No Token, Still A Jerk

I haven't posted in a long time because I've been trying my hand at personal goal obtainment.

After a couple of months of concentrated effort, I have had it with goals. While strategic planning has been ever present in my business and personal lives, I wonder if there was a time when it was actually relevant. It is an underlying assumption of the planning process that the planning agent possesses some form of command and control to act upon or implement the plan. Small wonder that conquering goals is so difficult when basic assumptions are not valid. I may wish and desire certain outcomes and I may even act with purpose, but I cannot actually command life to behave.

I am not the captain of my ship.

In keeping with the theme of Jerks Anonymous, I intended to write this post only after I could say I got my token for being clean and sober for a whole week. That post never came because, despite my best intentions, I never had a week in the ensuing months when I was not a jerk. I even had a couple of roll-around-in-the-gutter bouts of being a jerk. Too many in fact.

And then, the real captain of my ship spoke out.

Over the Christmas break, we started watching Netflix streaming videos when we discovered Flight From Death. I really was not that interested in the topic, but others wanted to watch and it was narrated by Gabriel Bryne, one of the stars of The Usual Suspects, a great movie. I did not realize it at the time, but here was the still, small voice calling me to a different plan beyond my own intentions. My feet had been put on a path by the commander of my soul.

The documentary had nothing to do with grief over the death of another as I imagined. Flight from Death examines the work of Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist. Becker's essential premise is that all anxiety and anger stems from a repressed fear of death.

Since anxiety and anger keeps me boxed as a jerk, I have been reading Becker's The Denial of Death and examining his premise applied to my life to see if it has validity. I am finding that as I understand Becker, I am also experiencing less fear and hostility. The diminution of turmoil is not due merely to a reading of Becker. I am also hearing the Scriptures more fully within the context of a fear of death.

As I am whipped by life, my defensive responses rear up. Fear and anger rise to a fever pitch as defenses are overwhelmed and I become beat by living. It is at the moment of being overwhelmed that I hear Jesus say, "Don't worry."  Instead of listening to my Lord, I dismiss the injunction as being a remnant of a popular song echoing through the grey matter and I ride out the rising tide fully juiced on fear and anger. At the point of being overwhelmed, I am a jerk. It is a defense against the position that life is out of control: a mini-death.

It is often said that you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge. I acknowledge that my life is not my own. I acknowledge that I do not listen to those who care for me. Paul Tillich said, "The first duty of love is to listen." I am learning to love.