One day about halfway through the semester with a class of thoughtful, generous, and talkative juniors, we were turning our attention to the role of religious practices. I wanted to prime them to think about the way “practices” take “practice,” so I asked what I thought was a fairly innocuous question to generate discussion: What is something that you are good at, and how did you get good at it? I then circulated throughout the room, eager to eavesdrop on the small group conversations of these engaged and engaging young adults. Instead, I heard only a “profound and holy silence.” Anna, a brilliant and conscientious psychology major with a great sense of humor and a small group of deeply devoted friends, sat in silence with Jillian, a compassionate and skilled nursing student with a side job as the group fitness instructor whose class everyone rushes to sign up for. Finally, Anna stammered, “Well, I guess I used to be good at dancing, but I don’t have time for that anymore.”
I did not really need them to answer this question for us to discuss the day’s material, so I dropped it, but I could not stop thinking that I had to address this issue in the next class. Why did this group have so much trouble identifying—or at least admitting to—skills and talents? The question is of vital importance. If we are to flourish and to contribute to the common good, any fruitful discernment of who we are and who we might be called to be in this world requires an honest and realistic assessment of not only our deficits but also—and perhaps more importantly—our giftedness. I had to ask them this question again and find a way to help them create space to recognize and to vocalize their talents and virtues.
In 2009, psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell identified a “narcissism epidemic” among youth at the time. They blamed, at least in part, the well-intentioned but misguided “self-esteem” movement for giving young people an overinflated sense of their abilities and an expectation of receiving from the world without having to contribute to it. Clearly, those vain, lazy, entitled “snowflakes” so prominent in our public discourse were not the students in this class, so I wondered, had the narcissism epidemic subsided? Had we as a society successfully shifted away from the “age of entitlement”? Or, was there something about our student body that had inoculated them from a toxic version of the self-esteem movement?
When considering vocation, we might celebrate such a swing from narcissism and entitlement towards humility. It is only in humility that we can recognize that we may be called to give to the world and not simply to receive—to recognize both the claims and the giftedness of others with whom we are called to share this world and with whom our identity and future come into form. The German theologian Johann Baptist Metz puts an even finer point on it in his short and moving Poverty of Spirit. For Metz, salvation comes not in overcoming the limitations of the human condition; salvation comes in embracing those limitations—in not clinging to some vision of ourselves being entitled to anything, but instead in recognizing our complete and utter powerlessness. When we do not cling to illusions of power and ownership over ourselves and our world, we become free to give of ourselves and to respond to the circumstances and persons that may call to us. In this moment, my students seemed willing to embrace what Metz calls the “poverty of the commonplace,” the recognition that they are just another person in this wide creation, not possessed of anything special.
However, the virtue of humility can turn into a vice when it goes too far and becomes—whether intentionally or by accident—a false humility. Virtuous humility requires that we recognize not only our limitations but also our giftedness. It requires embracing what Metz calls the “poverty of uniqueness.” I might only be one of eight billion people on the planet, but I also am the only one of me. To respond authentically to our individual vocations requires us to embrace that we are gifted in particular ways and are called to develop and use these gifts and talents. Without overcoming this temptation to fade into mediocrity and anonymity, writes Metz, “no one will fulfill their mission as a human being. Only it”—resisting this temptation—“enables us to find true selfhood.” It is this poverty of uniqueness, this false—by which I do not mean to imply “fake” or “pretend”—humility that seems to be a barrier to my students in recognizing whom they might be invited to be for the world.
One factor that might have partly accounted for my students’ inability or reluctance to identify strengths and talents was the relative preponderance of young women in the class. It is not news to note that young women are held to impossible standards in our society. They are expected to be good at things—to study and practice hard—and to be nice while doing it. They also, though, cannot be seen by their peers to consider themselves to be skilled, smart, and nice. They have to be “all that” without being allowed to believe—or at least to be seen as believing—that they are “all that.” They live in a context that Caryn Riswold points out not only shapes but also limits what voices they can hear. “Sometimes,” she notes, “the inability to realize a call is a direct result of the limits than an institution or the culture has established.” Of course, gender dynamics can only partially explain what was going on in the class that day. None of the young men in class—including some excellent students and skilled athletes—copped to being good at anything, either.
“Sometimes the inability to realize a call is a direct result of the limits than an institution or the culture has established.”
Caryn Riswold
At the next class meeting, I asked my students what made it hard for them to recognize, or at least verbalize, their gifts and talents. They noted that “I know a lot of people who are better,” “My parents were big on telling me not to brag,” “I’m afraid I would say something and people would think I’m not actually good at it,” and “I just can’t really think of anything.” In response, I shared with them much of what I have written above. I asked them to reframe the question and consider not so much what they were good at, but to reflect on what they did well enough to be helpful to their families, to kids in the community, to their patients, to their classmates, and to their teams. Appealing to their generosity and sense of responsibility had some effect. They opened up—if still somewhat tentatively—and started identifying gifts, talents, and skills.
As this discussion illustrates, we learn not only on our own, but in community, and often with the guidance and example of mentors. In preparing for this conversation, I also grappled with the possibility that I should model what I was asking of my students, but I decided not to do so. In this room full of generosity and vulnerability, though, the students turned the tables and asked me the same question I had asked them.
I sympathized with their reluctance. It was hard to answer. I was, after all, afraid that I would say something I thought I was good at and the students would disagree.
Christopher Welch is associate professor of religious studies at Rivier University in Nashua, NH, and a NetVUE Faculty Fellow. He is co-author, with Cynthia L. Cameron, of Life Abundant: God and the Created Order in Catholic Social Perspective (Kendall Hunt 2022). None of these endeavors has adequately prepared him to match wits or wills with his toddler.
So glad to hear that you have a class full of thoughtful, generous, conscientious, compassionate, and skilled students. That gives me some hope for our future. And glad to see that you know that any scholarly endeavors cannot possibly prepare you to match wits or wills with a toddler.