Vince’s Daily Journal – Day 1
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Indifference.
As a description of a person’s interior state, that’s a word that may lead one to feel more like I were describing lukewarm oatmeal than a person who’s being the best version of themselves, but I believe that, without indifference, it is impossible to be the best version of yourself. Now, I need to clarify something, especially in an era where the definitions of words seem to be morphing and transforming at rates and in ways linguists could never have dreamed of pre-internet. When I speak of indifference, I’m not talking about being uncaring, indecisive, or in any way ‘wishy-washy’. That is just simply not having a mind and spine of your own, and that’s an entirely different issue. When I speak of indifference, I’m speaking of an attitude that is equally open to all options up front, weighing them solely on their ability to achieve the end that we seek. (Which leads to the all-consuming question of ‘What is the end that I seek?’ – that’ll be a different episode, but the short version is to love and to serve my God, my family, and my community, in that order.) A double-bacon cheeseburger is an intrinsically good thing, but if you have heart failure and your goal is to live a long life, it’s actually an evil thing FOR YOU. For many people, alcohol is not a people. For many others, it’s the creation of the Devil himself. Not all things are the same for all people.
A couple of months ago, the institution where I’m currently housed underwent a massive shakedown that went significantly above and beyond BOP policy. The putative reason behind it was because of a string of drug overdoses and cellphone-related incidents. Every inmate was told that their property would be culled down to the commissary order maximums (which had just recently been cut significantly) and that every single item we owned would have to fit in a single, standard-issue, US Army duffel bag (this was also false – we were given bags at random. Most were Army duffels but there were several other types of bags, most of which were even smaller). The major problem with that being, even following the new limits, there’s no way you can fit the contents of an entire prison locker (2.5X the size of the bag) into a duffel bag. My locker was primarily stuffed with books, magazines, printed articles, family letters and pictures, and envelopes full of old half-finished (okay, I’m being really generous at ‘half’) writing projects. To follow their directive, I would have to throw away 75% of everything in that locker, including quite a bit that had significant sentimental attachment for me. I’m not proud to say that I had a minor meltdown that night. But, as I began to sort through my belongings, God kept bringing a point to mind – I’ve spent my entire adult life as a student of St. Ignatius in some form or other. Much of what I was crying about having to throw out were my father’s retreat notes from Ignatian retreats.
For those who aren’t familiar with Catholic history, St. Ignatius (fka Inigo Loyola y Onaz) was a Spanish soldier of noble birth who had a world-changing conversion while recuperating from a war wound, who went on to found the Society of Jesus (more popularly known a the Jesuits), wrote a book on spirituality called The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that (in my opinion) did more to further the average person’s relationship with their Creator than all the bloody efforts of the Reformation, simply by encouraging them to listen for the voice of God within themselves and act on it. One of, if not the, central portions of the Exercises is called the Principle and Foundation – call it Ignatius’ ‘mission statement’. I’ll put it here in full, because it deserves it:
“Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for the human beings, to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they are created. From this it follows that we ought to use these things to the extent that they help us toward our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that the hinder us from it. To attain this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things, in regard to everything which is left to our free will and is not forbidden. Consequently, on our own part we out not to seek health rather than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long life rather than a short one, and so on in all other matters. Rather, we out to desire and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created”
There’s that word again, ‘indifference’. Actually, that’s where I first encountered it, at least in this sense, as opposed to the one pointed out earlier – an uncaring, go with the flow, ‘nothing really matters’ kind of indifference. This indifference, defined by Fr. George Ganss, SJ as “undetermined to one thing or option rather than another;…with decision suspended until the reasons for a wise choice are learned. IN NO WAY does it mean unconcerned or unimportant.” [emphasis mine] And that’s what makes it so different, and so crucial.
Now, to get back to me, sitting in front of my locker, red in the face and pouring sweat from rage at having to throw away my ‘things’….
In my time here, I had completely surrendered that freedom, that indifference. Ironically, in trying to maintain some sense of control while in prison, I gave up one of the few freedoms that was left to me, the freedom from attachment to ‘stuff’. Because when I really got down to it, it wasn’t what I was losing that made me so upset, it was that I had no choice. I was lashing out because the small amount of control I had claimed over my life was shown to be a sham – they could throw everything away, and there’s nothing I can realistically do about it. That jarred me enough to break me out of my ‘woe is me’ victimhood and actually look at what my life had become. I was still pretty early in my sobriety at that point (I am a recovering opiate addict, an addiction I developed here in prison, one that has caused myself and my loved ones no end of pain and stress. But that will be a different entry, for now, know that I’m on the Sublocade shot, which keeps me from going through chemical withdrawal without providing the ‘high’, and my long-term goal is to leave incarceration without that crutch), so the idea that I was still neck deep in addiction – I had merely transferred the addiction from drugs to ‘things’ – was infuriating. I was still allowing the wrong things to determine my life.
I would love to say that I’m completely free of that now. I’m not. What I can say is that I’m now at a point where I can see my attachments for what they are, and I can attempt to combat them. More importantly, I now recognize that they primarily stem from a desperate grasping for control in a world where so much of that is taken from me. The reality is, however, that the greatest form of control I can have is self-control, and I believe that the ultimate expression of that is to develop that Ignatian Indifference, therefore leaving me open to whatever opportunities for growth come my way, even when they come disguised in packages that look like shakedowns.
