Light and Momentary

So good and so surprising

Over the past few months, I've been directing a sizable slice of my creative energy toward our parish's retreat team. It was a really joy-filled responsibility, and it was kind of a lot of work. I wasn't sure how I would keep the balls in the air once the semester started, but I figured I'd muddle through somehow. 

Last weekend was the retreat, and there are a few things I especially want to remember about it. I was our team's spiritual director, which meant that I was in charge of spiritual formation during our preparations. On the weekend, I was expected to be available for women who needed to talk. The big difference between those two things is that the former offered me lots of opportunities to work in advance. If I wasn't quite sure which direction to head in when I had an idea, I could chew on it and pray over it and eventually come to a conclusion. You can't really do that with a person in the throes of a spiritual crisis.

So here is the weird thing: each of the three women who wanted to talk to me over the weekend needed something that I felt prepared to offer. It wasn't the conscious, deliberate preparation I'd been doing for our team meetings. It was the preparation of past sufferings, of shared experiences.

The weirdest part of all: for a long time I have battled anger and bitterness about one of the substance abusers in my life. If you added up the number of times I have thought about smacking her, it would be a large number. If you added up the number of tears I have shed over her, it would even larger. I have never prayed more faithfully for anything than I have prayed for her to be free, but she is not sure she would like to be free just yet. I did not really want to read all those dumb books about substance abuse, but I pored over them anyway in hopes of finding something useful for her. As I prayed and as I learned, compassion snuck up on me.

On the weekend I spoke with someone who needed that painfully acquired perspective. Until recently, I could not have spoken with genuine compassion about the issue that was weighing her down, but I believe God used my past sorrows to lighten her load in a small way. I understood at least a little bit of what she needed that night, and why. I was able to offer some concrete judgment-free assistance in the moment, and to run interference for her the next day.

I have complained so fiercely about the relentless willful folly of the person who has taught me most of what I know about substance abuse. I never suspected it might be preparation.

The next morning I mused to the retreat director over breakfast, "You know, Veronica, God is so good and so surprising."

I'm still thinking about that.

Stick a fork in me, temporarily

Praise the Lord and pass the vodka, I have a completed tenure application.

I estimated that it would be a medium-sized pain in the butt, but it was actually a pretty substantial pain in the butt. The pain is not over, because it will be reviewed by a departmental committee that will doubtless tell me to do some more things and some different things and wrangle with the unfriendly upload interface some more.

But for right now? I've done all I can do.

Sunk Costs

I must not have an economist brain, because I cannot persuade myself that the sunk cost fallacy is truly fallacious.

You know about this already, right-- that it's supposedly bad judgment to say "I should go to the gym because I paid for the membership"? You should go to the gym because it makes sense to go to the gym. The money is already gone, whether or not you go to the gym.

I find this allegedly fallacious logic SO MOTIVATING.

Right now, though, it is tripping me up. I've known all year -- literally since I wrote my new year's resolution post in January -- that I wanted to do a fall half-marathon and also that it would be pretty tough to fit it in. I am slow enough that half-marathon training eats a lot of time, and as the distances increase they also burn a lot of willpower. I signed up for an October half-marathon KNOWING that it would be tough to get the runs in around the fall retreat schedule and also tough to get to the race itself, since I will get home from Arizona at about 11pm the night before the race. Which is 45 minutes away.

Last Saturday during my 10-miler I thought, "I can't keep this up for another month. But! I could email a pal to see if she is willing to help build a marathon relay team instead! I can switch my registration around even though I can't get a refund. That could work!" I can do a quarter of a marathon, no problem.

The relay idea doesn't seem to be working out, though. Under the circumstances the strictly logical decision would be to keep exercising for the stress relief and endorphins while acknowledging that I'm going to skip the half-marathon I registered for. It was good to have a goal that kept me running; it's probably more sensible to adjust the goal than to insist on powering through to meet it. 

But I paid for the race. I should run the race, says the voice in my head. Don't be a quitter, says the voice in my head.

The first time I read about the sunk cost fallacy I thought, "That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. OF COURSE you should go to the gym if you paid for the gym membership." These days I no longer think it's the single dumbest thing I ever heard. But I'm pretty sure I'll never think like an economist.