Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and
this is Ascension Presents. So years ago, I remember reading in high school or
college about how when people were raising elephants but not in the wild
but in captivity like in a circus or something like this, how they would train
them to stay put, essentially. You, what you do is you take a baby elephant and
you tie a rope to that elephant and then you take the other end of the rope and
tie it to a stake pounded into the ground. Now the baby elephant, because
it's not as strong as a full-grown elephant, would, would strain against the rope and strain against that stake and be unable to move. So that what the elephant did was, when it grew up, it wouldn't pull against the rope, wouldn't pull against the stake even though as a full-grown elephant, it could easily pull the stake out of the ground. As a full-grown elephant
it could easily, basically walk wherever it wanted to but it had learned, when it was a baby elephant, that no, no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do,
you're stuck here. They had learned helplessness. What will happen is a lot
of times, I'll run into people who kind of go through life with this same
mentality because of their situations, because of the things that have happened to
them, because maybe because they've tried again and again and again and they haven't experienced any kind of change, what they've learned is no matter what I
do, I'm always going to be the victim. No matter what I do, I'm always going to have a lack of power. No matter what I do, nothing changes. And they've learned helplessness and some people who have learned helplessness, begin to have this thing they call a pessimistic explanatory view of the world. The pessimistic explanatory view of the world is oftentimes permanent, it's personal, and it's pervasive. It's permanent: things will never change.
It's personal: it's probably all my fault. And it's pervasive: everything I touch
turns to dog poop, you know, kind of that's the idea. It's, it's permanent, it's
personal, it's pervasive. Now someone could say, "Well, then the way out of this
is to have an optimistic worldview," but that won't be any better, that wouldn't
help anything because what's an optimistic worldview?
An optimistic explanatory style would be um it's not permanent: it's always going to change,
everything will get better! That's not true. The personal optimistic explanatory
view would be it's never my fault. Well, that's not true either. And the pervasive optimistic explanatory view is like everything I touch turns to gold. That's not true. In between the pessimistic explanatory view and the
optimistic explanatory view, is the realistic explanatory view of the world, where I can say permanent?
No, this is how it is right now, it doesn't have to stay this way,
it can change, it can get better. It's personal: Yeah, sometimes I
contributed to my own situation but I didn't ... I'm not ... I didn't fully contribute
to this. It isn't all my fault. I'll take responsibility for what I did
but it isn't all my fault. And pervasive in the sense of, yeah, there's some things
that I do, I've tried and they and they kind of turned to dog poop and some
things I've tried and they've turned out well. So it's this realistic
explanatory style of looking at the world and recognizing that I might not be able to do everything, but it doesn't mean I can't do anything. I'm going to say that again. The explanatory style, the realistic world view is this: Just because I can't do everything, doesn't mean I can't do anything. Just because I don't have everything I hoped for, doesn't mean I have nothing to be grateful for. And just because right now, the reality of my situation can be incredibly painful, it doesn't mean that it has to stay this way. There is a doctor. His name is Dr. David Rabin and he died from ALS at the age of fifty back in 1984. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease when he was forty-five years old. And as a doctor, of course, he knew what was going to happen to his body. Within the first year of his diagnosis, it advanced very rapidly and he lost use of his legs, then the use of his upper body. He got to the point where he could hardly even speak. A fellow doctor shared with Dr. Rabin that there was a computer program that as long as you had use of one muscle group, you could
communicate through this computer program and so he got one of these computers and he had control, not of his hands or his fingers, not over of his body.
He had control over one eyebrow. That was the last muscle group that he could use. You could think, like, "OK, well, no he lost his medical practice. He couldn't go to the hospital anymore, he could hardly communicate through
his mouth to his friends and family to anyone," he could say, "I can't do
everything, therefore can't do anything," but with one eyebrow and his brain because
he was a smart guy. With one eyebrow and this computer, he was able to communicate with his family and friends, he was able to tell jokes, he was able to have a consulting practice where he would offer tutoring or consulting to medical students. With one eyebrow, in the last four years of his life, he wrote a textbook on endocrinology. Now, it would be really easy for Dr. Rabin to say, "Yeah, this is permanent, it's personal, it's pervasive." Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But he was more realistic, not optimistic, but realistic:
I can't do everything but I can do something. I might not have everything I'd hoped for, but I do have things to be grateful for. And there's some people I talked to who find
themselves in this place where it's a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of
loss and that's real. Maybe they've struggled against some external forces, struggled against some interior force in their life and they say, "Well, I've tried, I've tried, I've tried and what I've done right now is, I've learned helplessness." Well, you can also learn power. You can also learn freedom. This is remarkable. This is in Romans chapter 13. He says, Let's live ... let's throw off works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let's conduct ourselves properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh. That verse was instrumental in
the conversion of a man named St. Augustine. He found himself helpless in the
face of his own internal demons, in the face of his own internal battle with sin,
and he read that verse: Don't live in darkness, put on the armor of light. You can walk in the daytime. Christ is giving you grace. You don't have to ... you don't have to be a victim of your situation. you don't have to be ... even be
a victim of your own self. Augustine had learned helplessness and in this moment, linked with God's grace,
he learned power, he learned strength. And he learned what it was to walk in freedom. If you find yourself in
a place of helplessness today, because you can't do everything, because you feel stuck, I invite you, even though you can't do
everything, you can do something and even though you might not have everything you've hoped for, you do have something to be grateful for. Even though you can't move like you used to,
you can still move even if it's just with one eyebrow. From all of us here at Ascension Presents,
my name is Father Mike. God bless.
