Purposeful Wanderings - Bradford L. Glass - April 2025
“This above all: to thine own self be true.” – Hamlet, Shakespeare
In my work and in my writing, I focus heavily on the “me” story (the inner self), often to the exclusion of the “we” story (bringing gifts of our “me” story to the world). Living with meaning invites both. Here’s why I focus as I do: walking your true path means to: 1) discover what’s uniquely your own (your truth, gifts, your “me”) … so you can make sense of yourself, life, world; 2) bringthese gifts to the world (your “we”) … so you can be part of something bigger than self; 3) remember #1 & #2 as you walk life’s path each day. This is the invitation life is.
But here’s the problem, and mostly we miss this. We rarely become what life is; we become what we learn life is. At the inner/individual level, we learn: be strong; get it all handled; stay in control; compete; strive; achieve. (Nothing here on exploring a unique inner truth.) At the collaboration/community level, we learn: be socially acceptable; don’t rock the boat; share; maybe be kind to others. (Nothing here on bringing our gifts to the world.)
So which way do we turn? Well, generally, we don’t … turn. We unknowingly get stuck in upholding old lessons – trying to be someone we’re not – and rarely, if ever, stop to 1) question them, 2) realize the contradiction they embody, 3) see that it’s all illusion, 4) notice we’ve forgotten being who we really are instead. Our lack of conscious awareness here leaves us easy prey for following the “voices in our head,” echoes of these old lessons and habits.
As a result, when we join with others – relationship, family, work teams, church, politics – we [unknowingly] join with whichever version of “me” we are at the time. If we haven’t stopped to discover our authentic self, we bring to our communities our adopted self, made up of old [unexamined] lessons, beliefs, experiences, struggles. Yet all the while, we’d swear we’re being our true selves. This lack of awareness limits – and even compromises – us.
Without self-knowledge (and the self-trust it brings), we tend to feel safer in groups (whether of 2, 10 or 100), perhaps hoping we’ll find ourselves by connecting with others. It doesn’t work. They don’t have the answers; you do. We end up joining communities that collude with the adopted self, often preying on it by asking us to trade our own thinking for the promise of a “greater good” of the collective. It’s manipulative nonsense. OK, you can’t give what you don’t have; but unhealthy communities can rob you of whatever you’ve got left. This is why I push for a strong self first … so when you bring your gift to the world, you know … and trust … who you are and what you bring. Richard Wagamese, in Embers, says: “I keep my truth in front of me; I won’t get lost that way.” Love that.
Strong communities are built around a shared vision of what’s possible, one that encourages and nurtures your unique gifts, and for which your gifts expand the community’s potential. Early cultures taught interdependence like this from early in life. Young people participated in rituals of individual self-discovery (vision quests, etc.) and at the same time came to know themselves as integral parts of the whole. Maturing as an adult meant becoming both a strong, self-reliant, self-trusting individual and a crucial cog in the community of the whole. We seem to have lost this sense of ritual, and, along with it, the lessons and potential it contained. We can’t return to what once may have been, but we can move forward, to what could yet become. Strong “me” stories … join healthy communities … that express the “we” story … in healthy ways. So … find “you,” then bring your gifts to the world.
And a bit of “big” perspective: beyond the “me” story … and beyond the “we” story of the [many] communities of which we are a part … there’s a whole set of communities of which we’re not a part, communities made up of others unlike ourselves, yet communities nonetheless – just as real and valid as our own (despite our tendency to exclude/ignore/deny them). And these fit inside an even larger story, or community – the story – the mystery life is, the unfolding of the cosmos – a story bigger than ourselves and our communities. Connecting with this story depends on becoming the “me” story first … then living the “we” story … then opening to the story. This invites a strong commitment to a constant search for truth. We access that truth by listening, with the intention to learn.
Exercise:
Many of my articles offer practices to help discover/embrace your “me” story; I won’t repeat here. For your “we” story, here are some big questions. They’re not easily answered. Pondering them deeply helps you understand yourself in new ways and how mutually-enhancing your communities may be (or not). Listen and learn. If your communities don’t pass, you’re free to release yourself and choose a path that makes your life work better instead.
Think about communities to which you belong – friends, families, work teams, church, yoga classes. For each: name the common thread/purpose the community stands for. Does your participation support that purpose? Does the community support you … unconditionally accepting you for who you are, thereby empowering you to be your best, unique self? How does your connection to something bigger help serve the world? How does the whole then contribute to your growth? Does connection with others create a “spiral of possibility” around you, one that makes your contribution in the world far greater than you could possibly make alone? Is the story you live the same as the story you tell? Big questions! If the answers don’t touch your truth, have the courage to check out.
Life lessons from nature: by Carl Sagan, pondering the view of Earth from space. I love this! From this distant vantage point, Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their mis-understandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling, character-building experience. There is perhaps a no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Book of the month: A Hidden Wholeness, by Parker Palmer. Subtitled, “The Journey to an Undivided Life,” this book exposes how, in coming to hide our true selves from others (in order to protect ourselves), we cut ourselves off from soul, that deepest part of us … home to our essence. So we live “divided” lives. Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. We might learn to stand in the gap – to hold the tension between the reality of the moment and the possibility that something new will emerge. A few good messages: “Solitude doesn’t mean living apart from others; it means never living apart from oneself.” “Community doesn’t mean living face-to-face with others; it means never losing awareness that we’re connected to each other.”