You Cannot Be the Best that Humanity Can Be

By John Mark Reynolds
President, The Saint Constantine School

Some of us want to experience even more than being as happy as we can be in the context of a well-balanced life. Instead, we yearn to be as happy as anyone could be at any given moment.

We despise jobs in our desire for “careers,” or despise careers in our desire for “fulfilling” careers. We want an epic marriage to go along with it. If we are careless, then only winning the Super Bowl of academics, relationships, hobbies, or business will give us satisfaction. If we hear that we cannot have it all in a virtuous life, we opt to challenge natural moral limits instead of learning the joy of moderation.

As a result we develop what I will call “sequential monomania.”

“Monomania” is a marvelous Victorian word for an obsession with one idea or topic. I believe my generation improved on it by developing “sequential monomania:” we insisted that whatever we do deserves our maximum effort while we are doing it. We move from temporary monomania to temporary monomania, one after another. But this rarely-noticed habit is a significant impediment to happy adulthood, one that often occurs in the brightest and best – or in those who wish they were the brightest and best. 

Sometimes this gets called “multi-tasking,” but do not be fooled. First, we put several tasks on our plates, and give each task all our attention for tiny moments of time. While doing the task, we yearn to be the “best we can be.” But since this measure is rarely based on real self-knowledge, we’re actually trying to be the best that humanity can be. Then we move on to the next task, with the same impossible desires. But we are ourselves, not the pinnacle of humanity.

QUOTE

“Some of us want to experience even more than being as happy as we can be in the context of a well-balanced life. Instead, we yearn to be as happy as anyone could be at any given moment.”

The result is a kind of universal envy in the name of justice and self-empowerment. “God forbid that anyone, through other interests or callings, be deprived of what someone, somewhere else has had!” If we see a happily married person who has been very blessed, we cannot be content with what God has given us, but must endlessly “work on our relationships.” We moderns pretend that time is infinite, that talent is given out equally, and that mere desire is an indication of calling. 

But the truth is that becoming very physically fit takes time away from gaining mental fitness, just as mental fitness takes time away from exercise. We cannot be as buff as we could be if we had nothing else to do and also be as smart as we could be if we had nothing else to do.

God has given each one of us callings and talents, and God has given each of us a limited amount of time. We can have all that He has given us, all we could ever truly enjoy, but we cannot have all that God has given someone else. My friend Peter has pleasures I cannot experience, because I am not Peter. When I demand Peter’s pleasures as well as my own, I put myself in an impossible situation.

Misery follows. Oddly, many responsible adults, themselves victims of sequential monomania, encourage us to join them as they rush to their doom.

In school, my soccer coach, theater director, math teachers, and writing instructors all wanted “one hundred percent.” A few even dreamed of the mythical “one hundred and ten percent!” Since I was playing soccer and acting for fun, I never gave one hundred percent. If I had, play would have become work. Besides, I do not have three hundred percent to give!

How can we fight sequential monomania? By doing one thing at a time with only the intensity it deserves from us. Before even beginning, we must know ourselves and how God has made us. We must look at our skills, talents, and culture, and decide what is possible for us, or better: what is good for us. We can gratefully work with what we have.

Many of us long to be married, but should not marry. Why? Because we are called to dedicate the time that children and a spouse would consume to work, or perhaps because we never meet a worthy partner, or because we have no inclination to form a family. A great many of us long to have successful careers, but will never be “great” at our jobs. Why? Because the time that it would take to achieve greatness would take away from other parts of our lives.

To flourish as humans is to achieve a balance. For, “man does not live by bread alone.” We must not envy our neighbor who by Providence or talent can achieve what we cannot in the time that he or she has.

True happiness comes when we find the will of God for our lives and do it. It does not come when we demand that God accommodate the cosmos to our bloated desires.

QUOTE

“True happiness comes when we find the will of God for our lives and do it. It does not come when we demand that God accommodate the cosmos to our bloated desires.”

In Paradise, God’s great city, I know this: all the redeemed will be as happy as we can be. Finally I will be me, because I killed my futile and evil visions of myself and gave myself to God. I will have crucified all desires to be other than I am and allowed myself to become what He wishes me to be.

I do not pretend that this happy goal can be completed this side of Paradise, or that I will experience all the goods suited to me in this life. But I will be patient, grow, give each activity the little that I can in my God-breathed life, and at the hour of death lay down my burden of uncertainty, and finally be fully, absolutely whole.