Religion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern. And ultimate concern is manifest in all creative functions of the human spirit.
Paul Tillich
What do you care about most? What is your heart’s great desire? Your ultimate concern? Everyone has one, theoretically anyway, if you believe theologian Paul Tillich. The concept has always intrigued me, since I first heard about it in college.
According to one interpreter of Tillich I found online, “Every person has some concern that is of ultimate or infinite importance. … No human being is without some ultimate concern, and this means that anything could potentially become a person’s god. Money, success, sex, fame, justice, power, achievements, nationalism, and more can become gods of ultimate concern. As Tillich states, ‘Whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him.’”
The quality of a person’s ultimate concern says much about them. You can say one thing is your ultimate concern, but how you live your life may say something very different.
If compassion is your ultimate concern, then you have something in common with the Dalai Lama, and most of us would expect to see it in the way you conduct yourself. If there is a disconnect between what you profess and how you live, then there is probably something else that is your ultimate concern. If you spend most of your time amassing wealth and power no matter the cost to others and your own soul, you would have more in common with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. I’ll say this for Trump: he knows exactly what his ultimate concern is. As ultimate concerns go, it is utterly appalling and degrading, but he knows what it is and pursues it without hesitation.
Can the rest of us say that?
As long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. Writing has been my highest priority — creative wordsmithing, longhand, hopefully not long-winded. I pursued a career where I would have to write — and even get paid for it. Not much, just enough to make a living. I have never veered from that path. But is it my ultimate concern? Even now in semi-retirement I don’t devote all or even most of my time to writing. It is not my single-minded preoccupation.
Other priorities compete for my finite time, attention, and energy.
I want to love and be loved. I crave wisdom and meaning more than material possessions and wealth. I want a long life because it takes that long to master living. At times I feel like I’m fighting a battle between writing and the rest of my life.
In the new year, I took inventory and made a list of how my time is allotted.
Housekeeping: Cleaning, straightening up, returning disorder to order, declaring war on dust.
Recreation: Reading, walking, biking, plays, movies, concerts and other forms of cultural enrichment — thinking is one of my favorite pastimes.
Socializing: Enjoying the company of those I had the good sense to befriend.
Grandparenting: Caregiving and caretaking, teaching and learning in mutual reciprocity, joyful observations and interactions.
Continuing Education: Lifelong learning, steady input, feeding curiosity, finding stimulating minds who shift my brain to a higher gear.
Spirituality: Ditching ego to get better acquainted with a wider self, sifting through the ordinary to find the extraordinary, searching for reasons to believe there is something beyond mere matter.
Fitness: Eating that is more than compensating for a lack of fulfillment, exercise that isn’t boring, attending to an aging body and finding ways to extend its usefulness.
Technology: Social media, email, staying connected through “The Almighty Web” (the “ultimate” altar upon which so many now worship)
Causes: Worthy crusades like reducing gun violence and saving democracy.
Work: At its best, overlapping with creativity, meaning, financial compensation, education — ideally, a mission for betterment.
Life is time triage. The more concerns, the less time to devote to each. Focus shifts because life is full of surprises. It’s hard to stay on top of everything all at once, and even ultimate concerns get shortchanged. Choices reveal priorities.
Being with those I love, loving and being loved, is where I want to be, probably where most of us want to be. As close to the divine as most of us come.
Writing about all this is a bonus blessing.
The poet John Keats wrote that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” Adding a measure of beautiful truth and truthful beauty to the world’s surplus would be enough to satisfy my “ultimate concern.”
For today at least.
For the time being …
