Spero Consulting

One of them, at least.

Update: We’ve added an excel­lent line from Peggy Noonan’s Decem­ber 26^th, weekly col­umn, as it fits so per­fectly with our theme.

We spent a recent noon-​time dis­trib­ut­ing year-​end, hol­i­day, bonus checks to a group of care-​givers and their managers. 

It was very grat­i­fy­ing, espe­cially since it wasn’t our money. We’re jok­ing, of course. It would likely have been more grat­i­fy­ing had been our money, but while the lunch was for a small orga­ni­za­tion, it’s not that small.

Now, we know that it is quite easy to go through life ignor­ing not only peo­ple in need but also those who help them on both a vol­un­teer and paid basis. (It’s worth not­ing that those who do get paid usu­ally don’t get paid much for their efforts.) There are a lot of car­ing peo­ple serv­ing a vari­ety of con­stituents, e.g., in fields like men­tal retar­da­tion, men­tal health, the aged, etc.

Those folks spend sub­stan­tial time and energy help­ing oth­ers, includ­ing the less for­tu­nate, to lead more ful­fill­ing lives. For exam­ple, we know good peo­ple who have devoted their entire work­ing careerss to pro­vid­ing such aid, and that often requires fight­ing against an uncar­ing and soul­less gov­ern­ment bureau­cracy (in their attempts to do the right thing.) For another exam­ple, we know of oth­ers who call their work­places on their days off to check on their favorite clients. All of these peo­ple, for at least some por­tion of their daily lives, try to do the right things for oth­ers. (Yeah, some­times it seems weird to us, too.)

In her weekly col­umn, A Year for Books, Peggy Noo­nan men­tions “Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire” by Father Joseph Lang­ford, a friend of Mother Teresa’s. Ms. Noo­nan writes: “…and of the things he learned from her includ­ing, most cen­trally, this: You must find your own Cal­cutta. You don’t have to go to India. Cal­cutta is all around you.”

In that regard, if the reader has access to Touch­stone Mag­a­zine, we encour­age them to read the Anthony Esolen’s excel­lent essay, “Pot­ter­ville Nation,” in the Decem­ber issue. Unfor­tu­nately, it is not avail­able on line.

In the essay, Mr. Esolen writes about the clas­sic movie, It’s a Won­der­ful Life. His point is that it was not nec­es­sary for George Bai­ley to have never been born for Bed­ford Falls turn into Pot­ter­ville. (In the movie it is called Pot­tersville with an “s.”)

Even if George had been born, there were any num­ber of steps along the way when he could have veered slightly (almost imper­cep­ti­bly) away from his con­science and duty, and that would have been to the severe detri­ment of other indi­vid­u­als, his com­mu­nity, and soci­ety. Many of those small turns would have seemed innocu­ous or would have been unob­served by oth­ers. It’s quite pos­si­ble that no one, includ­ing George, would have known the dam­age he caused or did not pre­vent as he chased his dream. (Per St. Fran­cis de Sales, that doesn’t mean that one should over-​analyze or over-​account for ones every actions and deci­sions. We’ll try to pro­vide a link in the near future.)

Mr. Esolen notes that nowa­days much of soci­ety looks more like Pot­ter­ville than Bed­ford Falls, and he attrib­utes that phe­nom­e­non to folks (self­ishly) fol­low­ing their dreams to the exclu­sion of oth­ers. (Per­haps, like Utopia, Bed­ford Falls never existed. In fact, Mr. Esolen men­tions that self-​recognition and feel­ings of guilt may have been the rea­son why the movie was unsuc­cess­ful dur­ing its ini­tial release in 1946.)

Now, one rea­son we par­tic­u­larly like his essay is that it fits quite nicely with a recent con­ver­sa­tion we had with one of the princesses. We were told “When I’m an adult, I’ll do what I want.” Our reply was, “Hmmm, we don’t see any real adults act­ing that way. In fact, it seems to us that ‘I’ll do what­ever I want’ is the antithe­sis of adult­hood, civ­i­liza­tion, moral­ity, ethics, and rea­son. The impul­sive ‘I’ll do what­ever I want’ cer­tainly makes one no bet­ter than ani­mals and not very close to angels.” (Obvi­ously and clearly, we’re not talk­ing about those who are old enough to be adults, but who choose not to be, but that’s a post for another day.)

We told her that being an adult involves doing what oth­ers need you to do. In that sense, adult­hood isn’t lib­er­at­ing, but as George Bai­ley dis­cov­ered, it can be very ful­fill­ing. (Lib­er­a­tion involves liv­ing a coun­try where the gov­ern­ment per­mits cit­i­zens to be adults, but that, too, is post for another day.) 

We’ve won­dered how many times we’ll have to repeat that mes­sage in the com­ing years, and at Christ­mas Eve Mass, we prayed for the strength to be able to do so as often as it is needed to be heard.

We’re also quite thank­ful that her mother, the chair­man, sets such an excel­lent exam­ple of adult behav­ior and respon­si­bil­ity (and com­pen­sates for our many fail­ings and immaturity).

Unlike the folks that we ref­er­enced above, we doubt that we do our fair share, but we pray for those who do. We wish them and you a Blessed and Merry Christ­mas and a Healthy and Happy New Year.