It’s a new year - and that means well-intentioned people making resolutions and other well-intentioned people insisting that we’re all good enough as we are. Both are right.

It seems clear to me that most of us could use some improvement and such improvement requires intentionality and planning. The beginning of a new year is as good a time as any to do that.

It also seems clear to me that some of our ideas about self-improvement are driven by corporations intent on exploiting our insecurities for their own profit, a.k.a. marketing.

This tension between self-improvement and self-acceptance is one that has bedeviled me often. I won’t say I have any answers but I do have some experience.

I suggest two words to keep in mind:

Grace

Be gracious with yourself. Something needs improvement? That’s fine! Approach the issue knowing that you are not your enemy. Get out of the conflict frame of mind.

For example, I’ve let my running and meditating practice fall apart over the last couple of months. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. I shrug my shoulders and make plans to gently correct it.

Running: Work back into the practice by running a mile a day 3-5 times per week. Increase that from a mile as I feel like it. I’m in no hurry. I’m not going to die of a heart attack if I’m not running a 5k next month. One mile is better than zero miles.

Meditating: Work back into the practice by meditating 20 minutes at a time. I was meditating for longer periods of time and there’s a voice in my head that wants me to believe that 20 minutes (or even 10 or 15 minutes on really distracted days) isn’t good enough. But I will be gracious with myself. Ten minutes is better than zero minutes.

Whim

I was reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction this evening when it occurred to me that Alan Jacobs’ discussion of Reading at Whim might apply here also.

The Eat Your Greens school of reading (see Adler/Van Doren in How to Read a Book) would have us read the right books in the right way and - most importantly - have the right opinions about them. Jacobs offers a different approach: Read at Whim.

Eventually, however, he comes upon a problem similar to the self-improvement/self-acceptance conundrum. Not all books are equally valuable (some are more like junk food) - yet he still maintains that the Eat Your Greens school misunderstands the point of reading.

This is where he distinguishes between whim - “thoughtless, directionless preference that almost invariably leads to boredom or frustration or both” - and Whim - “based in self-knowledge.”

Capital-W Whim includes a playfulness grounded in a person’s knowledge of their own interests, capabilities, etc. It is not based on what others believe you should do, much less on what will enrich people wholly unrelated to you.

Grace applied to self-improvement means you will be kind to yourself, refusing to see yourself as your enemy. Whim applied to self-improvement means you will approach it with a certain playfulness, always with reference to what leads to your own flourishing.

Together this means that self-improvement is best approached through love and patience. The same approach you would take with a beloved friend.

For the last several months in response to all this, I’ve been reading about solitude and silence - and making some attempts at practice. No one needs me to tell them that the world is in trouble. What I’m looking for is a way to live with the trouble, without falling into the destructive patterns of behavior we see around us. It seems that more silence is either a way to that way, or the way itself.

Obviously, when I talk about the value of silence, I’m not talking about absolute, unending silence; otherwise I’d be quite a hypocrite for writing this. My interest is in silence as a space to inhabit, however temporarily, and from which to act.

The non-action of the wise man is not simply inaction.
It is not a studied thing and thus cannot be upset by anything.
The sage is quiet, not because he wills to be quiet
but because he is not unsettled.
(Zuangzhi, as found in Beaulac, Sitting with Lao-Tzu)

Silence separates you from the multitude of voices that would control you. It is a way to understand yourself as yourself and clarify your mind. Acting out of that place, rather than in reaction to the multitude of voices, is far better. Thomas Merton:

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world, without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. (Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action)

All of this, by the way, I write aspirationally - because I know how noisy my own head is and how tempted I am to stop resisting the ever-present distractions. It is a real struggle to separate yourself from the insanity of social media and cable news and scrolling scrolling scrolling. Listen, life is hard and you’re an adult, so you’re free to do with your life what you want. Just make sure it is what you want in your deepest self.

Some good writing on this subject:

• Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter
• Hermits by Peter France
• Solitude by Anthony Storr
• “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude” by Thomas Merton, published in Disputed Questions

Merton’s essay is particularly rich - and his struggle with his monastic superiors to get the solitude he wanted is also instructive. (I can’t find where I read about that but I’ll link it here if I can find it.) One of the lines that spoke most deeply to me is the following. My reasons for withdrawal weren’t nearly so grand - I just wanted some peace! - but I love the idea of healing in yourself the wounds you see in the world.

Such men, out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or of resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the entire world. (Thomas Merton, “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude”)