The Power and Privilege to Withdraw

The news is maddening and demoralizing. Modern life is hectic and stressful. Remaining engaged requires effort, and it's quite often frustrating, disappointing, and maybe even dangerous. Oh, to simply withdraw into the forest and leave it all behind!

The archetype of the renunciant is a powerful one, isn’t it? The idea of leaving our worldly cares behind—our possessions and our problems—to simply walk off into the forest or up into a mountain cave has such romantic appeal, doesn’t it? We could meditate…, do yoga…, connect with nature… We’d likely eat healthier food, lose weight, and get in great shape. But maybe it’s what we wouldn’t do that’s most appealing. And, oh, that list is long!

Oh, to just keep walking!

 

We tend to equate such endeavors with extraordinary spiritual resolve and attainment of some sort, be it wisdom, enlightenment, or liberation. But what really motivates us to want to retreat in such a way? Is the urge born of some so-called “true self” desire to attain wisdom of benefit to all once we return, or is it born instead of a “small self” desire to alleviate our own individual suffering regardless of what might be happening in the world? And how can we truly know? The workings of the ego can be so inscrutable!

I was working near Ferguson, Missouri back when Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was murdered by a White cop just a few miles away. I would visit the protest area during my lunch hour sometimes and join in the protests at night. It was disheartening to see the parking lot of the shopping center where I used to have lunch turned into a war zone-like staging area filled with armored vehicles, communications equipment, and personnel. Then, at night, the streets would erupt with defiant outrage and the authorities with their military gear would do their darnedest to beat the people back into submission.

Most of the protesters, I’m sure, were frustrated with the system that built up the nearby White enclave and its White police force at the expense of harassed Black residents and passersby who were forced to pay up for crimes of poverty like not maintaining their vehicles and homes in the regulated manner. They’d lived with the injustice.

For my part, I was frustrated with all the privileged White folks who remained silent as the racial justice conversation of our lifetime played out on the streets and in the media. Or maybe, instead of being silent, they did something innocuous and ineffective like posting a “Just Be Kind” sign in their yard—as if institutional racism isn’t maintained from day to day by willfully ignorant people being kind as they go about their racist business. Perhaps they slyly posted that Rumi quote on their social media page—"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I'm changing myself”—and then proceeded to insulate themselves as thoroughly as they could from all the injustice happening right outside their door. Yes, yes, just keep your eyes on your own (yoga) mat, right?

And yet I totally get it. I was glad to be able to head back home to my nice neighborhood after those protests and not return until I was good and ready once again. I wasn’t one of those people whose very existence is a protest. No, my frustration arose from seeing in other people that which I didn’t like in myself. After our most recent national election, for instance, my first urge was to just hunker down, bunker in, and abide. If this is what most voters want, I rationalized, then the only way things will change is if they personally feel the pain of their poor choice. And yet, I've accepted the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings. 

We do need to retreat from time to time, on a daily basis even, in order to cultivate the strength and wisdom needed for efficacious work out in the world and in our own hearts and minds. But let’s not fool ourselves and begin an inexorable slide into selfish disregard for our fellow beings, conveniently relabeled as "working on ourselves." If we have the power to engage in spiritual practice, then we almost certainly have the power to engage in action that will benefit those who are oppressed outside on our doorstep. We have voices. We have means. We have strength. We have protection. We have privilege. We have so many gifts that can be of benefit to others who are suffering. Can we really know true peace if, in our heart of hearts, we know how miserably we’ve failed to use them?

Let me close with one of my favorite quotes by Thomas Merton from his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. I like it for its balance. It discourages us from allowing violence to ourselves and our spirit even as it assumes that the work for peace and justice will continue with our help:

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

 May these words be of help and encouragement to all.

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This post is in the Power, Practice, and Peace series.

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Copyright 2021 and 2025 by Mark Robert Frank