Message from the Director, Dr. John Glavin: "Thisness"

Last week, I suggested you consider life as it comes to or through you but not from you. I want to continue this exploration by responding to alarms that, not unexpectedly, resounded soon thereafter.

“So I should just be passive, is that it?  Take what comes; accept the status quo.  Be content with whatever lot has befallen me?”

No.  Passivity is just the reverse of what I’m suggesting. Consider this anecdote.

Last summer, two second-year law students, a young man and a young woman, both very bright, both at premier law schools, entered a firm as summer associates.  As you may know, being a summer associate is often a key step in a law career. Many of the most desirable jobs emerge only from that experience.

The young man worked extremely hard.  He scrupulously did everything assigned him, and did it well.  He spent long hours, indeed long weeks, in the office. The senior members of the firm agreed his work was flawless. And, at the end of the summer, he didn’t receive a post-graduation offer.

The young woman also worked extremely hard. There was no difference in their legal abilities, or in the quality of their output. And, at the end of the summer, she was offered a job.

What did she do that he didn’t?

She came into the firm prepared to explore, to learn from and about the other lawyers, to interact with them. She did everything assigned to her, but she went beyond the assignments.  The firm scheduled regular lunches with outside experts.  She attended all of them.  Early on, when she saw no one taking notes, she offered to take minutes, then distributed her notes as aides-memoir for the other lawyers. She made a point of meeting as many as possible of the lawyers in her potential areas of specialization to explore the nitty-gritty of their practice.

The young man did none of this.  He did what he was asked, but only what he was asked.  He interacted only with the young lawyers closest to him in age. He made no move to know or be known by the partners.

In our terms, the young woman was responding to what life was delivering to her, in this case, the structure and dynamic of the firm. The young man, though he worked hard and well, never really engaged the life around him, the life coming to him.

In the Forum, we make much of the term central to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ –haecceitas -- 'thisness', particularly one’s own thisness. But, there is also the thisness of the other or others — the particular, dense, distinctive thisness of the life and lives surrounding the self.  We realize ourselves only when we pay full and responsive, inventively interactive attention to that specific otherness -- when we actively engage the activity that encounters us.

Anything else is either solipsism or fantasy. And, no matter how active, that’s the real passivity.

JG

(Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ)