joy are on the far side of service. Only then are we really able to love. Only then are we able to begin the second journey.
SEVEN
The Committed Life
The person beginning the second mountain climb wages a silent rebellion against the “I’m Free to Be Myself” culture that is still the defining feature of our age. That individualistic culture, you’ll remember, was itself a rebellion against the stifling conformity of the 1950s. The second-mountain ethos is a rebellion against that rebellion.
Individualism says, Shoot for personal happiness, but the person on the second mountain says, No, I shoot for meaning and moral joy. That individualism says, Celebrate independence, but the second-mountain hero says, I will celebrate interdependence. I will celebrate the chance to become dependent on those I care for and for them to become dependent on me. Individualism celebrates autonomy; the second mountain celebrates relation. Individualism speaks with an active voice—lecturing, taking charge—and never the passive voice. But the second-mountain rebellion seeks to listen and respond, communicating in the voice of intimate exchange.
Individualism thrives in the prosaic world, the world of career choices and worldly accomplishment. The second-mountain ethos says, No, this is an enchanted world, a moral and emotional drama. Individualism accepts and assumes self-interest. The second-mountain ethos says that a worldview that focuses on self-interest doesn’t account for the full amplitude of the human person. We are capable of great acts of love that self-interest cannot fathom, and murderous acts of cruelty that self-interest cannot explain. Individualism says, The main activities of life are buying and selling. But you say, No, the main activity of life is giving. Human beings at their best are givers of gifts.
Individualism says, You have to love yourself first before you can love others. But the second-mountain ethos says, You have to be loved first so you can understand love, and you have to see yourself actively loving others so that you know you are worthy of love. On the first mountain, a person makes individual choices and keeps their options open. The second mountain is a vale of promise making. It is about making commitments, tying oneself down, and giving oneself away. It is about surrendering the self and making the kind of commitment that, in the Bible, Ruth made to Naomi: “Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried.”
As I mentioned in the introduction, most of us make four big commitments over the course of our lives: to a vocation, to a spouse and family, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. We think of these commitments as different things. Choosing a marriage seems different from choosing a philosophy or a community. Only one of them, the actual marriage, involves a formal ceremony and an explicit exchange of vows. But the process of commitment making is similar across all four realms. All of them require a vow of dedication, an investment of time and effort, a willingness to close off other options, and the daring to leap headlong down a ski run that is steeper and bumpier than it appears.
How does commitment making happen? It begins with some movement of the heart and soul. You fall in love with something—a person or a cause or an idea, and if that love is deep enough, you decide to dedicate a significant chunk of your life to it.
For most of us this love creeps up slowly. It takes time to figure out if the person or cause is worthy of all the faithfulness, care, and passion that a commitment entails. We build gates around our hearts and let people or causes inside one gate at a time. If you retain a lifelong love for your college or your summer camp or your hometown, you probably had to live in it for a time before its roots sunk ineluctably down into you and the love became deep and permanent.
The few times I’ve fallen in love with a person, it’s been after a long period of nonromantic friendship. Maybe for that reason, I’m fascinated with those cases when the hook gets lodged in the mouth all at once. In 1274 in Florence, a young Dante saw the young girl named Beatrice and, in a flash, was overawed. He gives a striking, almost anatomical, description of a person surrendering to love: