Capstone Integration What is a Life Well Lived? Life is messy. I have tried to plan it out. Planning sometimes works to a degree, but the steps of life “don’t take place in a nice, neat order.  It’s a developmental process that will recur throughout your lifetime and you’ll move between stages as you learn and grow.” (Navigating Your Career Journey - Center for Career Development - Moreau FYE Week 4) I think that this is a good way to think about planning life. Because nothing is going to go exactly as you intend. In a word, nothing is constant. So we must find the things that are constant, and strive towards those. My mission statement is essentially that— the things which I believe are constant and unchanging. I said in it, “I believe that God is good. More importantly I believe that He loves me, so much that He suffered the worst pains imaginable for me.” (Mission Statement - - Moreau Week 7) His love is unconditional, meaning that no matter the circumstances, He will still love. That is what Christians are called to do as well. Because life is full of the unexpected, and oftentimes the thing which we do not expect is suffering. But the amazing thing that Christ did was to love the people who caused His suffering. That is a hard thing. But such is unconditional love, which is my mission. Who, then should we love? Well, for one, God. But what does that mean in practical application? “I was hungry and you fed Me, I was naked and you clothed me” is what Christ said. So when we love those people around us, we love God. This is akin to what Fr. Hesburgh said, “If you want to do something good, I think there’s a lot of room right here to do something good.” (Hesburgh - Jerry Barca, Christine O’Malley - Moreau FYE Week 2) Look around to your immediate neighbor. Not to someone you might help on that mission trip this summer, but to the kid who is sitting alone in the dining hall. Or your class mate who needs help on the homework. Because if we can’t love the people next to us, how do we expect to help those far away? And if we do this, the positive effects are greater than the sum of the parts, as Fr. Greg Boyle records, “alone, they didn’t have much, but together they had a potful of plenty.” (Tattoos on the Heart, Chapter 8: Jurisdiction - Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. - Moreau FYE Week 7) This, I have found, is easier said than done. Loving and connecting with people requires something that is extremely hard to give, and that is yourself. Relationships are impossible if you are simply thinking about yourself. You must instead forget yourself by simply enjoying the presence of others, paying genuine attention to them when they talk, caring about how they feel, and simply knowing them. And when I have done this, I have found myself enjoying myself more than any other time. This is because forgetting yourself “strips you of yourself, as of a coat of armor, by leading you to a place defined by something larger.” (Why We Need to Slow Down Our Lives - Pico Iyer - Moreau FYE Week 1) This type of relationship, in the context of helping, is called accompaniment. “Some people usefully focus more on what it is not: accompaniment does not involve being patronized, or having one’s autonomy taken away or one’s sense of dignity diminished. It doesn’t mean another person takes over your life.” (Teaching Accompaniment, Steve Reifenberg) The point is that in any relationship, even when the other is in dire need of help, you must remain a servant to those around you, recognizing that you are worth more than no one. It is important to have a certain sense of dignity, however. All people, to some degree, deserve this. And it eventually stems from God and His love for us. Jacob Walsh had this experience regarding this topic. He says, ““I think you don’t believe God loves you because you don’t love yourself,” he told me. “You don’t believe you can be loved. You think if people knew the real you, they wouldn’t love you either.”” (Growing Up Gay and Catholic - Jacob Walsh) And in terms of leadership, you must have this dignity, which is often seen as a a sort of authenticity, in order for 1 https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/39695/files/523981?module_item_id=167999 https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ people to listen, as Parker Palmer writes, “Leadership for community requires authority, a form of power that is freely granted to the leader by his or her followers. Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authentic, as authoring their own words and actions rather than proceeding according to some organizational script.” (Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community Parker Palmer) This dignity is also what allows yourself to recognize the things that you are good at. My mom told me in an interview that “you are good at designing things, and it is your passion.” (Conversation with Lauren Whatley, February 3, 2022 - Moreau FYE Week 5) Knowing these talents is crucial to using them to help others. As an aside, it is important to allow everyone this dignity, because sometimes it is unjustly taken away. Dean Marcus Cole wrote about an experience wherein a police officer took away that dignity. He says, “Still, I have often thought about what lasting scars may have cut into their psyche by watching what that officer did to me that night. I often wonder what my sons think of me, as a man, and as their protector, knowing that I could not fight back.” (I am George Floyd, Except, I can breathe. And I can do something. D. Marcus Cole) It is a heartbreaking thing to see something so violently stolen. But, as I said in my mission statement, I am ultimately a servant, so my suffering must be checked, and I must remain humble. One reason for this is that I have very little to be prideful about in the first place. Not very long from now, I will be dead, a thought called Momento Mori. A nun said that this idea, “allowed [her], not exactly to cope, but to surrender everything to God.” (Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die - Ruth Graham - Moreau FYE Week 3) And that is what we must do if we are to live a life well lived, surrender. We must surrender to the fact that suffering is a fact of life, and that our m mission is not to escape it. Aria Swarr said, “the purpose of my life is not simply to overcome suffering - suffering is a part of our lives - the purpose of our life is how to respond to suffering.” (5 Minutes - Aria Swarr - Moreau FYE Week 6) And so, as I said in my a letter to my former self, “I can only give you this advise; take time to have fun, hold fast to your friends, trust your God. Go boldly into whatever suffering you encounter knowing that it is those times that truly make a life well lived.” (A Letter from Your Future Self - - Moreau Week 8) 2 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://grottonetwork.com/make-an-impact/transform/why-does-god-allow-suffering/?utm_source=moreau&utm_medium=class&utm_campaign=spring_2022