A Fundamental Self-Consciousness

During a recent visit with my family, my Mom remarked that the day had been just about perfect. My brother and I were headed out for the evening, so we agreed with her and went back to our good-byes. A few days later, Mom asked me what had happened at that moment, feeling self-conscious that she had said something wrong. Of course, she’d said nothing disagreeable, but it got me thinking about how vulnerable we are to others, how the slightest remark can spin us into a flurry of self-doubt and weaken our self-confidence.

A popular approach, Evolutionary Psychology, seeks to explain how human emotion, thought, and behavior is tied to natural selection and the survival of our species through the ages. According to evolutionary psychologists, becoming self-conscious helped our ancestors to survive. With threats to survival ranging from animal attacks to dehydration during droughts, humans learned that the best way to survive was to be part of a group. Our social orientation today has roots in our ancestors’ survival, even leading us to become self-conscious with our own family and friends when we they don’t respond to us as we anticipate.

Feeling disconnected from others is excruciatingly painful and brings us face to face with our own limitations, finiteness and insignificance in this world. When this happens to me, knowing that my ancestors survived by being sociable does not make me feel any better. What does help me now are two things. First, I remember St. Augustine’s statement, “Our souls are restless, Lord, until they rest in you.” My restlessness and self-consciousness makes me human. Indeed, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser O.M.I. summarizes, our spirituality is a fundamental “dis-ease” with all that is finite about me and this world. That excruciating pain of feeling disconnected is God himself within me, giving me the desire for full and complete union that can not happen in my lifetime. It is hard to remember this when I am in pain, but when I do finally name my experience as my God-given restlessness, it takes some of the sting out and God seems to join me in my loneliness.

After I recognize and name my fundamental dis-ease, I know that if I move away from my own self and towards others, I will ultimately quell the heat of the fire within. I don’t always do it and I don’t always want to do it. But, when I do throw myself more wholeheartedly into serving others, helping others, being there for others, I start to forget myself and my restlessness with it. A theology of the cross tells us that our relationship with God is not just based on a vertical one-on-one between God and me. My relationship with God is also deepened by my horizontal relationship with other people. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

As it turns out, sometimes, loving your neighbor also turns out to be the best way to love yourself.