My wife is a track fan girl…a self-described “track stalker.” The adjacent spectator sitting above, below, or beside her, might not detect it. A stolen glance at her pre-prepared track spread-sheet would quickly betray the intensity hidden behind her polite, genial facade. If you sat next to her, you would soon learn that her intimate knowledge of arcane track data extends, beyond her own children’s statistics, encompassing, not only her home team’s metrics, but those of her opponents’ as well. And just like every parent of every track athlete since the dawn of bipedal locomotion… events featuring her children induce ear-drum splitting screams. I doubt she’d ever admit it, but it could be that my wife loves track even more than she loves me.
It was the day before we were due to fly out to the first post-COVID, Division III Indoor National’s Meet in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After two years of COVID taking it away, my son was set to represent the anchor leg of the Washington University Bear’s 4×400 meter race. This is John Harry’s last year of eligibility, and therefore, his last chance to compete in Indoor Nationals. He was stoked! If possible, I think Lisa was even more stoked than him…until….
At seven o’clock, my father-in-law’s companion, Lynn, called from his home in Florida. An ambulance was on its way. An array of frightening symptoms had stolen his otherwise sharp mind, along with control of his bodily functions. To top it all off, a worrisome fever suggested a life-threatening problem relating to his nightly dialysis.
How much time do you think it took for Lisa to set aside her plans for watching her son’s last Indoor National’s track meet so that she could sit with her dad in the ICU? Answer: in the time it took to hang up the phone, she was busy re-routing her plane ticket from North Carolina to Tampa, Florida.
Lisa missed the meet where her son got his running groove back, and for the very first time in living memory, Wash U’s Men’s track team stood on the top of the podium! The first eyes John Harry would have sought out in the crowd as he stood on the highest platform, with a Division III championship trophy in his hands were hundreds of miles away.
What do you think? Did Lisa regret her decision? Not on your life, and not on her dad’s life! Thankfully, with the help of antibiotics, and many peoples’ TLC, including Lisa’s, her dad is recovering nicely from sepsis. That’s the way it works with love. What looks like sacrifice or suffering on the outside, seems as natural as following the trajectory of gravity, or the flow of the tide. When you love, it’s just kind of what you do.
The example of Lisa forsaking her favorite activity to care for her dad will feel familiar to anyone who has taken vacation time to sit at the bedside of an ill or dying friend or family member. To put it in one of Theresa of Avila’s metaphors, love has a way of expanding the basin (i.e. the soul) that holds it.
Researchers of ethical development have observed this kind of expansiveness as people progress in levels of moral maturity. For the morally developed person, like Theresa’s basin, compassion and action begin to stretch beyond immediate friends and family to encompass a wider and wider array of concerns and people.
I know a young adult who is dedicating her time, treasure, and talent to create more resilient systems of health care for under-resourced mentally ill people. Being in the business of mental health myself, I know the Sisyphean task that awaits her. When I asked her about this, she replied, “I’m willing to dedicate my tears for this.”
Poland is a nation of 38 million. Her citizens, so far, have welcomed over 2 million Ukrainian refugees. In the first day of sign-ups, the British government reported that 100,000 of her 63 million citizens had signed up to host Ukrainian families this week. What we are seeing in this crisis is an outpouring of people dedicating their sweat, blood, resources and tears for people they have never met.
Experience provides plenty of examples that altruism is not the only motivator of human behavior. It may even be that altruism is not the most basic motivating force underlying human actions. But I think it could be said that it is the crowning motivator that binds, completes, and satiates all of the disparate drives of the human soul. Which leads to a couple of Sunday morning questions.
Reflection Questions
For whom and for what are you willing to change your plans? A track athlete (like my son and two daughters) works unbelievably hard, pushing through pain and exhaustion to shave a second off of their time. What concern makes you glad to expend your energy, time, treasure and talent? Where do you dedicate your tears? Where is the next circle of concern your soul is just now beginning to expand into?