There is a tendency for many of us to think we’re smarter, more evolved—superior, really—than others. Whatever we’re doing at the moment, including what we know, the way we live our lives—we consider to be on a higher plain than the other “deluded” mortals. They call that hubris, I think.
I’ve started meditating. I already know some of you are going, “kooky.” That’s fine.
Whenever I set aside time to for this practice, my mind sets off running in a myriad of directions, like it always does when I try to slow it down and locate space away from the “white noise” of daily life.
“Why don’t others meditate?” my thoughts often communicate back to me with smugness. That pride thing.
Actually, others do meditate. Mark embraced meditation over the last four years of his life. He let me know he meditated, but he never made me feel inadequate because I didn’t (and “couldn’t”) for the longest time.
Hearing Dan Harris on a podcast, talking about his own reluctance and even, skepticism, towards meditation piqued my interest enough to investigate and begin taking small, tentative steps towards cultivating the practice in my own life.
One of the countless things I loved about Mark was his gentle and uncritical ways. He didn’t preach, but modeled his behavior.
When he became plant-based, he sent Mary and me a book at Christmas in 2015. How Not To Die: Discover The Foods Scientifically Proven To Prevent and Reverse Disease sat on the shelf gathering dust for most of the following year. Then, in October, just prior to leaving on his final walk, I began reading Gregor’s book. I was convicted by my own surety at one time that eating copious amounts of meat was the way to go. Before being plant-based, I was into Paleo.
Hubris is problematic.
C.S. Lewis, an influential 20th century Christian writer and thinker identified pride as “the great sin.” In his best-selling work, Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote that Christian teachers considered pride to be “the essential vice, the utmost evil…Unchasity, anger, greed, drunkenness…” were mere “flea bites” in comparison when placed up against pride.
Lewis went on to say that “it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.”
The problem with thinking that we know better than others do about the ways of the world is that we might be wrong, and often are. When we inflict our own error on others, it creates division and strife. We’re seeing this writ large on the stage of politics.
Rather than inflict his own ways on his parents, Mark simply walked his talk. He would gently share with us where he was in his life at the time, but never in an “I’m better than you,” smug kind of way.
It’s that trait that endeared him to so many.
When I look back over my own life, I cringe at all the times I’ve been dead wrong about a host of things. One of the best examples of this was our foray into fundamentalism and embracing the error of Jack Hyles. This one experience illustrates why I’m working at being better at not getting all “puffed up” with pride.