The U-Curve or Why You Need Failure

In the introduction to The Road to Character, Brooks notes that the lives of each of the people he profiles within the book have a similar trajectory. He calls it the U-Curve. He writes, "They had to go down to go up. They had to descend into the valley of humility to climb to the heights of character." 

True character development seems impossible without this valley of humility. Brooks quotes Kierkegaard: "Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved." The self-emptying that takes place in the valley enables us to be of use when we climb back out, to rescue the beloved. Brooks calls this process "quieting the self." I like that metaphor. We become less through humility and then are able to exemplify the virtues only available through humility. We block out the internal noise telling us that we're great or this suffering isn't worth it or no one understands us or whatever junk is being piped into our brains and we are finally free to experience calm and tranquility. Moreover, we are finally free to actually provide purposeful aid to those around us who suffer and need to learn how to suffer. Tim Keller, in Counterfeit Gods, asserts that "people who have never suffered in life have less empathy for others, little knowledge of their own shortcomings and limitations, no endurance in the face of hardship, and unrealistic expectations for life." These valleys of humility are schools for obedience to God and usefulness to men. 

Brooks argues, and I mostly agree here, that we've "left this moral tradition behind. Over the last several decades, we've lost this language, this way of organizing life. We're not bad. But we're morally inarticulate. We're not more selfish or venal than people in other times, but we've lost the understanding of how character is built." I would quibble with the claim that "we're not bad." We are. We're awful. But I do think he is right that for most of us this transition has been unintentional or unwitting. We did not intend to create a culture that fears precisely the valleys of humility that allow us to be men and women of deep character. We did not intend to make it the goal of our lives to obviate suffering. We did not intend to create a culture of narcissistic, spoiled know-nothings. But, here we are.

A few months ago I wrote that one of my goals for the new year was to fail more. This is what I mean. I want to experience these valleys and embrace them. Not because they are pleasant or easy, but because they are not. I took a group of kids backpacking a couple of weeks ago. It is always illuminating to me to put kids in that position and see how they do. You can tell the ones who have experienced suffering and embraced it and those who shy away every time something gets difficult. 

We confuse ourselves easily on this score, too. I was talking with one of the kids who embraced suffering on the trip about this and we decided that there is a basic deceit at work in these situations: the people at the back of the pack are convinced that they are suffering more than the people at the front. This might be true, but it is not logically necessary. Take me, a 32 year-old suburban dad who has done virtually no cardio for the past eight months due to plantar fasciitis. Yet, I was slaying those kids who work out three hours a day. I don't say this to toot my own horn, but to point out that the ability to suffer can make up for all other sorts of defects. I am overweight and out-of-shape, but I don't mind the feeling of screaming lungs and burning quads. I like it, actually. It invigorates me and makes me feel alive.

And I know this because I have trained myself to know it. I have walked into those physical valleys time and again and kept going. There is something wonderfully democratic about this. Are there variances in talent? Of course. But, for those willing to put their heads down, grit their teeth, and quiet the self, a lot of ground can be made up. Our world tells us we can shortcut the valley and go straight to the mountaintop. Our world is a liar.

This Present Suffering

Read this book NOW!

The first time I read Gilead was in the Neuro-ICU at University Hospital while my mom's body rebelled against the shock of an aneurysm and the attendant surgeries and we were waiting to know if she would live or die. And, if life won, to what degree that life would be impaired going forward. In other words, I was suffering, perhaps for the first real time in my life. By God's grace my mom lived. And thrived.

But the book was an epiphany for me and a great gift. A literal gift, I had received it as a graduation gift from my best friend some six months before but, not being a reader at the time, it had sat on my shelf until then. Somewhere in the funk of that period, and the days bleeding into days, and the deep tiredness, I began reading. And I will read it every two or three years until my body or mind is taken from me. 

Here is one passage that stuck out particularly to me the first time I read. It was pertinent, then, in a way it is not necessarily so now. But I believe it more than I did at that first reading. Experience and age have taken the initial raw emotion of the reading, but it is no less precious for that exchange.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Good old Isaac Watts. I've thought about that verse often. I have always wondered what relationship this present reality bears to an ultimate reality.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone. . .

No doubt that is true. Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can't believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life.

It is unnecessary to point out how little our culture enjoys suffering or cultivates the ability to suffer with dignity. To say we are addicted to comfort is simply to say, at this point, that we are Americans living in the 21st century. 

But, if Robinson is right (or her mouthpiece, the Reverend Ames, is right), then suffering is something inextricably human, something upon which our very humanity is predicated. In other words, to be human is to suffer. And these sufferings are not without purpose. They are, according to the Apostle Paul, achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. As we suffer we approach the sufferings of Christ, our elder brother and co-heir. As we suffer, too, we prepare to share with him in his glory. We might, some day and by God's great grace, come, like Paul, to rejoice in our sufferings. Though I know no one granted that type of sainthood.

This is not to say that we seek out suffering or become indifferent to it when we see it ravaging the lives of those whom we love; rather, it is to acknowledge the beautiful truth that on the day when every tear is wiped away from every eye the joy we feel will be all the more joyous for the sorrows we once endured.