For a number of years, our son faced any setback with crippling self-doubt and anguish. I suspect that’s fairly common for children, especially those who are good at most things they try; if you’re naturally talented at lots of things, then those areas where you do fail are unsettling. (I was the same way as a kid.)
To help him get over this, we encouraged him to look at any “failure” with an attitude of “Hmm . . . That’s interesting.”
“Oh, I got that math problem wrong? Hmm . . . That’s interesting; what happened, and how can I learn from it?”
“I spelled that word incorrectly? Hmm . . . That’s interesting; what’s going on with the English language in this case?”
“I didn’t hear the teacher and I got in trouble for daydreaming? Hmm . . . That’s interesting! I wonder why I was having a hard time focussing?”
Certainly this method didn’t work in all cases. But it worked often enough that I think it helped our boy grow and develop, opening new avenues of thinking and keeping him from being dragged into the minutia of individual problems. Thus, getting math problems wrong helped him learn. Figuring out spelling helped him develop a love of languages. Discovering he couldn’t focus was precursor evidence that he needed glasses. And so on.
I was reminded of this as I reflected on today’s readings. The first reading, from the Book of Job (the Old Testament book we had read at our wedding!), shows Job’s attitude towards the Lord. It shows Job’s understanding of his insignificance compared to the Almighty. Job recognizes that our wisdom cannot match God’s, our righteousness cannot match God’s, our vision cannot match God’s. “If I appealed to him and he answered my call, I could not believe that he would hearken to my words.”
This outlook of Job’s always appealed to me, and it intersected with the “Hmm . . . That’s interesting” mindset we’ve tried to show our son. Many times, when I face a situation that I find overwhelming, I take comfort in the fact that — even if I don’t understand what’s happening — I know that God understands. This opens the opportunity to grow, in myself and in my relationship to the Lord. I recognize (like Job) that I will never match God’s wisdom or judgment, but I can at least get better myself.
This forward movement is echoed in today’s Gospel selection from Luke, where Jesus warns about attachments to this material world. Jesus ends this lesson by saying, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.” I’ve written before about the need to build our lives around the fleeting nature of this world, compared to the gift of eternity offered by Jesus. But what struck me today about Christ’s words was the idea of looking to what was left behind.
How often do we not grow from our experiences, but rather dwell on them? We aren’t moving forward in our lives, but spinning our wheels in frustration at our own failures or setbacks?
When you look at God’s plan in terms of forward momentum, you realize that this idea echoes across the Faith. Jesus’ own life followed a continual path that led — literally — to the Father’s presence. (The mysteries of the Rosary are a great embodiment of this forward progression.) The Sacraments have a beautiful progression, starting with Baptism, moving to First Communion and later Confirmation, progressing through life for many with Marriage (or perhaps Holy Orders), moving forward past our own sins with Reconciliation, and moving perhaps closer to our final reward with Anointing of the Sick.
Although he’s not perfect (far from it!), our son has still taken the growth mindset he gleaned from trying to see what was “interesting” about his failures and setbacks. In his final year of Elementary School, he did a presentation on the importance of failure. His teacher strongly discouraged him from choosing the topic (since she didn’t think there was enough scientific research or study), but he risked his grade and the potential of “failure” as he strove to prove how we can move forward not in spite of our imperfections, but because of them. He found lots of research, and got an “A” for the presentation.
If there’s some aspect of your life that you keep “looking behind” at, try to do so with the new goal of seeing what you can learn or how you can grow from the experience. Recognize that God’s own wisdom and power dwarfs our own, but that He wants us to know, love, and serve Him. The path forward will be filled with mistakes and setbacks, but it’s nothing that Jesus can’t help you navigate, so long as you trust in Him and try to learn what you can from this infinitely interesting journey.
