A temptation of graduate school is what my mother once described as “Pompous Assery” . . . the perfect ability to be a pompous ass, make an ass of oneself while being pompous about the action. Bad enough to fall into foolery, but to do so with comic pomposity is worse.
“I have not always avoided this” he said meekly.
The stop sign was there. The car ahead of me sort-of-stopped. I cannot be sure, but I was close enough behind that car that I had to stop. Suddenly there was an officer pulling both of us over and writing a ticket for failing to stop to both vehicles. We were driving off the Rochester campus and the officer was looking to the setting sun, so I am not sure how he was sure, but the ticket was sure.
This is where I made an error of the sort graduate students are likely to make. Hadn’t I stopped? How could the both of us not have stopped?
I decided to challenge my ticket and fight for “justice.”
This was unwise.
The officer came. He testified. I got to ask him questions and imprudently did so. “You did not mention the other car just ahead of me that also got a ticket. . .” and I spun out my defense. “Were you looking into the sun?” He hadn’t mentioned the other car. He was looking into the sun. My unbearable graduate school smugness was handed the humbling it earned. The judge doubled my fine as a lesson to me given another ticket I had received a while back for failing to stop at a stop sign. (Late night drive home from a Republic discussion at Professor Geier’s wired on coffee. . . mea culpa.)
The moment the judge began his dressing down of me, reality slapped me. I had taken an officer from his duty for my trivial complaint. I could have just paid the (small) fine and moved on with my life. My abilities as a lawyer were zero. What was wrong with my prioritization?
From this, I learned a pragmatic, political, and spiritual lesson. Our family also ate less well for the month. Hope was not amused. Pragmatically, I was reminded that wasting important people’s time with petty complaints (or worse playing at being a lawyer) was imprudent. Politically, it washed over me how blessed I was to be a graduate student at the University of Rochester. My neighborhood (19th Ward, “urban by choice” as the banners said) had problems. My traffic ticket on campus was not one of them. The injustice of the drug house on the corner that everyone ignored was a real injustice. My stop sign ticket was not.
Spiritually, I knew that my resistance to the ticket was mostly pride. I have received much mercy in my life. Why not let this error by the officer go? Maybe, just maybe, I was wrong after all and had not come to a full (and “complete”) stop? Why care so much? This is where Sunday school and those Republic discussions at Professor Geier’s house kicked into gear. My desire to be right was greater than my desire for true justice or humility.
Justice, if I was to believe the prophets and Plato, would respond proportionately. What was the place of my issue over against issues in my life, my family, my city? Was my upset proportionate? Was the time I spent and caused others to spend proper? A moment’s thought made obvious that my issue was not justice, but personal privilege. Assuming I really did stop at that blasted sign, the ticket was irritating to my ego. For justice sake, I should have let it go and gone on to better fights.
This brings us to the unpopular virtue of humility. This is not pretending one does not have skills one has. No virtue begins in a lie! The smart guy does not have to fake being “one of the folks.” Humility is recognizing our place before the good God. Next to God, perfectly just and holy, we can only cry out for mercy. Our “genius” is nothing compared to the one who made Heaven and Earth. Our power is futile next to the Omnipotent. A Christian aspires to be meek like Moses, not a swaggering bully boy. We want to win for others, not pompously push our personal brands or vindicate our every action. Christian humility keeps showing us the truth: we are all God’s children. Nobody has a greater right to life. Nobody has a greater right to dignity. Nobody can earn paradise based on personal merits. We are all in the same human family, with the same Father, and mother the Church.
Against this is the pomposity that can never be wrong or even accept the perception of being wrong. “I STOPPED AT THE SIGN!” I cried: petty, pompous, proud.
When I got the ticket, I could have blessed the officer (even if in error), paid my fine, and gone on with my life. I could have stopped, instead I was an ass and kept pursuing my useless quest for vindication.
God help me today, God help all of us today to stop pompous assery.
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