Dignity

Dignity, to a man, is what love is to a woman. In almost all cases, a woman who lives without love shrivels in some vital way, rots on the vine, falls out of shape, and loses access to the wisdom of old age. A man who lives without dignity is the same. The world becomes a weight which might have strengthened him, but instead grinds him down.

It is important to examine the crux of our desires, otherwise we lose them in hearsay. I grew up surrounded by men who found dignity in capability: the ability to exert their influence on the world, to throw their weight and feel life buckle a little, to solve problems, to make things. The good men I knew provided well for their families, were confident of their value to the world, worked hard at something others found difficult, won success in the eyes of others, and were at peace with that.

I have arrived late to every party in my life. I turned fourteen late, I turned twenty-one late. I hit puberty late, I became independent late. Lately I have become ambitious. For a decade it might have been there, it was not. I feel now, in my hands and my teeth, the desire to make something of myself. I want to be hard. I want to be a big shot. I want to be admired. I want to prove my strength, trample on a few toes, grind a few faces in the dust. I want people to listen when I speak. I want to be deferred to. I want to shape the world around my will. I want to be proud, perhaps a little haughty, dismissive when the mood takes me.

All these things are certainly attainable, but they must be earned. Anything earned must be earned at the expense of something else. I only have a very short life to work with. I am at an age where anything lived leaves other things unlived, and the unlived life piles up. All of us leave a trail of alternate selves behind. The best we can hope for is that we only leave career decisions and real estate choices behind; we must hope that we don’t leave anything vital unlived. Because the unlived lives on, and turns to death inside us. What we are does not hurt us nearly as much as what we were not, but might have been. We leave our unlived lives to be lived out by our children.

What I am really looking for is dignity. But what is dignity, really? It is an internal thing. It is conviction in what one lives for. It is a form of solidity that is open to change, but is not open to compromise. It is the decision, taken again and again, to live for something. Repetition forges a path in our personality. Dignity means unity. It is the confidence born from a life lived in one direction. But not just any direction. There are goals in life which do not give a person dignity. These are also goals which are somehow repulsive to us, and difficult to focus on whole-heartedly. The more beautiful a purpose, the more it draws us, and the easier it is to be absorbed into it.

My girlfriend asked me recently what is the purpose of my life. It is a deceptively good question. In order to articulate the purpose of one’s life, one has to whittle down all the chaff of other things that catch one’s attention. Trying to find a purpose puts things in perspective, and the fleeting interests and passing whimsies, seen from above, fall into their rightful place. It’s an exercise I would recommend to anyone: to write down, in one sentence, the purpose of your life. And see, in simply writing it down, if all the little worries don’t naturally melt away.

The most dignified man I ever met was a Sufi. He was not vain, he was not brash, he was not boisterous. He was extremely humble, but his spine was straight. He had been forged in the fire of love. Devotion had suffused him with the scent of what he was devoted to. All the midnight prayers, all the disciplines, all the dancing and fasts had left their mark on him. He had eyes that said that you could throw the whole world at him, and nothing could knock him down, nothing could even make him sway. He reeked of a very manly beauty. Many of the ‘great men’ I had met in my life had furtive eyes, eyes that said that if everything was taken away from them they would feel naked, and a little ashamed. They were defined by what they had, or what they had done. This man was defined by what he had become. I felt you could have taken everything from him, but you could never take his assurance. He knew, and it was written all over him. I saw in him all the possibilities of everything I might become. He was gorgeous. Looking into his eyes, I knew that all the bigshots I had met in my life were like rats in suits, and this was a lion. He had such weight, such majesty, such humility: such awesome dignity.

I knew at that moment, and the knowledge has hounded me ever since, that the only true dignity is found in a life given over to God. Not the God of finger sandwiches and church fetes; the God that is here and now, the God that lives in the breath. Any other goal in life would be somehow beneath my dignity. But is a goal that demands a lot - it is a goal that demands everything. I pray it embraces me, and I do not leave too much behind.

Winter Study with Mountain
Wassily Kandinsky