1.
I chose this book for several reasons, the foremost of which being that the author and subject is the current VP-nominee for the Republican party and I’d like to give the man a chance to speak for himself without my impression of him being influenced by the constant slamming he gets in the news. Other reasons include that the man came from the white working-class of the Midwest like myself, and he has been wildly successful so far; he’s a relatively late-in-life convert to Catholicism from Evangelical Protestantism; and Megan recommended the book.
2.
I learned quite a bit from the book, and it turned out to be a way more fun read than I expected, too. Regarding Mr. Vance himself, I encountered a thoughtful, considerate, compassionate man who has intensely strong feelings about things like loyalty, duty, right and wrong, standing up for the little guy, and the value of hard work. He struggles with a volatile temper as well as a fair amount of insecurity and ‘imposter syndrome’, but has learned to combat them by leaning on and trusting the people around him to help provide a clear mirror, as well as mental/emotional support. When it comes to his conversion to the Catholic Church, this book was published before that conversion, but I actually found quite a few of the seeds that were lead there already sown in the book: he had issues with Evangelism’s rejection of science from an early age, and specifically named the Church’s stance in contrast on topics like evolution and a multi-billion year age of the Earth and universe (things that the Church has embraced as fairly obvious truths that are completely in line with our image of God the Creator for decades, despite what a lot of the world believes, the Catholic Church is so science forward, it has priests doing AWESOME research at facilities like the CERN Supercollider!); he seems to be the kind of man who’s drawn to tradition and ritual (I would argue that we’re ALL drawn to tradition and ritual, which is why God gave the Church so much of it, but that’s a different discussion for a different place). He also seems to fit the ‘type’ that I’ve recognized in a lot of modern converts, especially converts from Southern Evangelism – someone with a deep faith in Christ and the scriptures, but with equally deep questions about everything else (they’ll find that the Catholic Church is communal – a massive family that includes all the saints from St. Teresa of Calcutta to Abraham, all the living faithful, all of creation including angel and animal – whereas the Evangelical/Protestant is so focused on ‘only Jesus and I’ that it must get horribly lonely). When it comes to his success, a big part of it comes from his ability to overcome his own ‘learned helplessness’ – a term I’d encountered previously, but hadn’t understood. It refers to the mental state of someone who has either not had a say over their life for so long, or who’s opinions and decisions have been so consistently undermined that they no longer feel like they have any say in their own lives. Mr. Vance was able to overcome that by directly challenging it with the help of his loved ones. He also asked for help from knowledgeable people when he encountered situations with which he was unfamiliar – like Yale cocktail mixers or Marine boot camp. I would say that the biggest thing that led to his success, however, was a decision he made to change paths from the one life had initially set him on – one that started in addiction and poverty and led to more of the same. Instead, he chose to set his past in proper perspective (that it HAS passed), and chose to forge ahead, advocating for himself and not accepting that others get to make his choices for him.
3.
The biggest take away for me centers on that idea of ‘learned helplessness’. That’s something I’ve actually struggled with for a very long time. I’ve always struggled with feelings of a lack of agency, that my thoughts and words don’t matter, that my actions don’t matter, that -I- don’t matter. That’s part of what enabled my addiction, and the reason for my incarceration – if I don’t matter, I can’t hurt other people, and it doesn’t matter if I hurt myself. It’s kept me from trying to do hard things, it contributes to the negative self-talk I fight with on a daily basis, it lays the groundwork for anti-social behavior, depression, and isolation. I can pinpoint a handful of life experiences that contributed to this feeling in a big way – I was given three choices for high school, but was simply told ‘No.’ to my first two choices, a very similar thing happened with college, except that I ended up going to a school that wasn’t one of my choices in any way, despite being told how smart I was constantly as a child, the vast majority of my ‘big’ decisions in life were either over-ridden or were completely taken out of my hands. I’ve spent far too much of my life allowing that to happen, and letting that define who I am. I’ve spent way too long being resentful about it, but not talking about it, causing it to fester and deepen. There’s a difference between ‘going along to get along’ or adapting to circumstances, and just giving up and floating through life rudderless, letting your life be decided simply by who you bump into and how hard they push you away from them. I’ve been on the latter for a long time, and moving forward I will be actively working to combat this in myself.
In the end, I can either be a victim of my past, bouncing from one miserable situation to another, never achieving anything that matters to me and ruining whatever I touch through my attachment to the hurts of my past, or I can conquer my past, getting up and moving forward, leaving the past right where it is. I’m choosing the latter.
