When the Prince Siddhartha was born, a fortune teller prophesied that he grow up to become a great king or a great spiritual leader. So his father, the king, afraid of the latter, tried to prevent his son from seeking three things: old age, sickness, and death. When the young prince snuck out of the castle and saw an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, he decided to go on his spiritual quest.
I started a hospital chaplaincy training program this month and it occurred to me that that’s the work: being with people as they confront old age, sickness, and death. We listen patients as they talk about their mortality, help them with their fears, with their doubts, and the meaning of their lives. In doing so, we confront our own.
One of the eye-opening aspects is meeting patients from all walks of life. My social circle is limited to mostly college-educated, well-to-do, articulate, "successful" people. On the hospital floor, there’s a much broader range of people. It's been humbling to see how flimsy my own definition of “the good life” is.
I met a 70 year old patient last week who, after a long life of service, was homeless, living in a large encampment on the outskirts of Portland. She has always felt safe there and felt like God put her there to take care of the young men living there too. Whenever she had extra food she would share it with them. She was looking forward to getting out of the hospital so she could go back and extend her ministry to those young men. She asked us to pray for her healing so she could go back and continue offering God’s love to her community.
The rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with my patient. Who has led a more successful life, me or her?
Who has more trust and more faith in life?
Who is more free?
I told this story to my friend Annie, who works in philanthropy. A couple hours later, she texted me:
[This story] highlights for me is that people with a certain kind of education and class experience have an assumption about what it requires to have resources to share with other people. And it’s really just grounded in capitalism.
Grounded in capitalism
Someone sent me this graduation speech from Neil Gaiman yesterday about “the problems of success.” Starting at around 7:00:
“I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I'd listen to them telling me that they couldn't envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn't go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.
And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. “
Not being able to do things that matter is a pretty good definition of failure. When you have to earn a certain amount every month just to make your nut and you can’t imagine a world where you’re doing what you want to do, you’re losing. I know so many “successful” people here. Are you?
The real point of this life is to do things that matter. Anything that conspires to stop you doing things that matter is rat poison. Including “success.”
If success makes you more fearful or less free to do the things you should be doing, you’re losing. The most invisible form of a wasted life is doing a good job at unimportant tasks.1
I’m still thinking of my homeless patient. She was looking forward to leaving the hospital (where she had shelter and food) to go back to take care of the young men in her community. Like the poor woman that Jesus watched give away her last two copper coins, she’s not giving out of her wealth, she’s giving out of her poverty. She is giving everything.
She is living with more trust and faith than any of us. More courage and freedom than any of us.
It humbles me.
Do the things that matter
Be suspicious of what you want — Rumi
I’ve written extensively about it before: we’re awash in the things we don’t need and don’t have enough of the things that we do. It’s the consequence of bourgeois values: we keep working our entire lives, so we can own bigger homes, go on better vacations, and buy the highest quality thing of the thing we want. Almost everyone I know, even if they don’t want to admit it, is chasing this “success.”
But the real point of this life is to do things that matter. And maybe this bourgois status game is keeping you from it.
Everyone is on a spiritual journey from the moment they are born and from that journey, we feel pain and, in turn, we grow. Our society doesn’t often emphasize this journey. We distract ourselves with busyness, whether it’s work, consumerism, activities, or screens. We’d rather remain in the castle, avoiding the truth from ourselves. My chaplaincy supervisor told me that any addiction (drugs, achievement, superficiality) is a way not to feel pain, but the pain remains underneath. At some point, as Brené Brown says, we need to “unravel.” As we near death, everything else is stripped away and only the important things matter. That’s what hospital chaplains do: help and comfort people when everything else is stripped away. Talk about things that matter.
But we don’t have to wait until confronted with old age, sickness, or imminent death. In so many ways, we use the temptations of the outer world, including money, to avoid looking at what hurts us. And that’s the archetype of the Buddha story, someone who didn’t stay in the castle, someone who didn’t wait, someone who didn’t avoid looking at what hurts. We can do that earlier. If we’re brave enough.
Not everyone gets there, but on the other side there is treasure. If you listen closely, it’s calling.
Last call for Financial Freedom 1
”Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” — Kahlil Gibran
One of the first questions we ask in Financial Freedom 1 is: If you were in an intimate, lifelong relationship with money (and you are), how would you describe it? What would money say to you? What would you say to money?
If you deepen your awareness of your relationship with money, it becomes one of the deepest pathways to seeing your pain. It shows you what you learned from your parents about the world. How you think of not-enoughness with money is a window into your inner not-enoughness.
Fall cohort of Financial Freedom 1 starts on Sunday, running October 1-November 30. If you feel like you’re not fully in control of your finances, if there’s something for you to learn and improve about how you relate to money, you should take it.
H/T James Clear.
Thank you Douglas. I have a passion for the pursuit of true wealth...and boy, does this story describe that? I think so, without a doubt. Thank you for sharing!
Another great article!