Three Lessons from a Benevolent Universe

I try to remember that everyone is going through something and has gone through something.

No matter how wealthy or poor, how powerful or meek, how healthy or sick—everyone suffers. And at times, suffers brutally. Grief, loss, and addiction affect everyone—whether it's presidents or paupers.

This is the first lesson I learned about suffering: if everyone suffers, and suffers gravely, then I have an opportunity to help them mend just by treating them with dignity. And practically speaking, I can’t handle having a different MO for people who I like and respect and trust, and for people who I distrust or even find repulsive.

My soul can’t code-switch in the same way that my language can.

If I try to selectively treat some people with dignity and not others, it feels like my character splits in two—like a self-inflicted Jekyll and Hyde. I lose myself. So I try to offer the same dignity to everyone. It’s all or nothing—not because it’s easy or even comfortable, but because it’s the only way I know how to stay whole.

What to make of suffering itself, though?

I had this thought experiment in the past week—which has been the most intense we may have ever had. Our family is entering a season of tremendous challenge, and equally tremendous joy.

And as I look to the horizon ahead, I had one of those raw, reflective daydreams that stripped my heart down to naked honesty.

Let’s assume there is a higher-order being that influences our lives, orchestrating at least some of the suffering and joy we experience. Let’s further assume that this being actually does care about us and wants us to thrive.

If you are a theist, that being could be a benevolent God. If you are a non-theist, maybe you still hold space for the idea that something greater—life itself, the universe, some force beyond understanding—is trying to help us grow.

If we assume that there is a benevolent being that truly cares about our long-run best interest, and that being is intentionally influencing the suffering and joy in our lives, there must be some reason.

So what are they trying to teach us?

I can never know for sure, but I think it’s something like this—something about how we are in relation to others:

Learn to take care of yourself.
Take care of others.
And let others take care of you.

Or—
Learn to be a light.
Help others find their light.
Let others find the light in you.

Or even—
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Help others laugh.
Let others help you laugh.

Each part of the triad points to a different kind of human bonding.

To love the self is to become a vessel—open to love, radiant with light.
To love others is to offer them that light.
To let others love us—that’s the hardest. It requires trust.
It asks us to believe that we’re worthy, and that others are safe enough to let in.

Again, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that benevolent higher being is trying to teach us this—though too often, our actions wrongly suggest otherwise:

Learn to make money.
Take money from others.
Prevent others from taking your money.

Or—
Learn to live in the shadows.
Put others in darkness.
Fight the people who put you in darkness.

Or—
Learn to create fear.
Project fear onto others.
Shield yourself from the fearful others.

The first triad is a lesson inviting us into trust, love, and connection. The alternative traps us in a cycle of fear.

The first is an open hand; the other is a dagger at the neck.

The point is in how we are in relation to others. I don’t think the suffering and joy the benevolent being is throwing our way is to teach us to be in a state of conflict and exploitation. I think what they’re trying to teach us is to be in a state of harmony and intimacy.

Every experience of suffering and joy follows this pattern of pedagogy:
Experience love.
Love others.
Let love in.

Not one, not two, but all three:
Learn to love (an act of the self).
Love others (an act onto others).
Let love in (an act of others onto us).

We can’t graduate with just one of these lessons—we need all three. Hinduism has taught me this. So has Catholicism. Even my reflections as an indifferent agnostic in my early twenties taught me this.

Life has taught me, through all gives and takes from us, that we need all three threads of this triad, braided together.

As I grapple with the road ahead for our family, we are starting down tremendous suffering—but probably more than our fair share of joy, too. In prayer, contemplation, and written reflection, I’ve come to this conclusion again and again—including this week—and more strongly every time.

Maybe there is nothing out there. Maybe there is. Your beliefs and your guess are as good as mine. But it is helpful to think as if a benevolent being is trying to teach us something.

Because the conclusion I’ve come to—over and over—is powerful and instructive:

All this suffering and joy reminds us that the meaning of it all is to refine our relation to others—
By experiencing love,
Loving others,
And letting love in… again and again.

To move us forward, faith must come from somewhere

There’s a old, simple, adage I’ve always liked: Say what you do, do what you say.

It’s essentially my moral upbringing in one sentence. The western version of what my parents instilled in me: Satyam Vada, Dharmam Chara - tell the truth, do your duty. These ideas, whether espoused from an Eastern or Western perspective have been a recurring lesson in my life - truth cannot solely be a theoretical concept, it must have a symbiotic relationship with action.

Which is to say, I really avoid making promises I can’t keep. Even little ones. If my family asks me to get grapes from the grocery store, I don’t simply say “sure”. I always respond to a simple request like this with something like, “Sure, I’ll check if they have any and get them if they’re there.”

Mind you, in the hundreds of times I’ve gone grocery shopping in my life, I cannot think of one time when the store was out of grapes. They’re grapes after all, the store always has grapes. But the thought always remains - don’t make promises you can’t keep.

But this week, I broke my rule. I made a promise, to my son, that I’m not positive I can keep.

Our older son, Bo, has been having a rough week. With Covid exposures in his classroom and the holidays coming, he’s been in and out of school. We’ve been stuck at home. His routine and support network of his friends and teachers is something he just doesn’t have now. We think this has been affecting his anxiety levels at bedtime.

The other night, after probably two hours of shenanigans I tried a different tack. Rather than barking at him to go to sleep - which I’d already tried and failed at, twice - I went up and just gave him a hug. I asked him how he was feeling, and if he was scared. 

I never got a clear answer out of him, but he did melt into my arms and lap. Clearly, he felt unsafe and anxious. We don’t know exactly what it was, but presumably his fears came from some combination of “dragons”, the dark, Covid, and “bad guys.”

Then, suddenly, he sat straight up and looked at me intensely. Eyes wide, he said nothing, but I innately understood that he needed comfort, reassurance. He needed to feel like there was nothing to be scared of, that his mommy and papa were there to protect him from whatever monster was lurking.

And so I said it.

“Don’t worry bud, you are safe here. I promise.”

And even as the words came out of my mouth I felt uneasy. Because I cannot, with certainty, 100% guarantee his safety. I can control a lot of the factors affecting his safety, but not everything. There is uncertainty at play here, this is life after all and things happen that we can’t control.

But I had no choice. I had to make that promise. This is what children need their parents for; what sons need their fathers for. And even though there was uncertainty, it’s a promise I could mostly make. I maybe felt 90% confident in that promise, maybe 95%. 

But that remainder…it doesn’t sit well, because I know it’s wrong to make promises I can’t keep. And this one was not a small promise, the stakes are about as high as it gets.

—

“Faith” is something I’ve never fully understood. It’s a foreign concept to me, a construct that’s rooted in western ideas and Christianity. There are similar concepts to faith in Hinduism, but it’s much more broadly contemplated, rather than being rooted specifically in something like Jesus Christ or salvation. From my vantage point, In hinduism “faith” is a secondary idea among many others, whereas in Christianity faith seemed more like the whole point.

This promise, made on the floor of our sons’ bedroom, was a real-life lesson in faith for me.

I made a promise I don’t know if I can or can’t keep, but had to make. I took a leap of faith when I made this promise that Bo would be safe here, in this house. And even though I made this promise, upon reflection, I didn’t make this leap of faith blindly. This faith came from somewhere. Faith comes from somewhere.

For me this faith came from the careful decisions Robyn and I made to move into this neighborhood, where neighbors look out for and know each other. It came from the prayers we do nightly, not as a free pass for a divinely intervened halo of safety, but because prayers and the belief that God is listening helps me to reflect on and improve how I think and act. 

It came from me knowing Bo is a good kid with a good heart, that will probably make generally good decisions. It came from knowing he has a younger brother who will look out for him and watch his six.

It came from the marriage Robyn and I have, I know together we are more likely to succeed at having our home be a safe place for our kids. It came from all the preparation and practice and debriefing Robyn and I do individually and together to learn from our mistakes. It came from our friends, family, and neighbors who pour love and comfort into our lives. It came from the unconditional love I have for my son and my dogged determination to honor the promise I made.

My faith comes from somewhere.

And yet, days later, I still questioned whether I should’ve made that promise. Because even with faith that comes from somewhere and isn’t blind, I just don’t know. But as I thought about it, what a sad, dull, stale way it would be to live without acts of faith. 

A friend of mine said something that was perfectly timed for this week and has been reverberating in my mind for four days straight:

“If I feel ready then it’s a sign I waited too long.” 

There are so many “acts of faith” that aren’t remotely religious. Starting a company is an act of faith. Marrying someone is an act of faith. Playing sports is an act of faith. Leading a new project is an act of faith. Standing up to a bully is an act of faith. Planting a garden is an act of faith. Reading a book is an act of faith. Ordering a cheeseburger is an act of faith.

Maybe not in the religious sense, but our lives are an acts of faith, strung together from moment to moment.

And in retrospect, I’m grateful for this. Because even though I don’t understand faith in the Christian sense, I do have a appreciation now that acts of faith are essential for human life to flourish. They help us grow. Acts of faith make us lean on each other and deepen our trust. They alleviate suffering and bond us to others. Acts of faith put us on the hook to figure out difficult but important challenges.

And that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I made a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, to my son. And now I’ve gotta own it. I’ve got to figure out how to keep the promise that he will always be safe at our home, no matter what. And I’ll be damned if I break that promise to him.

—

I know as I write this that for many, faith is a loaded term. It reeks to them of religious institutions that are untrustworthy, and that have actually inflicted great, irreparable harm to thousands of people.

Because I was raised Hindu, with Eastern philosophy and theology baked into day to day life with my parents, I luckily have some distance from deliberately specific, Western notions of faith.

And it seems to me that, yeah, we shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep. That’s still true. But maybe I shouldn’t be so doctrinally rigid with that belief, either.

Acts of faith move us forward, when they’re not made blindly. And yes, God is one source of faith. But there are many other sources of faith that we all can and do draw from when we leap, with good intent, toward something better. What seems to matter more than where our faith comes from, is that it doesn’t come blindly from nowhere. It matters more that it comes from somewhere.

Faith must come from somewhere.

"Even if I don't like you, I will carry you."

There isn’t much about our lives that isn’t affected by how wealthy we are. Wealth is insidious, it creeps into every corner of our lives. Our health, our mental state, our life spans, our relationships, our vocations. It’s everywhere; every damn place.

I am very grateful when friends comment on questions I ask on facebook. And there were many thoughtful responses folks shared to, “what’s something that has little to do with how wealthy we are?”

One friend commented with, “the earth’s rotation.” Which is true, the natural world and the laws of physics have little to do with how wealthy we are. But, knowing her that answer was sincere but probably also a little tongue-in-cheek. Because if an answer is the earth’s rotation - that implies that basically nothing else on earth has little to do with wealth.

Even inner peace and integrity, which some people shared, seems to be affected at least somewhat. Yes, money can’t buy peace or integrity, but chronic poverty probably makes it so that peace and acting with integrity are orders of magnitude harder to achieve for some.

But especially after several friends talked about how they thought hard about the question and literally couldn’t think of anything, I was unsatisfied. I agreed with them, but I was unsatisfied because it’s really sad if no aspect of human life is untouched by wealth.

So I thought about it some more, and I don’t even know if this is correct, but it’s the best I’ve got.

—

Suppose you go to an ice cream shop and order a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Instead of providing the ice cream, however, the clerk becomes very angry and indiscriminately hits you with a wooden rod. No warning, no apparent cause - just blow after blow from the business end of a broomstick.

This, by all reasonable accounts would be a completely unacceptable behavior. There is no circumstance I can think of where some story like this would be acceptable. It is illegal, yes. But more than that, it violates a norm we have when living in a free and peaceful society. It doesn’t matter who you are - it’s not okay to beat someone with a broomstick indiscriminately and without provocation. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, that is NOT acceptable.

To be sure, things like this still happen, but to reasonable people it is not acceptable that they happen. Reasonable people do not think it’s acceptable to be on the giving or receiving end of a broomstick in this way. That’s just now how we live.

And, because this sort of thing happens in ways that are somewhat predictable based on race and class, I concede that lots of people perhaps aren’t reasonable by the parameters laid out in this thought experiment. But let’s just continue because that’s not the problem I’m focusing on here.

What this thought experiment illustrates, however, is that norms about what’s right and wrong exist. Norms we owe it to each other to follow, and that moral obligation has little to do with how wealthy we are. There is moral obligation that exists, that has little to do with wealth.

Now, we may disagree on exactly what those moral obligations are, but this preposterous example, hopefully articulates that there is some moral compact among reasonable people - in this case, not bashing someone’s head in with a stick without provocation or warning - that has little to do with wealth.

The most common discussion that advances from this fertile soil is the question of - what are our moral obligations to each other? And, that’s literally and endless, and important, but also a stupid, impractical debate. Not in the sense that we shouldn’t have this discussion, but stupid in the sense that we facilitate this discussion stupidly.

Because we often exclude people with inconvenient opinions from this sort of discussion and often go into discussions to discern moral obligation where at least one party is unwilling to admit they are wrong. So it’s stupid - because we start discussions without the possibility of reaching a thoughtful conclusion.

But I think there’s another path this conversation can take. Instead of asking what our moral obligations are to others, we can ask something more hopeful. What if we asked: if we imagine the community we wished we lived in, what would that community believe they owed to each other?

And this thought experiment took me back to thinking about wealth.

Because I believe at the time we are conceived we all have equal potential. But then as the clock starts ticking, that starts changing. Because from what I’ve read, the wealth of our mother (or even if our grandmother underwent a period of famine) starts to affect us in the womb, before we are born. So from the moment we are conceived - the context in which we live, which is so strongly affected by our wealth - starts to influence our lives.

But I also believe potential is different than worth. And even though our potential as humans may be different (and unfairly influenced by wealth) our worth is equivalent. We all have equal worth. But more importantly, we all have immeasurably large worth. A life is not just worth something, and worth something equal - it is worth more than we can count or comprehend.

And that’s all fine and aspirational and mushy gushy, blah blah. Here’s what that means for me on the question of the moral standards of the community I wish I lived in.

Let’s ignore what moral obligations we have to the people we love and even the people we like. I’ve found, at least, that it’s much easier to treat people well if you love or like them. What really reveals the character of a person or group is how they treat people they don’t love or like.

I am not this man today, I know I’m not, but the man I want to be would live a creed like this:

I will treat you - whoever you are, whether I love you or not, whether I like you or not, whether I fear you or not - in the way that you would like to be treated. Even if it is difficult, I will treat you with respect. I will try to learn to love you or to like you. But even if I don’t like you, I will carry you. I will carry you without expecting your gratitude or the recognition of others. And if I falter, and need you to carry me, I will let you and be gracious for your kindness.

And ideas like this inevitably attract pessimism. “That’ll never happen. It’s not scalable. It’s not in people’s nature. That’s a waste of time. Let’s focus on something achievable.” I’ve heard phrases like these, over and over.

I think we should try, and try courageously to create a community that believes it has this stringent of a moral obligation to others.

The hope of a community like this is worth failing for. Because even if we only advance one inch in this effort which is equivalent to a journey of many miles, we will have moved an inch. And that inch creates the permission for others to try for two inches. And then for the generation after them to try for four. And maybe someday, even if it’s many decades after our own deaths, the long walk will be over and we will have arrived.

And this whole argument rests on the assumption that we have some defensible moral obligation to others we live in community with. And maybe that’s presumptuous. But I think that assumption is worth having faith in, even if it’s not decidedly proven. It is worth taking a leap for.