"Look to yourself, Anthony"

Recently, I have been indulging a fairly severe case of weltschmerz. As is often the case, simply realizing what was going on was a big step toward getting out of it. In that odd way that things sometimes work, the diagnosis came from an unexpected source; not a spiritual director or a self-help guru but a physical therapist and her intern. I was complaining of fatigue, sluggishness, ennui, malaise --- a lot of who-cares-ness. My PT listened to this both sympathetically and empathetically and then called in the intern, who was passing by, briefly explained, then asked young Ashley what she thought was the problem. "The world," young Ashley said without hesitation.

It was so true, so clear, so wonderfully innocent that I almost laughed myself off the table. It was, indeed, as simple as that. Things are not right and the reminders of that are, if one is paying any attention, non-stop, in your face 24-7.

(By the way, the fact that "in your face 24-7" is now accepted as not only correct but as a fairly high level of discourse is itself a reminder that things are not right.)

What to do about it? The answer is, of course, obvious, although profoundly counter-intuitive: Stop paying attention to the world.

But for those of us who have grown up with a deep sense of responsibility to others, this feels not only practically impossible but morally reprehensible. One would have to choose consciously to avoid the political battles, the natural disasters, and all the silliness and heinousness that humans are prone to and that make such fascinating stories. This is so far from what we have been taught, so far from what we are used to, so far from what the engines of "the media" want us to do, that even imagining it is psychologically nearly impossible.

So let me help.

There is a story that the greatest of the Desert Fathers, St. Anthony of the Desert, told on himself and that I have always thought contained a profoundly important lesson for us all. Anthony had been looking around and had become ever more aware that the virtuous suffered and the vicious prospered. As the old hymn goes,

          Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder
          Why it should be thus, all the day long;
          While there are others living about us
          Never molested, though in the wrong.

Anthony was getting more and more angry and as he wandered and wondered he cried out to God something along the lines of "How can you let this happen?" One imagines that he ranted at some length, quite possibly becoming more and more self-righteously angry. Eventually, God spoke to Anthony saying "Look to yourself, Anthony. These things are not for you to know."

One doesn't have to be what we now refer to as a "control freak" to imagine one's response to that as some version of "But....but.....but....." We have been taught --- one might say conditioned --- to pay attention to everything, to have an opinion about everything, to do not only the right thing but the best thing. Ignorance may be bliss but should still be avoided at all costs.

But God's admonition to Anthony is not unique. Alcoholics Anonymous counsels its members not to concern oneself with anything outside one's own "hula hoop." Keeping it simple, as AA preaches, requires giving up control over the things one cannot control.

But this is a negative counsel; that is, it is advice about what not to do. What is the positive version? I believe that it is to pay attention to one's own being, whether that is through meditation or contemplative prayer or long walks or listening to Bach cantatas.

This has its own dangers, of course. Paying attention to oneself can slide into solipsism. But the dangers of being sucked into the world, into a maelstrom of imponderable and uncontrollable phenomena, is a sure path to world-weariness.