I had a humbling experience the other day while driving to work. I was backed up at a stop sign. While waiting for my turn to go, I decided to pull out my phone and check the text message that I heard ping earlier.
As I was doing so, a car coming toward me from the other direction passed the car in front of them. They crossed a double yellow line in the process and barely avoided hitting the next car waiting at their side of the intersection.
From the anonymous safety of my car, I vocally berated the terrible driver for being a reckless idiot. Their dangerous driving put others around them at risk. How careless!
As I finished my tirade, I noticed I had pulled forward through the intersection, cell phone still in hand. I glanced down at the phone and was instantly struck by my own hypocrisy.
I like to think that I am a considerate, kind, peaceful and loving person. But the truth is, I can be as phony as the rest of them.
I think we’re all hypocrites to some degree. Even the most anti-violent fruitarian is responsible for massacring living beings daily — from the insects killed on the vegetables grown for their consumption to the hordes of bacteria living and dying in their bodies every minute of every day.
Nearly any item we own these days is touched by violence somewhere along its production — from dangerous mining conditions risked to gain the materials for our tech devices to awful human rights violations perpetuated by the textile industry. It is nearly impossible to live a life that doesn’t have terrible, if unintended, consequences for others.
Our ‘shadow side’
We all have values that we care deeply about, and we all break them from time to time. Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and prolific author, often writes about our “shadow side.”
Our shadow side is that part of us that was trained, through our upbringing and societal norms, to hide. Whatever behaviors or attitudes got us in trouble or were poorly received became repressed. So, most of us don’t cuss out the person who cut us off with their grocery cart or steal things we admire from a friend’s house.
But those tendencies may be in us, and it’s healthy to be humble enough to acknowledge that. As Rohr says, “The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows us to see beyond our shadow and disguise and to find who we are.”
You can’t fix what you don’t think is broken.
When I recognize my hypocrisy for yelling at the bad driver while being a bad driver myself, I open the door for redemption and improvement. Rohr even goes as far as to say that he prays for one good humiliation a day, in order to help him along the path toward growth and health.
I am not perfect. And that is okay. None of us are. The healthy reaction to our imperfections isn’t self-flagellation, crippling shame or aggressive self-loathing.
It’s gentle acceptance, realizing that we are only human, as flawed as everyone else. We can give ourselves grace and choose self-improvement.
Slowly but surely, from a place of love, we can embrace our whole selves while moving closer to our ideal selves along the way.
Hayward is a former Christian and the author of a spiritual memoir, “Giving Up God: Resurrecting an Identity of Love & Wonder,” and a children’s chapter book, “Sedona and the Sloth.”
