One of my first tastes of philosophy was as a child, in a coffee shop/restaurant, reading this jingle:
As you ramble on through life, brother,
Whatever be your goal,
Keep your eye upon the doughnut
And not upon the hole!
I thought it was great. I still do, but if you try too hard to analyze it, you may miss what it’s saying.
It’s an overall advice to be optimistic rather than pessimistic, to focus more on what you have than on what you don’t. It’s like that riddle of folk philosophy, “Is the glass half-empty or half-full?”
A longer version of the same thought is an old joke about two twin brothers, one always the optimist, the other, the pessimist. One Christmas morning, their parents decided to challenge them.
When the kids woke up, they took the pessimist to a room with a beautiful decorated tree surrounded by presents. He burst into tears. “Look at the star on top of the tree,” he cried, “It’s crooked!”
They took his brother to an empty room with nothing in it but straw and manure on the floor. He clapped his hands in delight, and cried out, “Where’s the pony?”
Going back to the jingle, it’s actually a false dichotomy—the hole in the middle is actually an integral part of the doughnut, a ring shaped piece of baked dough.
You might say that the absences—the missing things—in our life and behavior are also an integral part of our lives.
Not being God, we’re not perfect. Except for a special grace of God, no human person is or ever can be perfect.
We’re all somewhat “doughnut shaped”. We’re all “holey” people trying to become whole and “holy” people!
In the church of the apostles, the great emphasis was on the overwhelming love and mercy of God. Those who embraced the teachings of Jesus didn’t go about bewailing how imperfect they were. On the contrary, they were joyful that they were pardoned for their failings and were now sharers in a new life. And, they eagerly looked forward to wonderful things to come!
Somehow or other, as the centuries passed, maybe because people were “born into” Christianity and took the good news for granted, an emphasis on personal sin and sinfulness gradually became a much more important part of prayer and religious practice.
And, of course, the more we focus on the negative side of our life and behavior, the more down and discouraged we’re likely to become.
It’s a trap! Of course we’re not perfect people. So, of course, we can always find things to bewail—and we can always find others to call attention to our failings.
Let’s face it, we have a very bad habit of keeping our eye upon the hole, and not upon the doughnut!
Here’s another curious thing. You hear others bewailing that people don’t go to confession enough, as in the “old days”.
The roots of the rite of reconciliation were to allow a complete defector among those who had chosen to live according the teachings of Jesus, an “apostate”, to be re-admitted to the Christian community.
Thanks be to God, if we’re getting better and better! Convert your “examination of conscience” into a litany of thanks for the so many occasions of God’s love and mercy!
8 November 2020