Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Limitations, Shortcomings, and Contentment

Limitations, Shortcomings, and Contentment

Last updated on: July 16, 2023 at 6:00 am by Vance Morgan

0 Comments

Limitations, Shortcomings, and Contentment 2023-07-15T08:41:04-04:00 Vance Morgan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

For the past many years, my upper-division (juniors and seniors) classes have included an ongoing writing assignment that I call the “Intellectual Notebook.” Students are required to make at least one (preferably two) entries of 750 words or so per week, selecting a portion of an assigned text as the jumping off point for an open-ended reflection on what the passage makes them feel and think about, as well as what connections they can make. I describe my reasoning behind the assignment in the course syllabus as follows:

notebook 2

The intellectual notebook is an ongoing writing assignment that will allow you to keep an ongoing written record of your intellectual engagement with the course materials this semester . . . The idea behind the notebook grows out of the conviction that rich thinking and good writing are bound up together: your ideas about the books and issues of the course will grow more sophisticated when you “write through” your thoughts.

A former student who wrote three notebooks for me in different classes during his time at the college wrote the following testimonial in the last entry in his final notebook:

Speaking from three journals worth of experience, I can say with some authority that this is an unequivocally valuable exercise. One cannot fake engagement with the texts in this medium; one cannot hide out in the course when a project like this is required.

My own testimonial is that this assignment has, over years, produced the most interesting, insightful, honest, and beautiful student writing that I have read in over thirty years of college teaching. As I began my summer project this past week of rereading Michel de Montaigne’s Essais from cover to cover (all 850+ pages of them) in preparation for an Honors colloquium on Montaigne and his world that I will be teaching next spring, I was reminded of how students the first time I taught this class engaged with Montaigne in their intellectual notebooks.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows how much I love Montaigne and how influential he has been on my life both professionally and as a person. My first opportunity to teach Montaigne in an Honors colloquium came in the Spring 2020 semester. Eight honors students were enrolled and the first several weeks of the course were wonderful. But then with less than a week’s notice, the pandemic forced the college to send everyone home and figure out on the fly how to finish the last two months of the semester remotely on Zoom.

I realized quickly that for this particular class, conversations on Zoom were going at best to be a faint shadow of the sorts of conversations we had been having in person for the first half of the semester. Accordingly, the intellectual notebook assignment became even more important. For their required entry during a week toward the end of the semester, I asked the students to focus their notebook reflections on “On Presumption” and “On Experience,” two lengthy and important essays from the latter part the Essais. Two students chose the following passage from “On Experience” to write about:

We are great fools. “He has spent his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. “If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do.” Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all . . . To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.

Jack (I have changed my students’ names) wrote:

I have always enjoyed the question if money was no option what would your occupation be? . . . The few people that can give a truly honest and individual answer are those that are converging to the life that Montaigne suggests to be most fulfilling. So let us stop chasing that which is fleeting and that which is arbitrary yet instead invest ourselves in the here and the now. Let us come to know ourselves rather than the person we are pressured to be. When we can master ourselves, not in controlling desires or limiting actions, but in knowing what makes us live, we can begin to extinguish the dumpster fires of nonsense and worry that the world throws at us every day.

Brittany had revealed in her notebook throughout the semester her struggles with OCD and other perfectionist tendencies since early childhood; she expanded on that at the beginning of her reflection.

The importance of accomplishment has been impressed upon me many times over since I first enrolled in school. Possessing an obsessively competitive spirit at a young age, I glorified and reveled in the identity of the “overachiever” archetype. My desire for superiority was so delusional and uncompromising that I refused to recognize the value of any activity I did not already possess a natural aptitude for. Though I have since (slowly and begrudgingly) accepted my limitations and “mellowed out,” the standards to which I compare myself are largely similar. Now that I am older, the model of behavior that I and many of my peers seem to aspire to is the overachiever’s sinister cousin: the career-driven, productive workaholic. Even beyond my peers, our individualistic American culture as a whole has idealized ambition, efficiency, and competition. There exists a disturbingly romanticized vision of the sleep-deprived but passionate soul who is able to successfully prioritize his or her career, work, and productivity over self-care and personal interests. As someone who is still uncertain about her career path and who chose a liberal arts education over what would commonly be considered “useful” degree programs, I often feel as if I have made inadvisable choices and have failed to cultivate the proper ambitions. Along with most others I know, I feel immense guilt and dread if I do not have a “productive” day.

What could a reclusive, 16th century French essayist and philosopher have to say to a brilliant young woman seeking to understand herself and find her path through a world that defines “success” in ways that often are physically and psychologically destructive?

Montaigne offers a radically different perspective on what an ideal lifestyle should look like. It is in the manner in which we conduct ourselves, not in our achievements, that Montaigne places value. Submitting to Nature, embracing life’s pleasures, accepting our human limitations, and finding order in common ways of living are all far more worthwhile endeavors than maximizing productivity and ambition at the expense of chief human good . . . This outlook is so foreign to the cultural sentiment I have become accustomed to that it seems revolutionary.

The question, of course, is whether it is truly possible to live such a life?

Is Montaigne’s model of living feasible? It requires both moderation and the ability to “view both good things and bad things sanely,” qualities many people do not possess. Moderation, though ideal, is impossible to perfect due to our various weaknesses. Additionally, identifying the “most common human pattern” will forever be complicated, since our understanding of human behavior and our customs themselves are in constant motion . . . Montaigne offers us one helpful directive, that is to study oneself . . . We must neither be beings who embody the romanticized cultural standard of productivity, nor must we perfectly realize Montaigne’s vision; We must only recognize our limitations, embrace our shortcomings, and be “content with our own functions.”

Although Montaigne was Catholic, his vision of the balanced and moderate life is thoroughly secular. Yet it resonates beautifully with the Gospels. When Jesus tells us to “consider the lilies” rather than worrying about tomorrow, when he asks whether obsessing about our limitations can add one inch to our stature, he is revealing the same river of psychological health that Montaigne advises us to dip into fifteen hundred years later.

There is something divine about ordinariness, something holy about simplicity and balance. Revisiting this summer the philosopher who has influenced my life more than any other is therapeutic. Doing it with students one-third my age as they discover for the first time a new source of wisdom in reflections from half a millennium ago will be sheer joy. If Catherine of Genoa was right when she said “my deepest me is God,” then Montaigne’s advice that we should study ourselves has divine implications.

Previous Post

July 13, 2023

Why Is God So Wasteful?

Next Post

July 18, 2023 Do I Teach or Am I a Teacher? On Being a Verb Rather than a Noun

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Mary did have a choice. And she was able to make it before the Holy ..."

madalyn baumstark

Mary Got To Choose

"i cannot read beyond your recommendations for the books since i like to have a ..."

madalyn baumstark

A Doubting Faith

"AI will never be able to utter with honesty, feeling, or humility, the greeting: "Namaste".It ..."

madalyn baumstark

AI and Human Dignity

"They do. I'm sure you could find discussions of the same topic from any of ..."

Vance Morgan

AI and the Life of Faith

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Advent AI Angels Artificial intelligence atheism attention baptism Baptists beauty belief Benedictines Bible bicycling Big Bird books Bovina Camaldoli hermitage Canada Catholicism cats certainty change Christianity Christmas Collegeville Covid-19 creativity Development of Western Civilization dogs doubt Easter Enneagram Epiphany Episcopal ethics Eucharist evil extroverts Facebook faith family fear flowers forgiveness freedom friends God goodness grace happiness heaven hell history Holy Spirit Holy Week hope human nature humility humor idolatry incarnation introverts irreverence Islam Jeanne Jesus Joe Biden joy Judaism justice Kamala Harris knowledge Lent listen literature liturgy love Marsue Memorial Day miracles movies music mystery mythology NPR Old Testament optimism paradox peace Penguins philosophy piano podcast politics power prayer Protestantism Providence College Religion Rhode Island sabbatical sacrament science seeing silence Simone Weil Socrates soul sports St. John's College stories suffering tattoo teaching technology television theology thinking time tolerance transcendence travel trees trust truth Uncategorized Vermont wisdom wonder writing

Select a Month May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz