SUPEREROGATION [2-28-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Strivings of An Old Man—SUPEREROGATION [2-28-25]

 

[My birth month is up after today, and so will be my excuse for writing self-indulgent columns about myself. I’ll try to get beyond myself in future columns, but I make no promises.]

Quitting was never an option. Whatever life put in front of me, I figured “The only way out is through.” [Robert Frost] Well, I didn’t “figure” it. I didn’t think about it at all. I just had to do whatever was there to do.

So to be successful, I figured I had to show that I could out-do everybody. There probably was a little more thinking in that.

Not out-suffer, because I didn’t think of it as suffering, or even out-work, because I really didn’t think of it as work. Maybe it was trying to out-hardship everybody, or out-endure them. No, those words aren’t quite right, either. I guess I’ll have to stick with that general, generic, “do.” I wanted to show that I could out do everybody.

Early life gave me a hard row to hoe--not as hard as some, but certainly hard enough--and I tried to show that I could outdo even that row. I sought out other hard rows to hoe. I got satisfaction from that.

Hardship was a challenge. I got satisfaction from meeting the challenge and vanquishing it. The bigger the challenge, the greater the satisfaction.

Mostly, I did it in silence. I wasn’t trying to be secretive, though. Indeed, I was glad when someone saw my doing, and praised it, but it seemed wrong for me to call attention to it, except by the doing itself.

It started with sweet-corn detasseling when I was twelve or thirteen. It was hot, miserable work, walking those long corn rows. We made fifty cents per hour, but the work was so bad that few were willing to stick out. Thus Princeton Farms offered a 25 cent bonus, per hour, for anyone who stuck out the whole season, day one through the last day. I was one of only two who got that bonus. That was a huge bonus. I wasn’t about to forego that, regardless of how miserable I was.

I learned that I could outdo, and when I outdid, I got something extra.

The summer before my senior year in college, I was a social worker, basically with seven- to nine-year-old girls, plus out-reach duty, at Howell Neighborhood House in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. But I wasn’t just a full-time social worker. I was also the Sunday morning preacher at two Methodist churches. The other 7 college kid summer workers and three live-in professional social workers were late sleepers, so I would come home from my preaching and have lunch ready for everybody when they dragged in from their various rooms. There was no one that summer who did more than I did.

When I entered seminary, I was the Director of a community center that had a pre-school, a football team, a youth program, cooking and sewing and citizenship and workshop classes, and an after-school program. Because I tested high, the seminary offered me—one of only three students who qualified—the chance to take Greek and Hebrew classes at the same time I was taking the English Bible classes all students took. I jumped at the chance.

At every stage of my life, it was the same: outdo.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Many of us who outdo also neglect family and friends and God, but I tried to outdo in those areas of life, too.

The problem now that I am old is that I am unable to outdo. I can barely do. Having gotten my identity and satisfaction so long by outdoing, I’m now adrift. With nothing to outdo, especially with nothing the world wants me to outdo, or cares if I outdo, or even do, who am I? With nothing to outdo, how do I keep from being bored?

Not for the first time, but maybe for the last time, I have a great opportunity, to move from status as a human doing to that of a human being.

Stay in touch. I’ll let you know if it works out.

John Robert McFarland