There’s something to be said for tradition. In this case I am not speaking of Christmas trees and Easter eggs, but of the abstract concept of tradition. Take the Catholic Church, for example. The Church is an organization that has thrived for millennia, and shows no signs of letting up in the present age. One of the guiding forces of the Church is none other than our word of the day, Tradition (in the Church, we like it so much that we capitalize it). Tradition, as the preserved wisdom and practice of our predecessors on this ancient globe, provides generally reliable insight on how to address current problems. In fact, consulting tradition in this way almost allows those past men and women to return to the realm of the living, if only momentarily, to sound off on what must be done. G.K. Chesterton puts the idea forward quite beautifully in his book Orthodoxy:
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
Do not worry, dear reader (if, in fact, you exist): I am not going to bore you with a long treatise on Church Tradition. I am far too uninformed on the subject to do that. Instead, I wish to apply the concept of tradition to the wonderful practice of self-reflection.
I was looking over my inaugural posts in this blog today (in other words, consulting tradition to inform current action), and I couldn’t help but realize that it has changed a bit over the past year, perhaps a bit too much. The writing in the initial posts seems more lucid, more straightforward, than more recent endeavors. The content, too, seemed deeper and more insightful.
Does this reflect a deeper change in me, myself? Have I fallen off the spiritual wagon, or at least grown (metaphorically) fat and lazy so as to slow the wagon’s pace? I certainly hope not. However, I do sometimes find myself wondering at how a past version of myself would approach my present circumstances:
“Would Senior-Year-of-High-School-Joe have handled this situation better? If this had happened to me last year, would I have dealt with it more gracefully? Could my Kindergarten-self have addressed this problem more efficiently?”
As you can see, I sometimes go too far with this activity. Yet it is beneficial to look back on past problems, if only to recall the tools it took to solve them. I am the sum total of my life experiences. Everything I have overcome as an individual (granted: in my case, not a whole lot) required the cultivation and practice of a certain virtue or grace, which, though it may fall into disuse during easier times, remains in my soul. In other words, all capability and all wisdom which I have known in the past are still at my beck and call. The choice is simply whether or not to tap into them. I am my past selves; they live on long past their expiration date, and into the present moment. So the next time I find myself wondering what Senior-Year-of-High-School-Joe would have done if he were here, perhaps I ought to walk over to the mirror and ask him to his face.
Presently yours,
Joezilla
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