Gathering Our Glory

I'd like to revisit a question posed in the preceding entry from December 26th--which is to wonder how we can access the reserves of glory that follow us into this-world. Of course, to suggest that we come 'trailing clouds of glory' is to suggest that there are innate qualities that we carry with us into this-world as a part of character. Galen seemed to believe that we were inherently predisposed towards a specific temprament (melancholic, sanguine, irritable, anxious etc. and so forth), so that we can gather that there is a long history of affirming that there are indeed inherent propensities towards certain psychological characteristics within each of us.

Even Buddhists are aligned with the belief that we come into this-world carrying a certain amount of baggage, if you will. And while Buddhists also affirm that this baggage is not inherently ours--it is just that we have identified with that baggage as a way to 'solidify a sense of self' to the point that we become attached to certain modes of being, ways of relating, and stances towards the world--the consensus seems to be that we are not that proverbial tabula rasa others have contended.

That blank slate upon which a world comes to be a painted is not evident. For children, like adults, there appears to be more of a potential for unfolding innate tendencies towards specific ways of being that are both a blessing and a curse. For instance, a 'natural born leader' can also come across as an insufferably domineering control freak; a person who is emphatically gifted--by being able to resonate emotionally with the experiences of others--can become overwhelmed by his or her pourous psychological boundaries, which seem to make the influx of feelings too powerful to contend with.

So we can be liable to fall to forces that are in some sense our greatest of strengths. The paradoxical nature of our 'clouds of glory' is that they sometimes conspire against our own capacity for genuis. One given to adventure and exploration may end up becoming wishy-washy and unstable. Another given to self-reliance may not be able to let others near him- or herself emotionally. And that is often why in the work-place you will find the best managers of people putting their team in the best possible position so that their strengths are maximized without becoming weaknesses that bring the whole project down.