states like laziness and jealousy keep us stuck. As in the list of words above, they stand in the way of inspiration.

With some awareness and effort we can get them out of the way; we can get ourselves unstuck.

And now’s the perfect time to do it.

‘Tis the season

At the time of this writing, where I live the long cold is starting to break, making way for spring and with it thoughts of washing curtains, airing rugs, and scrubbing floors. In the spiritual realm too, analogous activities are underway. The Tibetan season of purification, for example, has just ended and they are celebrating a new year. Meanwhile, Ramadan has begun for Muslims and Catholics are entering into Lent, their season of spiritual preparation.

At the heart of these and similar practices is a fervor for seeking out and doing away with detritus and every last smudge in order to be made clean and fresh, to clear the way for what’s ahead. There’s also a doubling down on the commitment to keep it that way.

It’s in this spirit that I examine my own heart and mind, in particular, how the obstacles mentioned above sometimes get in my way.

I share it here in case some might find solace (as I did) in knowing they’re not alone, and maybe also something practical. I figure the more any one of us can get beyond what’s keeping us from doing what we’re meant to do, the better it will be for all of us.

Lazy

I don’t know how you experience your calling. In my life it feels like being primed for, and pushed and pulled in, a particular direction. As best as I can tell, part of my assignment seems to involve writing. That wasn’t always the case. But when it made itself known somewhere in my late-thirties, I got to work as best I could.

I was even more clumsy at it then, with so much to learn. My thoughts turned often to the time I’d wasted and how behind I was. Then things intensified. Over a decade or so, streams of separate knowledge and once trivial tributaries gradually converged into a rushing river of insights insisting on being shared. The result: more to say than I could hope to do in several lifetimes. Despite working consistently, here I sit behind a pileup of posts, books, articles, letters, and more, all in various stages of (in)completion.

When I’m being honest with myself, the frustration I feel at this is revealed to be mostly a matter of my own impatience and unrealistic expectations—and therefore workable. The real trouble comes with comparison. Measuring my accomplishments against others triggers a reflex of berating myself for being so lazy.

That isn’t all bad. It prompts me to look at my efficiency, focus, and use of time. I can do better in all those areas. It also highlights the need to cut myself some slack. The demands of family, home, job, farm, and other obligations are real. There are only so many hours in a day.

Still, I can’t help but think that I should be able to achieve more. Upon further inspection, I find what’s actually slowing me down: my inhibitions, self-consciousness, and perfectionism. I see my indulgence in these as another form of laziness, but that’s not the whole story. There’s another feeling at work here.

Jealous

I’m not very competitive by nature. Whatever splinter of competition was in me, I thought I had long ago removed it.

I remember feeling, as a young student, like I’d been scooped when reading about ideas I thought were novel and my own. (Is it just me?) When I finally understood how silly this was (because there really is nothing new under the sun), I decided that instead of feeling disappointed I would delight in being on the right track and in the company of thinkers I respected.

Apparently, some fragment remains lodged. Like a finger irritated by a sliver of hard-to-reach wood under the skin, it makes its presence known when bumped. This has been happening a lot lately. Almost daily now, I bump into people whose paths intersect or in places merge with mine.

It’s hard to say how much this increased frequency is due to the explosion of media through which one can encounter others (e.g., podcasts, books, videos, articles, webinars, emails, blogs, workshops, digital communities, talks, classes) or to the growing number of people paying attention to the things I’ve long been paying attention to.

Whatever the reason, there are days when I find myself fixating on how much more they’ve done and how much farther along they are. This, of course, is the perfect setup for my inner critic to reply: Unlike you, they have the guts to just get on with it.

Enter envy.

I don’t covet the usual things. I’m not after fame or fortune, or even credit. I don’t begrudge others their success. What I find myself envious of is their ability to put themselves out there, the courage they have to show up in ways I mostly have not.

It feels in my body like a sense of urgency, a need to get moving. This too can be helpful, like a cup of strong coffee. It becomes a trap, however, when entangled with envy.

Wise people have long known this, which is why across cultures envy has been recognized as problematic since time immemorial. It’s a capital sin in Catholicism and one of the major mind poisons in Buddhism, to mention just a couple examples from traditions I know well. Or, if you don’t care for religious language, it’s Shakespeare’s “green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” However you look at it, it’s not good.

We don’t need to beat ourselves up for every twang of a wish that we might have something others have. It’s more nuanced than that.

True envy, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is when we grieve over another’s good in so far as it surpasses ours. The real offense, then, is in failing to rejoice over our neighbor’s good as we ought to. [1]

Longchenpa, master and great scholar in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, concurs. True joy, he instructs, is found in learning to enjoy other people’s joy.

How to know if we have it?

 “The sign is the arising of joy that is free from envy.” [2]

By this measure, I’m mostly failing, or at least in the solid ‘D’ range.

Part of me does rejoice in the brilliance and benevolence these bright beings are performing in the world. But that gets overshadowed by even the slightest resentment of the abilities, circumstances, and confidence (I imagine) they have which allow them to speak and write as they do.

This is all so humiliating to admit.

That’s often the way it is with confession. This humbling, this getting low to the earth and re-grounding, is critical. Among other reasons, the traction it provides allows us to move forward safely and more swiftly.

For many today, the notion of confession is even more unfashionable than mentions of religion. But those who understand its value, from within any of the traditions which make use of it, know it is indispensable for clearing away obstacles, lightening our load, and allowing us to forge ahead in a positive direction.

Inspired

Aah.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Translated from the Greek pnein, to breathe—that quintessential form of giving and receiving—we can think of inspiration as being in the flow, the movement of mutual exchange that characterizes reality itself.

Around the late 14^th century, the verb ‘inspire’ took on another meaning:

“influence or animate with an idea or purpose”

In moments when I’m at my best, doing honest work free of comparison and appreciating others’ achievements without envy, I feel part of a primordial rhythm of reciprocity.

Free of clutter, I’m open to whatever purpose is given to me and willing to be moved by it. This hinges on my deciding to leave the dead weight behind and get out of my own way. Having done that, my energies can be mobilized in a good direction.

While it’s true that only persons can make and execute on decisions like these, the results of doing so are relevant for all.

As so many of my colleagues doing ‘transition work’ of one sort or another have observed, growing better cultures and futures entails collectively leaving a lot of useless and harmful stuff behind. But it happens in and through individual lives.

Thanks to our interdependence, we’re not only able to take inspiration from others, we can also give it.

One way we do this is in baring aspects of ourselves, creating possibilities for resonance. The resulting reverberations can initiate in us, if we let them, a process of clearing out and making way for.

Surely, just as our speaker knew the feeling Garfield described in his journals, of being “discouraged to meet fellow hotshots who seemed to be having an easier time of it,” [3] and as I understood how Goodyear felt upon learning about this exceptional person, some will relate to what I admit here.

Along with any comfort that may bring, my hope is that they might also find inspiration to catalyze their own forward movement. The more each of us is able to do this, and to support one another along the way, the farther and faster we can go together.

Postscript: I almost didn’t publish this one. I worried it was too personal and would seem pointless. An experience I had the following weekend, however, nudged me into a yes. We were at a middle school honors band concert (my 13-year old son plays the clarinet). The conductor was introducing a song by an up and coming Thai-American composer. He described how, “at the ripe old age of 22” he had already composed many wonderful pieces and won several awards. “I hate him,” he added with a smile and a wink. He went on to describe his admiration for this rising star and the inspiration he draws from his work.

Like bookends to my week, these Saturdays had the effect of putting my spine upright and giving me the courage to stand tall and claim my tiny place among the offerings on this grand bookshelf.

References and Notes

[1] Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Second part of second part, Question 36, Article 1.

[2] Longchenpa. “Meditation on Joy.” Excerpt from The Great Chariot. A commentary on Great Perfection: The Nature of Mind, Easer of Weariness, translated by Rime Lodro Waldo with Lama Urgen Shenpen.  #502, Chapter 7, part 4.

[3] Goodyear, C.W. 2025. Lecture at Hiram College. February 22.

Featured image: “Vanquish Soul Pluton,” trading card in the Yu-Gi-Oh! game Wild Survivors.