Let's be driven to do meaningful work AND to define what gives it meaning
In the footsteps of Dorothy Day...
Dorothy Day has always been an inspiration to me, e.g.
If she’s not familiar to you, here’s a 3-minute primer:
She is too often reflexively associated with “activism” in what I view as a limited way. Well, I just learned Dorothy had some powerful epiphanies and some strong words for those who engage solely in virtue signaling.
For example, the first time she was arrested while marching for women’s right to vote, she wrote from her cell:
“I had an ugly sense of the futility of human effort, man’s helpless misery, the triumph of might. Man’s dignity was but a word and a lie. Evil triumphed. I was a petty creature, filled with self-deception, self-importance, unreal, false, and so, rightly scorned and punished.”
It’s been said that Day had “a fierce capacity for humility and self-laceration.” This mindset drove her to do meaningful work and to unambiguously define what gives it meaning.
She eventually found peace in her faith.
I didn’t think I could admire her and relate to her more but it just happened!
Dorothy Day, presente!
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Her name is unfamiliar but her message is eternal
I remember immediately resonating with her quote to "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" when I first heard it twenty-some years ago. I wrote it on the chalkboard in the academic office where I worked, and it stayed up there for years.