Vince’s Daily Journal – Day 3
———————————
“What seeds can you sow to prepare for success after a crisis?”
That’s the prompt that Mr. Santos included at the end of his newsletter – titled ‘Gratitude’ – today.
“After the battle there comes a crown, and the more conflicts the soul has, the more victory palms there will be. Knowing that there is a level of eternal glory for every victory won, why then,[…] are you not rejoicing that you are engaged in winning so many battles in the course of your life?”
That’s the beginning of today’s quote from “Padre Pio’s Spiritual Direction for Every Day” – a selection of the writings of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, a Capuchin monk, stigmatist, and world-renowned spiritual director better known as ‘Padre Pio’.
In both, suffering and gratitude are presented together, with the latter being implied as the proper response to the former (at least for Padre Pio, I may be stretching Mr. Santos’ statements, but I suspect he would agree), Which is completely antithetical to the current American mindset. We live in a culture where immediate pleasure reigns above all else, a “whatever I want, the world owes me, and owes me immediately for all that I’ve been through” kind of mentality. That’s an incredibly intense kind of victimhood, made even more disturbing when you consider that this mindset prevails primarily in countries that experience a level of comfort and prosperity that was absolutely unimaginable until 50-75 years ago, and is still nothing more than a pipe dream for the vast majority of the people living on the face of this planet.
For example, our hot water went down for 24-36 hours over the weekend (tap water, we still have a BUNN hot water dispenser for cooking), and some of the people here were immediately talking about how awful life is for us, how poorly we’re treated, how we’re treated worse than animals, etc. Said in a building that has an ambient temp of about 68, despite it being over 90 and humid outside, after walking back from a hot cooked meal. The same day, in the newspaper, I read a story that over 1,500 Muslims died while making this year’s pilgrimage because of the intensity of the heat. On one hand, we have a group of men who are fed, clothed, and housed at no cost to them who are losing their minds because they can’t take hot showers. On the other, we have hundreds of thousands of devout believers, willing to endure any kind of heat, cold, pain, tiredness, deprivation, anything to honor the God they love.
I think this is the fundamental sickness of the West. The moment that we encounter any kind of suffering or hardship, we immediately set out to somehow eliminate it. While that has been absolutely fantastic for technological and economic progress in this country, I think it has left American culture a hollow shell of itself. While we used to be a country known for our belief that anyone who’s willing to put in the work can succeed, the birthplace of the ‘Self-Made Man’, these days we’re more likely to be mocked as spoiled, entitled brats by the rest of the world. In a large way, I agree. We no longer see the redemptive and constructive value of suffering, and in our rush to avoid suffering, we often lose the opportunity to sow those seeds for success, especially when we turn to the easiest solution.
In trying to not fall into that trap, I keep in mind a mantra that my Grandma Libby lived by and taught us, that I believe has served her children and grandchildren in good stead: “Offer it up.” Offer up even the smallest sufferings to God, thank Him for them and know that He will do great things in return.
Gratitude and openness to the Will of God.
Those are the first and most important seeds to sow.
