Paul Cumbo's Blog, page 3

Wilderness Therapy Available for Pre-Order!

The Kindle ebook edition of Wilderness Therapy is now available for pre-order, with automatic electronic delivery to your Kindle library on May 1st. I'm going to donate $1 to St. Luke's Mission of Mercy for each Kindle copy sold through the end of May. St. Luke's is a great organization well-known in Buffalo. Like everything else, the publishing world is experiencing delays right now. So other editions, including hardcover, paperback, and ePub (for other e-readers, such as the Nook) will be available, hopefully, in the coming days once their publishing metadata populates the online ecosystem. Once they do, you'll be able to order them from just about any bookstore, including Barnes & Noble, or your favorite local store via IndieBound. It's possible these other versions will take a bit longer. Finally, if you want a personalized, signed hardcover sent to you directly from me, please send me an email at pjcumbo79@gmail.com and let me know. They are $27.99 plus tax and postage. I may have these available sooner than the booksellers will. If you didn't catch the book trailer, here it is:

People who fix things are amazing

People who really fix things are rare. Whether it's a broken machine or a broken company, it takes a combination of skills and qualities to fix it right. I've been learning about organizations (and more specifically, the people who comprise them) as I've been tasked with leadership roles in various systems in recent years, both in my primary role on a school faculty, and in my own businesses. I've come to appreciate just how truly hard it is to solve serious problems in an effective, sustainable way—and I've come to appreciate even more so the small subset of people who do this well and, more to the point, consistently well. Most of us are good at seeing a serious problem—but only insofar as it is affecting us. Thing is, our limited view tends to skew the scope and nature of the issue. I might assume, for example, that it's affecting others the same way it's affecting me, when, in fact, it isn't. This could make it seem like a systemic problem when it's not. By contrast, I might under appreciate the scope of the issue if it happens to have minimal impact upon me. Nonetheless, most of us, most of the time, are fairly good at at least noticing a problem, if only because it causes some form of pain, discomfort, or difficulty. But most of us, most of the time, don't have the time, the resources, or—let's face it—the inclination to do the hard work of correctly identifying the real scope of the matter. We probably don't have adequate data to support our own interpretation, and we probably won't get it—either because we can't do so practically, or because we aren't willing to do what it would take to get it. (And, notably, this requires acknowledging that our interpretation might be wrong. A lot of people can't or won't do this—so that's where they stop.) The real leaders have the listening skills and patience it takes to figure this out. But even assuming we've correctly and objectively identified the scope of a problem, the tougher thing to accomplish is a reasonably correct determination of the causes. One of the reasons this is hard is because of the first point I made, above. We have a tendency to attribute a problem to the cause most evident to us in our narrow, immediate experience of it. Of course, it's not always (or even usually) the case that there's only a single cause of a problem. We quickly develop cognitive biases, though—and why wouldn't we, after all? Again, it takes a conscious effort (and imagination) to acknowledge that there are probably causes beyond the one most immediately apparent to me. That also takes both humility and patience, and that's in short supply for most of us, most of the time. The leaders have to be agile communicators, because they have to work with other people to understand the full narrative. They know they can't do this alone. And then there's the real kicker. Even if we've accomplished the elusive goal of sufficiently correctly identifying a problem and sufficiently correctly identifying its causes, we have to determine how to act. And that's really hard—if only because we can only act on one thing at a time, so we have to prioritize. I think this is where the genuine leaders emerge from the pack. They've had the humility and patience to achieve a sufficiently accurate understanding of a problem, including its scope and most influential causes. Then they can appropriately prioritize that problem amidst all the others. And then, beyond that, they have the intelligence, creativity, and tenacity to develop and implement a real, practical, affordable solution with a reasonable chance of being effective, sustainably. Beyond this, of course, they are also able to work with other people as part of a team, whether large or small, and maximize the potential of each member. Of course, they also have to have the chops to understand that they might have been wrong all along, and, if so, the courage to admit it and start over—and bring the team along, too. That's an impressive combination of qualities to exercise together. I think it's really hard to pull off, so I'm increasingly amazed by people at the highest levels of organizational leadership who do. I think the people who do this well are rare, and worth paying attention to—whether or not we agree with them, or even like them. #organizations #collaboration #systems #leadership #problems

Intergenerational Fisticuffs? A Case for Mutual Gratitude, Instead.

Amidst all the intergenerational gnashing of teeth (most recently embodied by #okboomer), maybe a little mutual gratitude would quiet things down. Perhaps older people should reflect more on the gift of younger people, who tend to drive innovation and apply challenging pressure to test the sustainability of old systems and ideas. After all, if the old systems and ideas are strong and true enough, their core essence and fundamental values will withstand the pressure—even as they adapt. A little less bitter resentment (which seems petty and, ironically, childish…) and a little more listening would probably go a long way. Likewise, younger people should exercise gratitude for the gifts of older people, and not be so reductive as to dismiss their perspectives as irrelevant or outdated. The world has problems, but the world is, by all sorts of measures, so, SO much better than it was before. (Consider the precipitous drop in global poverty, warfare, et cetera since, say, the early part of the 20th century. That stuff didn't just work itself out naturally, kids.) Moreover, not only is it somewhat hypocritical—young people literally owe their very existence to their forbearers—but it’s also paradoxical (not to mention, remarkably naïve) to categorically dismiss older generations, since one’s own generation will, inevitably, soon become the older one. (Soon, probably, to be critiqued as irrelevant by the next.) There’s a lot of noise right now, and a lot of impulsive critiques being cast haphazardly. It would probably be worth listening more and saying less, because each generation has something of value to share with the other. It’s foolish to dismiss another generation’s perspectives outright—and that’s true in both directions. Of course, ultimately, all of this “generational divide” is pretty silly, because let’s remember that “generations” are nothing more than somewhat arbitrary group associations. And like any groups, they are composed of radically different individuals. Everyone is unique. Forgetting that is a dangerous prospect—it leads to the perilous habit of categorizing people into reductive group identities. #gratitude #listening #patience #compromise

Faith, Hope, and Love When Things Are Broken

This essay was originally published a in the Buffalo News on September 15, 2019 with the title "Joy Rekindles Faith at Family Wedding." My brother got married last weekend. As he and his wife professed their vows, I felt genuine joy and a sense that things were as they ought to be. Our family is Catholic, so this joy emerged despite troubled times. In fact, just hours after the wedding, an interview aired in which our pastor called publicly for the bishop’s resignation. My four brothers and I attended the same Catholic elementary school and Jesuit high school. We were all altar servers. We are all married in the church. To my knowledge, across a more than a cumulative half-century of Catholic education, none of us was abused. Church was not always where we wanted to be on Sunday morning, but it mattered. Catholicism shaped our moral development, setting clear rules and offering redemption when we messed up. It was a backdrop for childhood. Christmas. Easter. Weddings. Funerals. Brunch at Grandma’s. The crisis hits close to home, then – not explicitly for us, but existentially. My brothers – all local – work in medicine, information technology, media production and digital animation. For 22 years, I’ve either coached or taught at Jesuit high schools, working alongside many good Jesuit priests and brothers – virtuous men and servant-leaders. The spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, invites us to deeper relationships with ourselves, others and God through honest discernment of our most authentic desires. That has helped me to look deeper, beyond the occasional impulse to cut, run and slam the door on the whole institution. But I haven’t been going to church much. Is that a failure? A response? A nonresponse? I don’t know. Maybe all of the above. Mass was always a “joyful burden,” but Sundays now come with a dose of resentment for having committed to an institution that has been negligently and even criminally mismanaged at some levels. To be honest, a morning of blueberry pancakes and cartoons with my wife and kids has, lately, felt more sacramental. So, a lot churned through my mind and heart at the wedding. But somewhere in there, through what I think is called grace, our broken church embraced me again. Because of family. Our family’s strength – suddenly compounded by marriage – was tangible. Our little kids and their great grandparents were bound together in kairos, which is Greek for “an opportune time.” C.S. Lewis called kairos a “brief, momentary glimpse of the eternal.” That’s why, as my grandmother looked on, I knew my grandfather was with us, holding hands with his bride, to whom he made those same timeless vows nearly a century ago. We buried him a few years ago, but the sureness that he has not ceased to exist is grounded in our shared faith. We are more than material stuff – we are eternal children of God. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminded us that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Love is the very nature of Christ. Love and family, then, are intertwined with God. No, my kairos moment does not reconcile the brokenness of our church. It does not diminish the crimes, the rank offenses, the very antitheses of Christian love that such abuses comprise. It does not excuse mendacity. But it does affirm that our Church is bigger and stronger than its weakest, most horrific parts. I’ll go to Mass amidst the mess. I support calls for change – including changes in leadership for which many good priests have called. Deep in my heart, I’ll hold to the truths our church and family have taught my brothers and me since we were little. Because in those truths lie faith, hope and love. If those are not the keys to the redemption of our church, I don’t know what possibly could be.

Excellence vs. Perfection

Students (and their parents) should understand the distinction between excellence and perfection. Perfection is flawless achievement of the ideal. None of us mortal types is going to achieve true perfection in any area of life, except perhaps in the rarest of cases, by some modified definition of perfection. But we can aspire and work toward perfection with near-perfect consistency, and that's excellence. People who don't grasp this distinction aspire to perfection, but mistakingly (and one might say naively, or even arrogantly) believe they are supposed to achieve it. When they achieve anything less, they see only a failure. They do not value incremental improvement. Moving from a C to a B is not a victory for them. It's still a failure; the intrinsic improvement deserves no affirmation. At its root, this mindset is driven by fear and insecurity—it manifests in anxiety. People who understand the distinction, on the other hand, know that excellence is the relentless pursuit of the ideal through genuinely optimal effort. They know that's possible every day. They have the humility to value incremental improvements. Victory lies in steady progress. When they come up short of perfection, they are not surprised, and they are not disheartened. Moving from a C to a B is a victory. Not the end of effort, no, but a victory to be affirmed. This is a goal-driven mindset, and it comes hand-in-hand with the healthy kind of stress. And it isn't just about ourselves. Having this mindset helps us live in accord with others. Because they're just as imperfect as we are. We can appreciate, validate, and affirm their efforts if we aren't first caught up in lamenting their flaws. Excellence is virtuous. It's about the long game. It's habituated, near-perfect effort, blended with the humility of knowing that perfection is always just out of reach. It's knowing all along that we can't and won't be perfect, but trying to be anyway, because it's the right thing to do. In other words, it's getting over ourselves: acknowledging our flaws (and those of others), and then getting back to work, grateful for the time we have to do it. #virtue #excellence #pilgrimage #education #teaching

Kirkus Review: Ten Stories

Kirkus, one of the better-known literary review names in the industry, offered a kind review of my short story collection, Ten Stories. Here's an excerpt I'm proud of: "Cumbo certainly delivers on his vision of realistic fiction that 'resonates precisely because it might as well have happened.' Cumbo’s tales feature a spectrum of sympathetic characters and plausible situations and ably deliver telling details and expressive sentences...ruminative, true-to-life fiction. Elegant writing that captures the minor revelations of everyday experiences." - KIRKUS REVIEWS Here's a link to the review on the Kirkus site. #shortstory #Kirkus #BookReview

Two Minutes in the Van with Three Children

For your entertainment (and by way of warning to those of you who are contemplating having children), I offer this Un-Edited Transcript of a Two Minutes of the Ride Home Thursday afternoon, July 25, 2019 The Participants: DADDY: Me THREE: Our three-and-a-half-year-old son FIVE: Our five-year-old daughter SEVEN: Our seven-year-old son THREE Daddy? DADDY Yes? THREE How come some buildings are water towers? DADDY Um THREE Like how come only some buildings are water towers? DADDY Well, because only some buildings are…well, used as water towers. THREE And why do they have a thing that lets the water out? DADDY Because that’s how they work. THREE What is that thing? DADDY That’s called a pipe. THREE (Incredulous, disbelieving.) You said it’s a pipe! A pipe! DADDY Yes. THREE For the water? DADDY Yes, for the water. THREE Except, Daddy? DADDY Yeah? THREE What if the pipe was an octagon? DADDY Well, I guess that would be okay anyway. I'm glad you know about octagons. THREE Yeah, they're shapes. I know all about them. DADDY I see. SEVEN You don't know ALL about them, just some things. FIVE I see the bank. THREE No, I see the bank ‘cause it’s on MY SIDE. FIVE Yeah but I saw it first. THREE (Screaming suddenly) YOU CAN’T SEE IT BECAUSE IT’S ON MY SIDE OF OUR VAN AND YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK THROUGH THE WINDOWS ON MY SIDE OF THE VAN BECAUSE THAT'S SO ANNOYING!!!!!!!! FIVE (Screaming louder, at a higher pitch) YES I CANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!! THREE DADDDYYYYY!!!! DADDY What? Dear God will you both stop shouting. THREE and FIVE (Simultaneous indecipherable whining about windows and the bank) Meanwhile, SEVEN Daddy? DADDY Yep? SEVEN Are we almost home? DADDY Let’s hope so. THREE (calm now) But Daddy? DADDY Yes? THREE Why are some houses octagons? DADDY Um, well... FIVE (interrupting) No houses are octagons. Houses aren’t allowed to be octagons. It’s against the law. SEVEN No it isn’t. FIVE Yes it is. DADDY Actually, out west in the Navajo Nation, there are houses called... SEVEN and THREE (Rising to shout) No it isn’t!!!!!!! FIVE (Full shouting) YESSSSS ITTTTT ISSSSSSSS!!!! DADDY Stop it! There is no law on the books prohibiting octagonal houses. There are some octagonal houses. Just not here. Now stop. THREE (calm again) Daddy? DADDY What? THREE Where’s mommy? DADDY At work. THREE But I want her to pick us up and drive us instead of you. DADDY I long for the same. THREE Why are you long for it? DADDY It’s…just an expression. It means I wish that, too. SEVEN Are we almost home? DADDY Fortunately. FIVE Daddy? DADDY Yep? FIVE When we get home, I’m going to poop on your head. DADDY Please don’t. THREE and SEVEN, in unison: Poop on his head! Poop on his head! DADDY There will be no pooping on anyone’s head. THREE Houses can be Octagons. FIVE. No, they can't. DADDY We are home. #parenting #parenthood #van #kids

Ashes and Goodwill

It’s hard to give clear thought to what caused a fire when we’re in the midst of putting it out. But afterward, when the flames are extinguished and the smoky remains crumble underfoot, we can sit down with a glass of cool water and reflect on what the hell happened. Interpersonal conflicts can be like this, whether they are one-on-one or involve groups. I’ve been involved in two recent situations that one might liken to such fires—one in a professional context, and the other in a personal relationship. And upon reflection, I’ve realized that these two instances fit a pattern I’ve observed in so many similar situations—including public discourse, particularly in the political realm. While the specifics of each situation differ, of course, there is an underlying parallel: an insidious pessimism. One of the hallmarks of Ignatian philosophy, which has played an important role in my own spiritual and ethical formation as well as that of many people with whom I associate every day, involves aspiring to a charitable disposition toward others—particularly when tensions and temperatures have reached the point of combustion. Ignatius articulated this in his Spiritual Exercises when he encouraged those involved to default to a “presupposition of goodwill.” One might call it a “charitable optimism” about another’s intentions. It does not call for a naïve blindness to ill intentions, or the presumption of the good in every situation. It’s more nuanced than that; likewise, it’s a bolder calling. It’s the presumption of the possibility of the good. It’s an appeal to our common humanity, in order to accommodate each other’s mutual frailty. To cling to the conviction that underneath our lapses, there is a unique human person comprising more than the sum of our failings. And that giving credence to this is of paramount importance—even if, yes, it does imply some genuine risk of being burned. (But can you think of a meaningful relationship that doesn’t?) This insidious pessimism, on the other hand, is the “presupposition of ill will.” To use similar but diametric imagery, I’ll say it’s the arrogance and self-righteousness that disregards each other’s mutual human frailty. It’s a failure to accommodate the fullness of each other’s humanity, instead using a zero-sum calculus to reduce each other merely to the sum of our deficiencies. Some of the signs and symptoms of this pessimism include unwillingness to listen further after hearing something we don’t like, conclusive judgments based on our own feelings (regardless of broader facts), and misappropriating mere anecdotal instances as sufficient evidence of patterns and trends. It’s at the heart of the “call out” culture that seems so prescient online—just consider the ferocity of the mob attacks that dismantle lifetimes of good work and render lifeless everything but a person’s worst moments or most careless comments. Yes, I’ve seen this at work in my own life recently. So, make no mistake: my thoughts here do not comprise some intellectual analysis from a distance. No way. I’ve been right there in the mix, carelessly throwing sparks, and sometimes even fanning the flames. And I bet maybe you have too. What makes this so hard is that usually, we're able, quite easily, to identify the other side's unwillingness to presuppose our own goodwill—all the while hypocritically refusing to do the same in the other direction. Quite a trap. So what’s the alternative to this insidious pessimism? Is it to put on the proverbial rose-colored glasses and ignore the harsh reality that people can be rude, careless, deceptive, spiteful, or even hateful? No. But it is to have the humility to acknowledge our own capacity for the same, while holding fast to the truth that most people, most of the time, are not these things. It’s to approach situations of tension with the underlying presumption that the person or people involved are so much more than the worst of what we are seeing (or think we are seeing). And all the while, having the humility to remember that there’s probably quite a bit we don’t know that’s relevant to their actions. This equips us with the freedom to encounter situations of tension with the confidence and calmness that there is a greater, deeper good to be discovered within each other—even if we have to wait for the flames to clear some space first. I’m told, by those who know of such things, that ash makes fertile soil. #discernment #presuppositionofgoodwill #StIgnatius #communication #relationships #humility

Judgment-Free Zones?

“Hey, it’s okay. This is a judgment-free zone.” I heard this the other day in class. It was a tongue-in-cheek remark—the kid who said it was being sarcastic, which is not uncommon in a room full of seniors. And so, through irony, he was, of course, issuing judgment about something fairly ridiculous the other kid had said. Now, the sarcasm wasn’t very nice, but neither was the ridiculous comment that provoked it. Having overheard this, I first diffused the situation. But then I challenged them. I said, “Guys, actually this is the polar opposite of a judgment free zone.” Because if our classrooms are judgment free zones, we’re in trouble. After all, one of the most vital purposes of education is to develop both the ability and the will to exercise good judgment—not to inculcate the avoidance of judgment. There’s a distinction between critical feedback issuing from good judgment and inappropriate comments (which issue, incidentally, not from non-judgment, but rather from poor judgment). Helping students develop the tools of discernment to understand that distinction is a big part of our job. We can’t develop good judgment in judgment-free zones. We need to facilitate the confrontation with tough situations and different perspectives. Without this, they won't learn to differentiate between good judgment and prejudicial thinking—that is, premature judgment. Judgment without discernment; without thinking. It's understandable why people—indeed, teachers—want to avoid this. It's uncomfortable. But it's irresponsible to teach students that they’re too fragile to handle discomfort and conflict. Both are going to figure prominently in their lives. When I was a younger teacher, I used to tell my students—with genuinely good intentions—that they shouldn’t get so stressed, because even if things don’t go according to their plans, "everything is going to be alright." Well, I always had the sense they didn’t really trust me when I said it. And for good reason: This was profoundly bad advice, and I’ve stopped giving it. One should not mislead his students, any more than a doctor should harm his patients. What I tell them now is this: Everything is not going to be alright. Terrible, painful things will happen to each of us. But relatively rarely, comparatively speaking. Most things will be alright, most of the time, for most of us. Of course there are outliers and exceptions. But you know what? The data are in: So far, you’ve endured and survived 100% of what life has thrown at you, because here you are. Those are good numbers. They prove that you’re stronger than everything life has thrown at you so far. And that suggests that you’re strong enough, well, to continue to get stronger. And you know what? They respond really well to that message. I don’t get the skeptical, sidelong glances I used to get when I suggested everything would turn out okay. Because this is a lot more honest, and it doesn’t set off the built in B.S. detectors with which teenagers come equipped. Fortunately, most of the world is not a judgment-free zone. Most of the world is peaceful most of the time, precisely because of good judgment on the part of most people, most of the time. It’s the judgment-free zones that scare me. #discernment #teaching #education #decisions #judgment

Rock, Sand, and Cura Personalis

(This is the transcript of a keynote address I offered at the Canisius College All-College Honors Program annual banquet. It's on the longer side for my posts.) “Rock, Sand, and Cura Personalis: Self-Care as a Foundation for Service” Paul Cumbo Canisius College Honors Banquet March 7, 2019 There’s a story in Chapter 7 of the Gospel of Matthew called “The Two Foundations.” We hear of two houses—one built upon rock, the other upon sand. The rains come, flooding ensues, and, well, the results are predictable. Anything we want to last, and to function well, needs a solid foundation. Our Jesuit education calls us to a life of service. Essential to that is cura personalis, care of the whole person. My talk is centered on three concepts: strong foundations, a service ethic, and cura personalis. Specifically, I want to explore cura personalis as it applies to self-care, insofar as self-care is the solid foundation for a life of service to others. Let me be clear: I’m saying it’s a both/and proposition: this life of service requires self-care and care of others. Each depends upon the other. They are simultaneous responsibilities—not sequential or alternating. On Valentine’s Day, I decided to do a Socratic Seminar with my twelfth-grade students—all boys—at Canisius High School. I like Socratic Seminars, and I thank the Honors Program for introducing them to me 20 years ago. Basically, we sit in a circle and talk about stuff that matters. Anyway, the question I posed to them was this: “I’ve come to believe that in order for a man to love someone else in the most genuine way, he must genuinely love himself, too. What do you think about this?” It was a great talk. It hinged, as these conversations do, on taking time to define our terms. So, for example, it was important for us to define “genuine love of self.” We arrived, by way of a meandering intellectual journey, at something like this: Love of self means acknowledging the fullness of who we are, including strengths and flaws, and “taking care of” all those parts. We differentiated between “liking” something and “loving” it—and that love is not merely liking, more intensely. We explored how it was possible to love our own flaws, even if we disliked them. Because ‘to love’ means ‘to take care of.’ To invest in. To work hard at improving. By that logic, of course, the things we like least about ourselves are the very things that require the most love. Our flaws, weaknesses, inequities, and bad habits. We don’t have to like them, we have to love them. Because they are, if we’re honest, part of the wholeness of our humanity—which, paradoxically, includes our brokenness. Now, remember, I had asked them about loving others. Well, it’s not hard to make the connection: unless we are willing to love our own flaws, it stands to reason that we would have trouble loving—that is, caring for—the flaws of others. And without this, how authentically, fully, and enduringly can we love the wholeness of their humanity, including their unique kinds of brokenness? I am not a counselor, at least not a “capital-C” counselor. But I have been told by those who are that when a person is truly struggling to find self-worth, it often manifests in a breakdown in basic self-care. Those struggling neglect things like eating. Bathing regularly. Brushing teeth. Bothering to do the laundry, to change the sheets. And those same counselors have told me that oftentimes, those basic things are the starting point for helping a struggling person. There is a therapy consisting of wholly small victories. Achieving the small stuff matters, because taking care of oneself is, however simple it may be, an act of love. This is personal to me because when I was your age I was going through a clinically diagnosed depression. It followed a life-changing decision I made to quit, just as I was getting started, a promising military career at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. I can say honestly it is the only commitment I’ve ever quit in my life. I had built my entire adolescent sense of self and purpose around the dream of military service, like my father, who was an Air Force Major, and both of my grandfathers, who were noncommissioned officers in World War II, only to arrive in the reality of the moment and realize, over the course of a couple sleepless nights (with a rifle at my side—an M1, caliber .30, gas operated, clip fed air cooled semiautomatic shoulder weapon, sir), that I had been wrong. Or maybe I was just scared. Maybe I just quit when it got tough. I was my platoon leader, and doing well. My company tried to talk me out of it. But whatever the reason—and I’m not sure I’ll ever know completely—I quit, put down my M1 caliber .30 gas operated clip fed air cooled semiautomatic shoulder weapon, took off my uniform, and signed my withdrawal papers. I spent the next few years back here in Buffalo, dragging myself from class to class at Canisius College, wallowing in what felt like aimless stupor. And at the worst of it, I stopped taking care of myself. It’s not that I got into drugs. Nothing like that. It’s that I stopped caring enough to take a shower in the morning, or eat. Or get out of bed at all. If we can equate love with “taking care of,” not just “having strong feelings for,” we realize the stuff we don’t like needs more love. More care. More cura, that is. It is telling that I spent much of those college years very much in isolation. I wasn’t in a place to love others well—certainly not to be of much service to them, at least not sustainably. There was too much deficit at ground zero. Okay. I’m shifting gears a bit, but you’ll see the connection. We all know there’s one piece of Ignatian jargon that stands above all others: “Men for others.” Make that, “Men for and withothers.” Err…, no, make it, “Men and women for others.” Okay. So, let’s go with “Men and women for and with others.” However you’ve come to know it—and let’s face it; it has become quite a mouthful by now—this phrase is connected to Jesuit education. It was coined by Superior General Pedro Arrupe in a 1973 address in Valencia, Spain. He was speaking to the alumni of Jesuit schools, calling them to task. Throughout his talk, he implored these men—yes, mostly men at the time—to re-examine their lives since graduating. Simultaneously, he critiqued Jesuit education as a whole, suggesting that it had fallen short of its formative mission. There is some not-so-subtle chastisement. It is not a comfortable read. I wasn’t there, of course, but I can only imagine it was even less comfortable to hear in person. And it’s brilliant. Arrupe offers both genuine affirmation and unambiguous challenge. He’s nuanced where appropriate and blunt where needed. The man had an enviable acumen for agile articulation. I have spent many hours over the years studying and discussing this document with students and colleagues. It has traveled with me, dog-eared, coffee-stained, and egregiously annotated, from the Nepal Himalaya, to the mountains of the Dominican Republic, to the high desert of the Navajo Nation, serving as fuel for the kind of challenging, formative conversations that take place in these classrooms of life. Arrupe’s talk compels deep, critical reflection. It calls for contemplation in action, with an emphasis on the action part. It was a timely kick in the pants to a demographic Arrupe called out for being complacent in their ‘posts of power.’ When you hand a document like this to a young person, especially a young person who cares about the world, it’s sure to stoke the fires. In my twenties, that is, once I emerged from the depression I described earlier, I spent a great deal of time in restless confrontation with life’s inequities. I had the gift of travel in the form of traveling to India and Nepal between my junior and senior year of college, and the world woke me up. Suddenly yanked from the doldrums of my own psychological struggles, I witnessed a wholly different type of struggle in the slums of New Delhi, I changed quickly. I changed even more quickly when I began my teaching career the same week of 9/11, just a few miles from the Pentagon. I engaged with the world in those years, and its gut-wrenching terror became altogether apparent. I as spent more time in the poor villages of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, I struggled to reconcile these parts of the world with the decadence of suburban Washington, D.C., where I had begun my teaching career with the often-privileged sons of the elite at Georgetown Prep. And Arrupe’s document, and its derivative catch-phrase, kindled in my heart and mind a passionate insistence that the world was hopelessly inclined toward injustice. I was convinced that radical action was the principal priority, and that established structures and systems were flawed irreparably. And I was convinced, also, that so much of the problem lay deep in a fundamental human flaw—and that was our universal selfishness. I saw problems everywhere in society. At times, I was inclined to disavow my entire upbringing as a fraud. I resented my own material wealth, which, as a teacher was not much by American standards but a fortune by global standards. And yet I knew that wealth it was the very reason I’d come to where I was. You see, my education—including the writings of Jesuits like Pedro Arrupe and Daniel Berrigan—had presented a conundrum: I was the son of privilege, and yet I also knew it was my privileged education that brought me to said awareness—and a fervent desire to transform the world. There’s a both/and conundrum for sure. I’d like to think some good came from this. But I also know that this period of my life was one in which, ironically, I wasn’t disciplined. I poured myself, often without balance or measure, into my work. I sacrificed friendships and personal relationships. There was a period in my late twenties, just before I met my wife, when I was literally living across the street from work, teaching full time, coaching full time, and directing service programs full time. It was in many ways an “either/or” kind of life. It was either work related, or it was of no real value or consequence to me. As such, I saw my own personal inequities, my own bad habits, those things no one else could see, as entirely disparate from an outward life wholly focused on outward service. It wasn’t that I brandished it vocally—I didn’t brag about it. It’s just that I ignored the clear inner longings that told me I was lonely, that this was unsustainable, that I was in many ways being hypocritical, and that—in the worst moments—I was growing resentful. When I would hear of friends getting married, I grew resentful of my own failed relationships. When I would have financial trouble, I grew resentful of my own career choice—one that I knew damned well would never pay much. When my adolescent students acted like, well, adolescents, failing to acknowledge just how much blood, sweat, and tears I was investing in their education, I grew resentful of them. I would grow judgmental of their parents’ parenting skills—something I was woefully unqualified to do, as is (I believe, to be quite blunt) anyone who isn’t a parent. Gradually, I began to resent my own commitment to service and to others. Because, you see, that’s what happens when a young person burns himself with the bright flames of an outward-directed service ethic while failing to maintain the slow-burning, subtly burning coals at the heart of the fire by practicing mature self-care. Eventually, resentment grows. Eventually, the fire goes cold. Well, for me, the coals endured—although just barely for a while. Because God is good, I met my wife a week before I turned thirty. And just in time, Megan saved me from my own self-assured disintegration. My firebrand sensibilities were tempered by the very different decade of my thirties. Specifically, my restlessness was calmed by marriage, and even more so mitigated by fatherhood. My thirties have brought me, slowly but steadily, to a more refined (though undoubtedly incomplete) understanding of the world, of people, and the systems we’ve created. Even as I continued to commit myself to Jesuit education, and continued to work in the context of developing economies, my life became newly immersed in a far fuller range of human experience—one that demands self-care even more urgently, and ironically makes it even harder. Honestly, it has made me far more optimistic about the world. When one becomes a parent, he or she cannot help but experience all things as a parent. First, it is a great tempering of expectations, and a great dose of realism. This has a way of changing the way one sees, well, everything. It tends to make us a little more conservative (small “c”) in our thinking. But it is also ushers in a great, liberal (small “l”) expansion of hope. The creation of life is overwhelming. In my opinion, it is the premiere existential paradigm shift of human experience, and that’s because becoming a parent is so infused with simultaneous terror and hope—and recognition that for all its flaws, humanity is an absolute miracle. Perhaps that’s why the Christmas story is so powerful—the God-man is made manifest in the form of an infant. Humble, vulnerable, and poor—and yet an unmatched affirmation of human vitality, hope, and potential. If you’d prefer math to theology, try this: The odds against our individual conscious existence prove staggering. The economics of scarcity and value are as clear as the cry of a newborn—we are so rare, by relative volume, in the vastness of space—so, so rare that each of us is, undoubtedly, a miracle if only by mathematical ratio. That alone is reason enough to practice self-care, no? But that’s before you factor in the love, which itself is a force so powerful it cannot be articulated fully in words (or math). And so, in the midst of this paradigm shift of fatherhood, it’s no surprise that my understanding of Arrupe’s clarion call shifted. As I began to regard my students from the standpoint of a father—with the perspective that each is someone else’s child, my approach to teaching—indeed my understanding of our mission—transformed. The longer I’ve been a husband, father, and teacher—the more those three roles have blended. And one of the by-products of that blend is this realization: having one’s own self in order is really quite necessary to being much good in the service of others. As I say to the teenage boys I teach every day, “You can’t be a man for others without being a man.” The meaning is clear: we can’t do much for others unless we also take care of ourselves. So I’ll say it again: To have a foundation of rock, we have to love ourselves. I don’t mean we have to likeeverything about ourselves. That sounds dangerously like Complacency, or his bigger, meaner cousin, Arrogance. No. We have to loveourselves, even the parts we don’t like. And doing that genuinely means taking good care of that self that should be loved. That’s hard. It’s really a lot harder than we think. Now, this may not sound particularly novel, and you might be saying to yourself, “Well, yeah, I figured that out a long time ago!” But if that conclusion came to you rapidly, I’m going to challenge you think on it a little more. Because, like most conclusions we come to quickly, there’s a good chance it deserves more reflection. How well, in fact, doyou love yourself—as evidenced by your actions? By how well you take care of yourself? Because the reality of who we are in a given moment is best found by examining not what we would do ideally, but what we actuallydo—especially when no one else is looking or when no one else would know the difference. (Which is pretty much the best measure of integrity, by the way.) I’ll take ownership of the point. See, I’d like to think I’m a pretty smart, educated, capable, and accomplished guy of thirty-nine—but I didn’t figure thiscura personalis thing out until recently. Like, really recently. Here. Try this. If you’re pretty sure you’ve got your own stuff together most of the time, ask yourself these questions: Do you go to the doctor and dentist as often as you should, and follow their advice? Do you floss your teeth daily, or almost daily? Are you disciplined about getting enough sleep? Are you disciplined about getting enough exercise? Do you have a disciplined approach to electronic devices, so they don’t interfere with your relationships, sleep, or health? Have you ever kept a meaningful New Year’s or Lenten resolution? Do you clean your living space? Not just trash and clothes. I mean, like, wiping down surfaces and cleaningtoilets. Do you maintain a healthy diet, because you’re a smart person and you know what’s good and bad for your body? Do you have true mastery over the potentially addictive substances and behaviors that tempt you most? Do you approach your assignments diligently, taking full responsibility for on-time completion to the best of your ability? If you answered “no” to a handful of these, or most of them, or even maybe all of them, you’re not alone in this room. Because the fact of the matter is that we allstruggle to take care of ourselves in the way that we should. To be disciplined. And my point, you see, is that taking care of ourselves—getting our own basic stuff in order—is really vital to being of service to others. I’d argue that it is, in fact, a not-insignificant act of service in and of itself. It’s discipline, and that’s key to discipleship. The connection between those two words is not arbitrary. I’m not saying never do anythinguntil you’ve mastered personal discipline. No. And in your late adolescence and early adulthood, you shouldbe passionate about stuff. Go for it. Get out there and engage the world. Even if you don’t scrub your toilet or change your sheets or see your doctor as often as you should. Even if you are addicted to gaming, or vaping, or your smartphone. Don’t be afraid to be an activist, political or otherwise. Hey—the upside of youthful passion is that it’s passionate, and without it, a lot of stuff might not ever get off the ground. But at the same time, tread lightly, and measure the loudness of your voice when it gets critical of others, because the downside of youthful passion is that it’s often not particularly well-informed by experience, and it often exudes a rather unpleasant aroma of irony and hypocrisy. Sort of like the guy wearing too much cologne: clearly, he can’t smell it, but others sure can. So, case in point: if you answered no to any of those self-care inventory questions I asked before—let alone a whole bunch of them—it may behoove you temper and reflect upon your opinions about other people and their misguided ways for a while. Because, you know, irony. And in the meantime, you can work on improving those things, maybe just a little at a time. Let me shift gears again, this time to our Jesuit high schools and universities. Again, if you’re listening, you’ll see the connection. I’ve been employed by Jesuit schools for 21 years—literally since right after I graduated high school, and I have a postgraduate degree specialized in Jesuit school leadership, so I get to critique them a little. If I have one concern with them that rises above others, it’s this: In our formative education of young people, we put such an emphasis on service-to-the-other, that I think we may do so at the expense of emphasizing the importance of self-care. In fact, I think we inadvertently compartmentalize service into something wholly outward. We normalize the idea that service is something quantifiable, done through programs. And because of that compartmentalization, it conveniently doesn’t necessarily have to have much to do with how I live my private life. It doesn’t dependon my self-care. It’s an either/or approach, not often enough a both/and. Now I don’t want to be simplistic. I think we do a decent job of treating service and self-care as complementary. Just consider how well our schools align retreats with service initiatives. But again, those are two compartments. I not sure we do so well at helping students truly understand that self-care and service are morethancomplementary compartments—they are, in fact, co-dependent. They have a mutually-causal relationship, not merely a correlation. We must develop the man or woman—help him or her to achieve a genuine wholeness of mental, physical, and spiritual health—if we wish to have him or her be, in any lasting way, “a man or woman for and with others.” We have to empower students to focus on their own self-care—while making very sure we distinguish it well from selfishness. And, institutionally, we have to remember that for all our fervor to set the world on fire through important projects in faraway places, our principal priority—whether in the classroom or far afield—must be the formation of the students in our care.Their formative education is our primary responsibility. My assertion on this is not unchallenged. Not long ago at a conference for Ignatian service-learning coordinators, I got into a bit of a tiff with some colleagues. This was in the heyday of my role in Campus Ministry. I had the temerity to suggest that as high school or university educators, we should acknowledge that the principalgoal of a service learning program for students should be formative education of those students—not humanitarian work or the completion of a particular social justice initiative. In other words, that yes, while we certainly should carry out acts of service, things that tip the scales in the direction of a more just world in the long term, we should first and foremost have the humility to acknowledge that when we bring our boys to a service placement here or another country, we are there for one thing more than any other: As educators, we are there principally to carry our primary mission of educating—of forming—those boys in the context of our mission. Key to that is making space for them to realize that we are allpoor in different ways. That while material poverty is relative to wealth, we each have different, unique, personal poverties that we must acknowledge and confront alongside the material poverty around us. A colleague asked me, “So Paul, you’re saying that for all these years you’ve brought dozens of groups of students to carry out service projects in poor mountain villages, you’ve essentially just been using the locals and their poverty as a sort of laboratory for the moral development of your own privileged students?” My reply? “No, not justusing them. But yes, in a sense, if I’m being honest, I suppose we are. It’s a both/and. And if you’re not willing to acknowledge that, than, well, you’re a hypocrite.” (I should note that this same colleague orchestrates an annual “sleep out” in the streets of a western city, wherein students spend a night sleeping in boxes—but of course safely cocooned in down sleeping bags—in an effort toward solidarity with the homeless. But apparently, this does not qualify as a laboratory in which students “use” other people’s poverty as a sort of laboratory for their own moral development.” Obviously, yes it does. And obviously, there’s a both/and to the whole idea.) You see, it isn’t that simple. The ethical principle of the double effect applies well here. It’s the idea that positive effects don’t necessarily exist in isolation, and that there might be a negative, or partially negative effect, alongside positive ones—and that this does not negate the value of pursuing the positive effect. If we didn’t reconcile the reality of the principle of double effect, we’d be paralyzed from ever doing anything. Because there isa double effect: the four road bridges, three improved roads, four multi-kilometer gravity driven aqueduct systems, half-dozen homes, two school buildings, and dozen or so cement sanitarios that exist because of our little “laboratories” at Canisius High School are absolutely concrete products of a service ethic. And you bet those things have made life better in poor villages. The economic development springing from a well-constructed bridge and road, for example, is hard to fathom. Roads are everything in developing countries. But here’s the thing: my primary job as an Ignatian educator is not road-infrastructure developer. For this purpose, there are professional road-infrastructure developers who are much better at road-infrastructure development. No. My job as a teacher is about forming a different kind of infrastructure of the hearts of my students. And the change in the hearts of these boys is the real product, and that is the more sustainable impact. It’s the long view, that patient trust, that the Jesuit poet Teilhard de Chardin encourages in his poem by the same name. Like so many things in life, there’s a both / and. We in Jesuit education have to focus on our own students if we want to see magnified, long-term change in the world. This calls for a sort of institutional self-care, which is so important to creating young men and women of service. It may seem selfish at first glance. It isn’t. It’s just honest. And the telos, the aim, is not selfish at all. Which brings me back to my point a few minutes ago. I said service to others and self-care are co-dependent. Meaning they depend upon each other. And I said they are simultaneous, not sequential. Because care for others is a fundamental driving force for self-care. Being there for someone else is a powerful motivation to, well, be. In my experience, nothing has driven me to appropriate self-care more than coming face to face with the overwhelming responsibility that comes with fatherhood. I woke up a few months ago and realized: “You idiot. You haven’t been to the dentist in years. You haven’t been to the doctor in years. You’re almost forty, and you’ve had the same extra fifteen pounds that you’ve been planning on losing since you first met your wife ten years ago.” We cannot be men and women for and with others unless we are whole men and women, with both our strengths and inequities loved, cared for, and nurtured. Because it’s real simple, friends. Anything else is not sustainable. In my work in program administration, as well as in my entrepreneurial business pursuits, I’ve learned to value prioritizing sustainability. That’s not about using corporate jargon. If sustainability sounds too corporate-jargoney, let’s go with ‘enduring.’ What this means is tempering my most exciting ideas and aspirations with the cold light of realism in terms of one essential question: Great idea, man, but will it endure? And you see, the same applies to a life of service. If we want to be of service to others sustainably, in a way that endures the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then we’ve got to take care of ourselves. There is no honor in exhausting ourselves in outward efforts that depend on a depleted and neglected inner core. Sure, there may be some short-term successes, and even some admirable acts of heroic generosity. Thing is, it just won’t last. At least not as long as it would if we were taking better care of ourselves. And that martyr-complex thing? Careful. Amidst all the apparent selfless generosity, good chance there’s one hell of an ego at work. Who is serving whom? Now there’s a danger here, of course. Some of you are probably thinking of it right now. How do we draw the line between genuine self-care and self-indulgence? It’s a tricky distinction. But the gut is a powerful thing, and we tend to know when we’re fooling ourselves. Whether or not we act on that—well, that’s a matter of discipline and maturity. I’m not so sure it’s all that hard to know the difference between taking good care of yourself and, for example, just avoiding discomfort. Getting plenty of sleep by being disciplined about bedtime—you know, turning off Netflix at a set time and hitting the rack—is very different from getting plenty of sleep by staying up as late as I want, then selfishly making up for it on the morning end, sleeping in late without regard for my responsibilities. There’s a difference between making an intentional retreat to catch up with oneself and just taking an arbitrary day off to avoid responsibilities. I’m not talking about lowering the standards to which we hold ourselves in the interest of “self-care.” Because that’s not self-care at all. That’s just being lazy. I think the key to achieving cura personalis, simultaneously caring for ourselves while serving others, is to realize they aren’t binary and mutually exclusive. Rather, they have to be blended—that is to say, integrated. They have to effect (with an “e”) each other, and subsequently they affect (with an “a”) each other. It cannot be all about self-care, everyone else be damned. But neither can it be all about others, self-be-damned. It has to be both—not balanced, because balance suggests they are at odds with one another—but rather integrated. Overlapping, if you will. That is the type of integrated wholeness of being to which I referred before. I give talks at boys’ schools on authentic masculinity—and my point is that the authentic man lives such that the various aspects of his life—physical, mental, spiritual, social, emotional, and sexual, for example—blend and overlap. Even as there is tension among and between these elements, the man who has achieved authentic masculinity integrates them. Such that yes, his sexuality and his spirituality are connected; such that yes, he sees the connection between his physical and mental health. That what he does in one area or context of life is not compartmentalized from the others—and that the habituation of small, seemingly harmless vices can creep into our ability to love others and meet our responsibilities. And that small victories over daily struggles are essential to the fabric of our broader moral being. That talk is about young men, but it is, of course, in no way exclusive to males. It is simply about achieving and maintaining an integrated wholeness. That is being human. The word “human” shares the etymological roots with the word “humble.” They are both derivatives of “humus,” which means earth. And thus, being fully human requires being fully humble—being down to earth. So, my invitation to you, my fellow future alumni of Canisius College, is to allow yourself to be fully human. St. Irenaeus of Lyon said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Embrace with humility your own unique struggles as a partof your unique wholeness. Get to know those struggles well, so you can best master them, if only little by little. This will make you stronger, maybe even stronger than you think you can be. And strength is so, so important—because life is hard and sometimes very scary, and you have to endure it. The prognosis should be encouraging, though. The data looks good: Since you’re all breathing, you have endured 100% of the challenges set before you thus far. Those are good numbers. Care well and honestly for yourself, such that you might achieve good, or maybe even great, things in the love and service of others who are, like you and me, unique children of God. Others who are, like you and me, struggling daily to realize their own beautiful potential amidst the wholeness of our humanity. #virtue #service #selfknowledge #balance #Jesuit #Ignatian #AuthenticMasculinity