Reading Francis

How would you feel if I told you that, as you grow older, you’ll probably become a more concentrated version of the person you are now? Like, you, only more so?

This isn’t a data-driven theory, just an observation. It seems like, for the most part, the people I have known for a long time tend not to undergo significant personality makeovers, nor do they remain static. They just become more of who they already were.

I was sharing this theory with a friend of mine recently, and They. Were. Horrified. Or maybe Terrified is the better description. They wanted to be sure that it didn’t have to go down that way. Which I suppose it doesn’t, since it’s a theory I kinda made up.

But that reaction gave me pause. This person is a wonderful human being with many great qualities that I am honored to witness. (I would say the same of several of you.) An increase in those qualities would be amazing.

What they focused on, though, was the other stuff. The quirks and hangups and parts of their personality that they are neither blind to nor proud of.

We all have those. Shoot, my mantra for the last week has been that the spiritual life is just a recurring offer to Get Over Yourself, and I can tell you exactly where I continue to reject that offer. I can definitely predict several ways that I will be a pain in the behind to those around me in thirty years (if I’m lucky enough to be around then).

I know it’s really late in Lent to raise this, but maybe a good examination of conscience would be to look at your life and identify those habits that it would horrify you to see magnified and concentrated, and see how you can eliminate those. Fast from that stuff, instead of chocolate.

But, if you’re going to do that, make sure you do the flip side too. If you can’t see or name the parts of you that would be a blessing to others to have magnified, distilled, concentrated, ask someone who really knows you to tell them to you, and marinate in those a little, to use a Fr. Greg Boyle malapropism. In that specific way, hurry up the aging process by trying to live more into those things.

Eventually, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get to the point where somebody notices that we too have become more of who we already were. Maybe we can try to shape the course a little if we try to be more of the same now, on purpose.