Loyalty, pt. 3
In our last discussion about loyalty, we ended with questions about why so many options lead to less satisfaction in our lives. I asked you what you were looking for in your life. I asked you if you were actually committed or loyal to anything. I hope you’ve taken some time to think about those questions. Here’s my stab, at least in part, at an answer.
I think, and I’m not super educated or anything, but I think we’re looking for a life of deep meaning and I don’t think we can find it without loyalty to people and things that really matter. Real loyalty. Not the corrosive and debilitating loyalty that demoralizes and mistrusts outsiders, but loyalty that honestly appraises people, movements, situations, or whatever and still chooses to stick by them- through thick or thin.
Loyalty means that we work for the good of others, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. We stick with a cause that we really believe in, even when it missteps every now and then because we believe that, at its core, it’s worthwhile. We keep our commitments, regardless of anything else, because we’ve said yes and no to the right things. We stay in a relationship with another person, even though they fail us, because we love them and love is so much more than feelings.
Loyalty isn’t dependent upon the person, thing, or movement you’re loyal to- it’s dependent upon you. It can’t become corrosive if you acknowledge, as we all could stand to do, that people and systems are fundamentally flawed. Nothing and no one, in our world as it is, is perfect. But, because we believe that there’s good at the heart of the world, we’re going to labor with and on behalf of the person, thing, or movement we’re loyal to, through thick and thin. We won’t be defined by the people, things, or movements that we serve because we are so much more than what we do and, therefore, we won’t get defensive when someone asks us questions or has a negative experience with these people, things, and movements. We’ll welcome critique and view outside opinions as gifts to make everyone better because loyalty isn’t about blindly defending something, it’s about working for the good of it.
And if we can do that, work for the good of the people, things, and movements we’re loyal to, we’ll shock the world. We’ll be so countercultural that people won’t be able to help their curiosity about us. We’ll enhance the world around us by being for it and with it, not against it.
But we can’t do that if we just keep flitting from person to person and new product to new product. We can’t be truly loyal to anything if we don’t have a commitment to stick with it when it stumbles and falls from time to time.
I imagine that at least some of you are thinking that this all sounds great. You might even be fired up and ready to bring real, true loyalty into your life and world. But, can you really do it? Think about whatever it is that you’re most loyal to. Think about how you would feel if it were threatened. Maybe you’ve already experienced this. How did you respond? As I mentioned above, I’m not talking about real threats, I’m talking about perceived threats.
Imagine with me that the person you’re most loyal to is your mother. Imagine that you love her so much, have no complaints about her, she was and is the best mother in the world. Now, imagine that you’re having a conversation with one of your buddies who works at the grocery store in your community. Your buddy is telling you about how your mom, wonderful as she is, came into the store the other day and just treated them horribly.
What’s your knee jerk response? Are you able to put aside all of your biases in favor of your mother and listen to your friend who is telling you about a really painful experience they had with her? Are you able to listen and consider that maybe your mother isn’t just the greatest all the time, always? Are you able to accept that your perception of her is limited and, thus, incomplete as her beloved child?
If you can’t answer in the affirmative to the questions listed above, you’ve got a corrosive loyalty problem. I don’t think most of you are going to like this, but I’ll say it anyway because I’m used to people disliking what I say by now and, more importantly, I love you.
What we have got to understand is that accepting an alternative perspective and really hearing someone out does not undermine our loyalty to a person, thing, or movement.
Listening, without judgment and defensiveness, to someone with an experience drastically different than your own DOES NOT mean you have to agree with or even validate their experience.
Are you aware that you can hear, understand, and entertain ideas without them having to become part of your worldview? You can truly understand what someone else is saying and still disagree with them. You can imagine where they are coming from and why they drew the conclusions that they drew or made the decisions that they made without validating their position. It’s not dangerous to hear ideas and worldviews different from your own, it’s empathetic.
How strong is your tendency to create a bubble around yourself and those that you care for? Remember the social media echo chamber and virtual reality scenario I discussed a few weeks ago? Do you seek out ideas that make you uncomfortable in that space? If you’re a parent, do you screen your children’s library book before you bring them home to make sure that you never read them any ideas that aren’t consistent with your worldview?
Those who answer “yes” to that last question get me more fired up than anything else. How in the world do you expect children to learn to hear, understand, and entertain ideas that conflict with their worldview without being shaped by them if you yourself don’t expose them to these “bad” ideas and help them see why they are wrong? Are you even able to do this? How many of us can truly say that we can come to information and ideas with a mind willing to learn, but a heart rooted in a firm foundation that can’t be shaken?
If you have a tendency to create a bubble around yourself and those that you care for to shield them from “bad” people and ideas, then I’d like to not-so-gently suggest that perhaps you haven’t built your identity on anything solid. You’ve developed some corrosive loyalties to things that you think need your defense and protection. Why do you think they need defending and protecting? Because, deep down, you know that they’re not solid enough to withstand criticism and mishandling. Or because you have doubts. Or maybe you don’t really know what it is that you believe- you’ve only scratched the surface when there’s whole worlds to explore.
What I hope you’re seeing is that there’s a lot going on underneath the surface of our lives. We live, work, move, clean, cook, and have a life that, for most of us, remains unexamined.
Do yourself a favor: ask difficult questions about your loyalties. Explore what it is that you really believe. If you’d like to level up, allow your mind to be changed. Not for shallow, cheap, or emotional reasons, but because another point of view makes more sense than the one you’ve always held. Consider it all a gift. You’ve got one life to live. Don’t spend it being corrosively loyal. You and the world you live in is worth more than that.