Isn’t it strange that princes and kings,
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
And common people like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass, a book of rules;
And each must make, ere life has flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.
— R.L. Sharpe
Many people—from princes to kings to clowns that caper in sawdust rings—recognize we live in times that shake our highest values and deepest sources of meaning to the core. Philosopher Martin Heidegger describes the resulting tension, “The no-more of the gods that have fled and the not-yet of the god that is coming.”
The magnitude of this transition reminds me it is more than personal shortcoming when I feel small and lost.
Help comes to me through inner work, an ‘activism’ of development and self-change whereby I learn to see the subjectivity of my world view and take responsibility for the fruit it produces. Following is an example:
For many weeks a demanding personal-weather-front causes difficulty on the job. Work is no more onerous than usual, but I am beset with one storm of resistance after another. The minor inconvenience of early morning meetings provokes strong resentment. Routine scheduling tasks spiral from dull to unbearably oppressive. An extra assignment is not welcome variety but a predatory power play. The only relief I see is to quit the job! I struggle to combat the disruptive 'mood' possessing me and it eventually subsides, even though outer circumstances remain unchanged.
To quit the job as a means of resolving strong affect would leave underlying problems and hidden motivations untouched. As a solution, it is material rather than transformative and (like an outdated physics) belongs to ‘the gods that have fled’.
Inner work ushers me to a frontier in which I am fueled by psychic forces that often create turbulence. Developing the ‘skillful means’ with which to respond to them necessitates ongoing self-examination and inquiry into unconscious motivations. Attended faithfully, inner work transforms personal stumbling blocks into valuable stepping stones. It serves the approaching future and ‘not-yet god that is coming’.
I find encouragement for this work in the old story of David against Goliath and a more modern Margaret Meade who counsels: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.