The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them. | Henry David Thoreau
In the book Walden, Thoreau makes this observation about people and their ‘quiet desperation.’
By this, he means that all people have this ideal of life in them that they are seeking to attain. Whether that is a hole that needs to be filled or a identity to be discovered, there is something in life that isn’t met. All of life is lived to fulfill it. I would say Ecclesiastes 3.11 references this same feeling when it says:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes is talking about the perfection of God marred by sin (to be experienced fully in eternity); Thoreau translated this desperation to the misplaced values that arise from consumerism. His experiment was to get away from everything, all distractions, to find a life of peace and contentment in nature (read the book if you want to know how his experiment ended up). In any society, you have a number of different desperations living quietly among one another.
Our desperation is not quiet anymore; I think the volume on our desperation was magnified last night. But it wasn’t just last night. The discontentment with life has been building through Supreme Court decisions, Black Lives Matter protests, and Religious Right marches. We have been declaring the need and the void louder and louder and louder, hoping that making it known would somehow fix it. But the fact that we don’t agree about what the source of the desperation is means that as one person gains ground, another feels like they lose it. As another person fights for their ideal, another feels attacked. As one person celebrates, another feels mocked. The only way to match a noise that seems to be drowning you out is to get louder yourself. On and on we go, turning up the volume to get our point across.
Last night, some people voted their desperation; making known that they feel cheated by the system and let down by the status quo. Others found a deepening desperation at the election of a man so profoundly against their ideal (and responded through social media and protests). I am not going to argue ideals here, or attempt to dissuade you from feeling desperate. Instead, I want to aim our desperation toward reconciliation; it is clear that we are not on the same page. What will it take for us to hold ideals, our differing desperations, while living in harmony with one another?
It takes humility. Humility does two things to us, it humbles us before God, causing us to take on His concerns. It also humbles us to others, make us care for theirs. Anyone who has been at my church has heard me reference Philippians 2.3-4:
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
This is easy(er) to do with those who agree with you. How do you take on the interests of others when they stand opposed to what you believe? You listen. You take the time to understand what they believe. This doesn’t make you take on their belief. Instead, you allow their worldview to have a fair hearing. Then you share your beliefs with them. This is called dialogue. It is different than posting your thoughts and walking away (blog irony). It means hearing and being heard. This does not in itself promise reconciliation, but it will go a long way in helping us to understand our fellow human beings and what they are experiencing. The reality is, no one feels content with the way things are, we all want to work toward healing, but the very healing we desire is blocked by our own pride.
Let’s just start with this. The next time you encounter someone who comes to a different conclusion than you; ask them why. Don’t ignore them as if they have the plague. Don’t lash out at them. But also, don’t agree with them to avoid conflict. Ask them questions. Answer theirs. Get to know the person behind the worldview. While you may never agree with them, it makes people a lot more difficult to be against. They are living under a quiet desperation, just like you. While you have been given an answer to yours (JESUS!), they are still laboring under the weight of trying to solve the riddle of this life. We are all trying to fix it, even if this places us at odds with on another. As GK Chesterton said:
We must hate the world enough to change it, and yet love the world enough to think it worth changing.
Which is a statement as much about people as it is about any abstract part of creation. We must hate the brokenness enough to pursue reconciliation, but love others enough to go through the hard work of knowing them.