You Make Braver Choices When You Know You’re Not Alone

Your calling is connected to those who came before you and those who will come after you. This means you are not alone. Sure, in the meantime, you may feel alone, but when you look at your life in the context of generations, you can rest assured that you are completely and fully connected. You are not alone. And when you know you are not alone, you make braver choices.

Here is a personal example. My great grandfather died twenty years before I was born, and yet he still speaks to me. How? Through a wooden sign he carved. Written in his native German and in an Art Nouveau font called Jugendstil, Hans Christoph Mähler chiseled the words of Christ to the church at ancient Smyrna. (modern day Izmir): Be faithful unto death. (Sei getreu bis in den Tod.)

Although these borrowed words are inspiring on their own, they become personalized  through the skilled hand of Hans Christoph. Why? Because I know stories about him. He emigrated to America in 1902. He preached in house churches to immigrants in the steel and railroad industries. He was rather strict—movies were always suspect and anathema on Sundays—but he was remarkably devoted. He broke with his brothers over the rise of the Nazis, for he saw them as a portent of great evil, while his brothers saw in them national salvation. None of his brothers survived the war. Hans Christoph raised four sons who embraced the American dream and succeeded in the world, so much so that they became mildly embarrassed at their father’s preoccupation with heavenly things.

And as Hans Christoph lay dying, he saw the Holy Land and Egypt from above, as if his spirit was gliding past them on its way out of the earth. He described this to his sons, who stood around the hospital bed along with his ten-year-old grandson Freddie—my dad. And there, in a room where the sting of antiseptics and floor cleaners penetrated the air, Hans Christoph spoke his last words: “I smell fresh baked bread!”

It is those stories that come to mind when I see the words “be faithful unto death” carved by Hans Christoph. Now, I could choose to conclude, “Cool story. Cool ending. Time to move on with my own life.” Or I could choose to receive the words and the stories as a tradition to continue, as a trail to pick up. It doesn’t mean I must be a preacher to steel workers or shun Netflix on Sundays, but it does mean I must be intentional about influencing others toward what (or rather, who) really saves, and I must be vigilant about guarding my heart—for that is the essence of two of the stories I know about him. And so, I pick up the trail. It is my turn to blaze it forward. It is my turn to be faithful unto death.

Think of someone in your life whose story you know. A relative, a friend, a person in history, a contemporary you admire but may not yet have met. What stories do you know about them? What life-giving words have they spoken? What of those things can you incorporate as your own? What trail did they blaze that you can pick up?

A person, their story, and their trail: I am speaking of a mindset absolutely essential for aligning your life with your calling. It is a mindset that recognizes preexisting connections. It is a mindset that understands the joyful and sober responsibility of discovering those connections—and cohering with them.

And here is the implication that cuts across our post-modern assumptions: It is also a mindset that moves away from the idea that the most important part of our identity is the expression of our individuality. Yes, you read that right. In fact, it is for the sake of your individuality that it cannot be the center.

Instead, it is vital you cultivate a mindset moving toward the reality that your identity—and therefore your calling—is connected to others.

Your individual story picks up the trail of those who have gone before you, and now it is your turn to move that trail forward. It is your turn to blaze.

To truly pick up that trail, therefore, you must move away from the mindset of mere individuality and toward the mindset of community—even if much of that community is comprised of people in the past like my great grandfather and people in the future like my great grandson, neither of whom I know. (Yet.)

Now, you are a person, of course, a unique instance of the image of God, as your fingerprint and DNA bear witness. However, to find full courage for your calling, you must settle it in your heart that “being yourself” is not your supreme value. (“my personality, my expression, my preferences, my…my…” etc.) For such a pre-occupation with oneself actually short-circuits your full potential, which is always in connection with others in the past, others in the future, and others among the people you presently know. What is more, if you want to guarantee a sense of isolation and loneliness in your life, then make radical, autonomous individuality your central principle. It is sure to get you there.

So, then, now that we have settled it in our hearts that our calling inevitably involves picking up the trail where others have left off, let us turn to the practical matter of finding who else is on the trail, both past and present. Let us learn from role models.

A role model is someone whose life possesses an element we incorporate into our own lives through consistent practice until that element becomes our own. We lay hold of the element in another we admire and move it from admiration to incorporation, from wishful thinking to second nature. It affects our emotional chemistry and daily habits. And here is where our individuality does come through. For, when we incorporate that element, it inevitably finds expression not as a carbon copy, but in the flavor of ourselves.

We need not mimic a person’s whole life wholesale. We can, for example, pick up the carefully crafted musicianship of Janis Joplin—she consciously picked up the trail of blues and jazz singer Bessie Smith—without the addiction that led to her early demise. Or, in my case, I can learn from the intrepid spirit of travel writer Richard Halliburton without adopting the recklessness that led to his death at sea. With this understanding of selective discretion within a role model, the possibilities broaden considerably. We do not search for all-in-one idols. Instead, we seek someone who, in a particular category of life, disciples us. There are, for example, role models for our:

• Profession (accounting, advocacy, aeronautics, etc.)
• Skills (writing, woodworking, windsurfing, etc.)
• Season of life (student, single parent, senior citizen, etc.)

And there are also categories that span several of the above, such as role models in:

• Character (honesty, humility, hunger for truth)
• Combat (defending truth, a people, a cause, or a country)
• Advocacy (improving the quality of life of others—from better drinking water to helping people write their wills)

These are a few examples, but the variety of possible elements to choose from is virtually endless. This vastness can be organized into two kinds of people: those who have walked the earth in the past, and those who walk it presently. Let us call them:

• The cloud of witnesses—those whose legacy remains in books, documentaries, writings, and other long-term accomplishments and artifacts.
• Those with ‘grace and gray hair’—people still on earth who have the wisdom gained through the successes, failures, joys, and sorrows of the years. This is their ‘gray hair.’ But an additional element is essential if they are to be our role model. Neither arrogance nor insecurity, neither bitterness nor cynicism, color their souls. They are graciously willing to share their life and their lessons learned with us. When we find such people, we earnestly and humbly appeal for a measure of proximity with them, be that a single hour, a decades-long mentorship, or anything in between.

This is where we must exercise agency. We must be attentive. We must be constantly on the watch for those we can learn from. And again—given our definition of the role model—this means that virtually anyone can become that for us, from the honest rickshaw driver who charges us a fair rate to the reformer of city codes of that same place where the rickshaw driver labors. You name it. The categories and elements are there for us to select, and the people who model them can become the ones we learn from. It just takes eyes to see.

Once we have picked those role models—once we have picked up their trail—we are connected to those who went before us and those who will come after us. And knowing that we are part of that great community, knowing that we are not alone, we make braver choices in the hour where we live and move, and have our breath and being.

© Kurt Mähler

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