Dialogue in an Age of Narcissism

Fred Harburg

A graduating senior recently asked me, “How can I develop character in my life?” I think I mumbled something about the importance of reflection and living an examined life. I even gave him an empty leather-bound journal with the advice to be attentive to capture his observations, feelings, and questions.

With the benefit of greater reflection, I realize that my answer was a half-truth. What I left out was the practice of dialogue that can move one from preoccupation with self to a healthy enrichment of perspective.

We live at a time when more people know how many boyfriends Britney Spears has had than can recognize—let alone recite—the Declaration of Independence. If ever there were an age of self-image and “self as center,” this is it. In contrast to our age is the profound wisdom of the spiritual masters, who advocated the highest order of dialogue—unceasing prayer.

I recently pulled out one of my favorite expressions of this idea, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. When I first read this slim book many years ago, I was struck by the revelation that I have an unceasing inner voice that chatters a non-stop monologue in the back of my mind. Now some of you may be thinking, “I don’t know what you are talking about; I don’t have an unceasing inner voice.” That’s it—that’s the voice. At night we call it dreaming. In the day we can recognize it as worry, or the sub-vocalization of a frenzied and ever-changing personal focus. But what Lawrence learned to do was to move that voice from a monologue to a dialogue with God.

Henri Nouwen, the renowned Catholic priest and theologian, expressed this idea with clarity and power in his book, Clowning in Rome:

“Thinking about God all the time is an unrealistic expectation that might cause mental imbalance . . . our prayer can only become unceasing communion when all our thoughts—beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful—can be thought in the presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds us. By trying to do this, our unceasing thinking is converted into unceasing prayer, moving us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue. To do this we want to try to convert our thoughts into a conversation. The main question, therefore, is not so much what we think, but to whom we present our thoughts, because to pray unceasingly means to think and live in the presence of Love.”

To move out of fearful isolation to courageous conversation with God is the wholesome yet frightening path to a healthy, productive life. Socrates wisely urged us to reflect when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But Nouwen points out that introspection without dialogue can lead to paralyzing self-centeredness and narcissism.

Psalm 139 may represent the best advice I could have given my young friend the graduate:

O Lord, you search me and you know me,
you know my resting and my rising,
you discern my purpose from afar.
You mark when I walk or lie down,
all my ways lie open to you. . . .

O search me, God, and know my heart.
O test me and know my thoughts.
See that I follow not the wrong path
and lead me in the path of life eternal. [1963 Grail Psalter]  

Fred Harburg is Managing Partner of Harburg Consulting LLC and a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum. During more than two decades in the private sector Fred has served as an organizational architect for companies including IBM, General Motors, Disney, AT&T, Motorola, and Fidelity Investments.

1 Responses • Provocations, Character and Ethics, Spiritual Growth, Wed 06 Jun 2007