Self-Fulfillment v Self-Donation

Finding your reason for being, your purpose in life is critical. “Who am I and why am I here?” are necessary questions for any individual who aspires to become a fully functioning mature human. For millennium after millennium, these questions have been asked and answers sought for within the context of man’s relationship to his Creator. Given that God created me, He is the One who defines me, the One in, by, and through whom, I find true meaning and purpose, and my highest good. Today, however, answers to these questions are often searched for within the realm of man’s relationship to himself. I want answers because I want to be true to myself and realize my full potential so that … Why? What for? Well, because I want to experience true self-fulfillment. Tragically, the answers we find within this realm will diminish and degrade our souls.

When my quest for meaning and purpose is reduced to self-fulfillment, then all things—all values, all experiences, all people, and all choices—are interpreted solely within the realm of the Kingdom of Self. “Does seeking after x help me attain or maintain self-fulfillment?” “Does y help me to feel better about myself or not?” “Will doing z make me happy?”

In the Kingdom of Self, values such as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, are all approached from the standpoint of my needs, desires, and demands, rather than as reflections of God’s being that place demands upon my being. Here, in this realm, God and values must be de-formed so as to comfortably fit within my present predilections and personality. We can hear this self-orientation in the individual whom has been confronted with the demands of, say, the value of Goodness or Love, and says, “That is just not who or how I am.”

Even in our quests for personal transformation, we all too often approach and engage values and people solely as means for our ends: for helping us to get where we want to go, to transform us into the persons we intend to become. However, transformation is only achieved indirectly: it is a by-product of my relentless pursuit of honoring values that lie outside of and above me as objective realities.

Consider the differences between seeking to honor and worship God solely because His being places a demand upon my being to do so, and, in contradistinction, honoring and worshiping God so that I may be transformed. The first pursuit is all about placing appropriate honor where it is due, regardless of costs and benefits, whereas the latter approaches God as a means to my ends. The former will certainly broaden and deepen my soul but only as a by-product of my pursuit; the latter approaches God and all values primarily for self and, so, impoverishes my soul.

Self-fulfillment, transformation, and finding our place and calling in the world occur indirectly, as a result of our primarily seeking to know and honor God and those values that are reflections of His being, with all of our beings. Life, then, isn’t about self-fulfillment but of self-abandonment and self-donation.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Yes, You Can!

I recently had an email exchange with a lady who, after reading my book, was taking exception to my assertion that each of us has a unique calling to become Legendary Leaders within the worlds God has placed us. She began with telling me that my book was “romantic” rather than “realistic,” followed up by charging me with “setting people up for severe disappointment,” and, seeking to sum up her issues with me, she wrote, “You are telling Frodo that he can be Gandalf.” 

 

Me: Not at all. I am telling Hobbits to aspire to becoming legendary Hobbits who leave a legacy to their families, friends, and communities, worthy of their faith and calling, and for Wizards and Elves to do the same.

 

I use to be severely frustrated by people who believe their calling in life is to run around telling everyone they know what they are not capable of accomplishing. For such people, all aspirations are futile, dreams are childish nonsense, and visions are dangerous hallucinations. Over time, however, I realized that their crusades were fueled by fear and guilt and I began feeling sorry for them, for when they said, “Life isn’t like that,” what they actually were saying was, “If life can be like that, what happened to my life?”

 

An excerpt from chapter one (The Soul of a Legend) in Legendry Leadership:

 

As children, we knew that we were not cut out to be average or ordinary.  We dreamt of greatness and glory, of fantastic achievements and gripping adventures.  We were going to be the scientist who found the cure for cancer, a heroic soldier in the Special Forces fighting for liberty and justice, a school teacher whose students go out into the world equipped for a successful and full life, an artist whose body of work provoked and awed people for generations to come.  And then we encountered the cynics—the so-called realists—who told us that we were living in fantasy and wasting time and energy indulging in such wishful thinking.  The cynics were accompanied by the well intentioned whose expectations of us were much lower than our own. “No,” we were told, “that is not your path.  You are meant to be someone else, someone other than the person of whom you are dreaming.  Really.  If you take the path of your dreams, your life will end in misery.  It’s for your best that you listen to me.”

 

Some brave and independent souls are able to resist the counsel of the cynics and ignore the expectations of the well intentioned.  Many are not.  I am not saying that those who submit never achieve anything worthy of honor or never become honorable individuals.  I am suggesting that, from time to time, they are struck with the awareness that they could have been so much more, could have accomplished even greater things.

 

Soren Kierkegaard said, “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”  Fear keeps us from seeing.  Fear keeps us from recalling our dreams.  Fear keeps us from childlike faith.  Fear of despairing over what could have been enslaves us to what now is.

 

How do you overcome these fears?  How do you resist cynicism?  How do you begin overcoming the fear of disappointing others?  How do you revive your dreams?  St. John wrote that there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love (I John 4:18).  Love is the key: loving God, loving self, loving others, and loving the gift of life.

 

Loving God, we remember that, with and through Him, all things are possible.

 

Loving self, we remember that we were created “a little lower than the angels” and that He that is within us is greater than he that is in the world.

 

Loving others, we remember that we have gifts, talents, and wisdom with which we were meant to serve.

 

Loving the gift of life, we remember that every moment of our existence is a gift we are to cherish and steward.

 

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014