So I've been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the  eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you put on your résumé, which  are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that  get mentioned in the eulogy, which are deeper: who are you, in your depth,  what is the nature of your relationships, are you bold, loving, dependable,  consistency? And most of us, including me, would say that the eulogy virtues  are the more important of the virtues. But at least in my case, are they the ones  that I think about the most? And the answer is no. 

So I've been thinking about that problem, and a thinker who has helped me  think about it is a guy named Joseph Soloveitchik, who was a rabbi who wrote a book called "The Lonely Man Of Faith" in 1965. Soloveitchik said there are two  sides of our natures, which he called Adam I and Adam II. Adam I is the worldly,  ambitious, external side of our nature. He wants to build, create, create  companies, create innovation. Adam II is the humble side of our nature. Adam II wants not only to do good but to be good, to live in a way internally that honors  God, creation and our possibilities. Adam I wants to conquer the world. Adam II  wants to hear a calling and obey the world. Adam I savors accomplishment.  Adam II savors inner consistency and strength. Adam I asks how things work.  Adam II asks why we're here. Adam I's motto is "success." Adam II's motto is  "love, redemption and return." 

And Soloveitchik argued that these two sides of our nature are at war with each  other. We live in perpetual self-confrontation between the external success and  the internal value. And the tricky thing, I'd say, about these two sides of our  nature is they work by different logics. The external logic is an economic logic: input leads to output, risk leads to reward. The internal side of our nature is a  moral logic and often an inverse logic. You have to give to receive. You have to  surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You  have to conquer the desire to get what you want. In order to fulfill yourself, you  have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. 

We happen to live in a society that favors Adam I, and often neglects Adam II.  And the problem is, that turns you into a shrewd animal who treats life as a  game, and you become a cold, calculating creature who slips into a sort of  mediocrity where you realize there's a difference between your desired self and  your actual self. You're not earning the sort of eulogy you want, you hope  someone will give to you. You don't have the depth of conviction. You don't have an emotional sonorousness. You don't have commitment to tasks that would  take more than a lifetime to commit.

I was reminded of a common response through history of how you build a solid  Adam II, how you build a depth of character. Through history, people have gone back into their own pasts, sometimes to a precious time in their life, to their  childhood, and often, the mind gravitates in the past to a moment of shame,  some sin committed, some act of selfishness, an act of omission, of  shallowness, the sin of anger, the sin of self-pity, trying to be a people-pleaser, a lack of courage. Adam I is built by building on your strengths. Adam II is built by  fighting your weaknesses. You go into yourself, you find the sin which you've  committed over and again through your life, your signature sin out of which the  others emerge, and you fight that sin and you wrestle with that sin, and out of  that wrestling, that suffering, then a depth of character is constructed. And we're often not taught to recognize the sin in ourselves, and that we're not taught in  this culture how to wrestle with it, how to confront it, and how to combat it. We  live in a culture with an Adam I mentality where we're inarticulate about Adam II. 

Finally, Reinhold Niebuhr summed up the confrontation, the fully lived Adam I  and Adam II life, this way: "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our  lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. nothing which is true or beautiful  or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore  we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be  accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is  quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own  standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by that final form of love, which is  forgiveness.” 

Thanks.



Last modified: Tuesday, January 14, 2025, 8:38 AM