Do we ever learn?

A patient of mine was lamenting his tendency to go backwards in life - to do what he knows better than to do. We talked about the human frailty - our tendency to learn things, to make changes, but then to fall back on old habits, old ways, old thoughts and beliefs.

It is indeed part of our tragic nature - a flaw we all share - that we often know better than what we do. We learn, we change, but often only partially.

As we talked, I wondered aloud what our next reaction to this situation might be. I mean, obviously we experience frustration about "knowing better", but what comes after that....is it despair? Or, is there another reaction we can choose after we allow ourselves that moment of initial frustration about being fully human and not changing fully in the way we would wish? Despair is so tempting, so easy when we don't know what else to think or feel.

This morning I offer this: that after the frustration of chronic human failure to change, we can choose to react with hope.

Hope. Not blind optimism or trying to insert a positive thought we don't actually believe, but hope.

Hope that in spite of our failure to change fully, we have at least begun to change. We are capable of some change, of starting a process in which change is happening even if it is not complete. Hope that our incomplete changes are in and of themselves meaningful and good. I may not have stopped being selfish, but the times I choose not to be are good - good for me, for my family, for my patients, and maybe for the world. I want more of those good choices not to be selfish, and hope propels me forward to continue to work at choosing well. Despair blurs my judgement and tells me that failure to perform at the level I expect means I should give up. I causes me to lose sight of the good that has come from the changes I have made. We are works in progress, and to lapse or step backwards is not the same as to undo all of the progress we have made. In this case hope is not closing one's eyes to the truth to escape a bitter reality, but rather seeing things for how they really are, and being more engaged with life as a result.

There is another source of hope. A hope that our progress someday will reach completion, that this cosmic drama we live in is headed in a direction that eventually resolves with a full reconciliation and restoration of all creation. I grew up with the notion that all that had to happen was for me to a) believe the right things, and b) die and go to heaven where everything would be fixed up for me. Later in life I've come to realize that the work of refinement, redemption, and reconciliation are in progress now, here, on the earth, and that God seems to will that we partner with God in this work in the present, rather than waiting for a magic transformation to happen after we die. I'm not attacking the idea that a final perfection might take place, just the opposite, I think the work of change is completed in a mysterious way in the future. I think perhaps we do eventually "learn" fully, in some transition that takes place beyond our mortal bodies. But for now, we are to engage in starting the process. Showing patience with ourselves for not being at the end point, and choosing hope rather than despair for our "work in progress" that someday, through the mysterious work of the Divine will be completed.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  1 Cor 13:12