Picking favorites

I usually struggle to answer the ‘favorite’ questions — “What’s your favorite book? What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite food?” I never understood why, but I think I see now.

To have a favorite is to claim something as yours, to be willing to defend it from criticism, to pick something and say, “Ah … this. This is it.” Maybe the reason I don’t pick favorites is that I’m afraid of saying, “It doesn’t get better than this.” I wonder instead, “What if it could get better, though?” I’m afraid of settling for less. When I enjoy something, I tend not to take my experience for what it is but to take it as an indicator, a sign, for greater joy. 

I am like a tourist in a hotel room with a beautiful view of the ocean: I enjoy the view, but I don’t just want to keep looking — I want to go out on the beach! I am like someone watching a wonderful sunset through smudged glasses: I am in awe but, not content with the blur, I wipe off my glasses. I am like an archaeologist who has just discovered an ancient coin: I cry ‘Eureka!’ and rub the dirt off my coin, but then I quickly get back to excavating, for there may be an underground palace nearby.

I recently asked some friends, “Have you ever experienced perfect bliss?” I was shocked when many of them replied, “Yes, of course — have you not?”

They told of legendary nights with friends, of storybook study abroad experiences, of those time-stopping deep conversations. They insisted that I must have felt that same bliss, too. We all do sometimes, right? But I was, and still am, hung up on the word ‘perfect.’

Perfect happiness, in my vocabulary, in my experience, sets an inconceivably high bar. There have been times when I have thought, “I didn’t know I could be this happy,” or, “I didn’t know nature could be this beautiful,” or, “I didn’t know an idea could be this true” or, “I didn’t know I could be this good or love this much!” And while for a short time I may be content or at peace or joyful or in awe, even then I feel my heart leaping for more of the new world I just discovered. 

I am like one who has awakened from a deep sleep — experiencing reality more richly than I dreamed. I eagerly jump out of bed into real life. You may call me melancholic for discounting my experiences of true joy, but I consider myself alive with hope for a higher life — one I can hardly begin to imagine. Mine is a restless heart, and I should rest in my true restlessness, not rest in a false rest.

I am coming to see, however, that there is something good about having favorites, about collecting trinkets of joy from life, about learning to love more deeply this world. The apostle John writes, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

Perhaps we may adopt this verse and say, “Whoever does not love this world in which he lives cannot love Heaven in which he longs to live.” How often do I look but do not see, hear but do not listen, take note but do not understand! How often do routines and complacency and ingratitude blind me from the treasures of this world and keep me from a higher life even now!

“This is an interesting planet,” writes Marilynne Robinson, “It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

Fr. John Dunne, formerly a Theology professor here at Notre Dame, had the interesting idea that matter is a dimension. One end of the matter axis is what we see in routine and complacency and ingratitude — just plain stuff. The other end of the matter axis, which stretches out to infinity, is Christ, the Living Word made incarnate, through whom all things are made.

This depth that is the axis of matter (which, if you will allow me some liberty, is also the axis of particular things, places, events, and people), at rare but distinct moments, “flame[s] out, like shining from shook foil,” or “gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins says — for this depth is, again, nothing but Christ, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places.” It is in these rare but distinct moments when we feel a semblance of perfect bliss or perfect peace or perfect beauty or perfect love or perfect truth.

It is when something or someone “flames out” or “gathers to a greatness” that we choose favorites and say, “Ah … this. This is it.” Indeed, it is it, because it is Christ, and Christ is it. But it is not perfectly it — for that we await with hope Heaven and our resurrections.

I think it is time for me to plunge myself into the dimension of matter and particularity, in hopes of finding Christ at the bottom. It is time for me to start picking favorites.