The Promise of Stability
By Josh VonGunten
2.5.26
We are living in a time increasingly defined by the ever-present pressure to make choices. Choices abound from small daily decisions about what to eat, to bigger things like what kinds of interests, hobbies, or careers we’d like to pursue. When we find ourselves in transition, we might ask, what city do I want to be in? When we stop for a moment to think about how often we are surrounded by choices, it’s actually quite staggering. What’s more staggering is how all of this compares to the way humans have lived over the 99% of history which precedes us.
Fifty years ago, a website like Amazon, which currently makes 600 million items available for instant purchase, was of course, inconceivable. While the research on decision overload due to technology remains an emerging field, current studies suggest we are being presented with more than 10 times the number of decisions per day than our ancestors were 100 years ago. Clearly, we are living in a time and culture in which we are saturated by the notion that the more options we have, the better.
There are some ways our ability to choose should be celebrated and appreciated. When it comes to things like healthcare, education, and diet, there are certainly many situations when having more options, not less, results in goodness and flourishing. However, coexisting with the goodness in something like being able to find and choose the right doctor in a time of acute personal need, there’s an under explored dark side to being surrounded by so much choice and change.
“The tyranny of choice,” as some have come to call it, is a psychological phenomenon in which more choice results in less satisfaction with the life one has. In a surprising twist, and no doubt something that took 10+ years of smartphone use to realize, it appears that increasing the number and occasion for choices is directly connected to a decrease in well-being. Perhaps a trivial example of this would be the overwhelming number of choices one is faced with when going to browse and stream a movie with numerous online platforms in play. Some find themselves spending increasingly more time scanning Netflix (and other platforms) with a growing sense they are less and less clear about what they are even looking for. In this situation, the inability to determine the best choice while scrolling a never-ending list of options steals a lot of the joy and confidence in deciding. Who hasn’t wanted to scream into the void, “somebody just tell me what to do!” These days, a confident suggestion from a trusted friend on what to watch or buy feels like a lifeline compared to endless scrolling.
It seems in all of this we have unknowingly surrounded ourselves by more than just choices, we have also surrounded ourselves with unintended consequences. More options do not always equal more contentment and when we’re not clear on this, the consequences become much more serious than wasting time browsing the internet.
With a perceived deluge of options in the background, it can be hard for us, in the foreground, to put roots down in relationships. The ambient influence of choice makes us less likely to commit to group membership and more vulnerable to the haunting assertion that being tied down or overly associated with a group is suffocating. This quietly seeps into our psyche with a whisper, “no need to get too attached here, it’s better to keep your options open.” It makes us less tolerant and resilient when we encounter conflict. When a relational strain emerges (and with enough time and proximity, one always will), the composure and commitment needed to stick around and work things out through ongoing dialogue is sustained by a very different energy than that of the perpetual freedom to simply start over somewhere else. Intimacy requires vulnerability and conflict resolution and to the extent that choice creates the illusion we can avoid these things, we unknowingly limit our capacity for intimacy. The result is a loneliness we don’t understand.
On a macro level, the mass marketing and messaging of choice has a way of making us feel unsettled. The constant suggestion, whether subtle or explicit, is that we lack something and by extension, remaining where we are is akin to being stagnant or falling behind. In this vision of the good life, trying new things is liberating and staying with what you’ve got is stifling.
Wendell Berry, in his classic drastic, slightly grumpy tone, once summed it up like this, “if you have a tv in your house your children will be subjected from the cradle to an overwhelming insinuation that all worth experiencing is somewhere else and all worth having will be bought.” This is a bold claim and it’s an understatement because this was before smart phones. There exists in our pockets and in the glow of the screen before our eyes, a run-away, mostly unquestioned, overwhelming insinuation that something better or more exciting is happening somewhere else. Unchecked, this makes whatever room we are in or people we are with seem unadventurous. Imagine what this suggestion does over time to our relationship with home or wherever we find ourselves engaging with the normalcy of life?
Like Berry suggests, what if much of the claims of choice and change to make us happy are actually a scam driven by commercial interests? What if this encouragement to move and keep moving, to perpetually keep our options open for something bigger and better is more in line with a life characterized by shallow, fleeting, and tenuous relationships? To drive the Netflix analogy deeper, how much does the user experience of technology (scrolling) rub off on our way of being in the world and put us at risk of spending much of our lives in a state of browsing and queuing rather than fully engaging?
What if the good life we crave won’t be found cycling through more experiences, settings, and options but in going deep and remaining present within the life, place, and community we’ve been given? Is it possible the thing that might be best for us is the one thing we don’t have much of an imagination for: the choice to remain.
I believe the choice to remain is something we have a hard time considering because it is so little celebrated, named, and talked about. We need language and terms for the things we value and without it, we struggle to find our footing and get traction especially when what we are doing feels against the wind and countercultural. In the 6th century, against a backdrop of enormous upheaval and social unrest, The Rule of Saint Benedictine was developed as a method for giving language to what Benedictine monasteries valued in a surrounding culture characterized by rootlessness. Within this rule is a concept which could be very timely for communities like ours, communities which aspire to foster enduring relationships and deep life-long spiritual formation.
When a monk desired to commit to the community, they made a vow of stability, a public promise to cultivate a life of stability where they were located. This was a commitment to shut down the “options-open-browsing” way of being in the world so they could give their full hearts and attention to the place and people around them. What they found, through experiences beautiful, difficult, and stretching, is that the human spirit thrives in settings where there is commitment, longevity, and roots. The power of the choice to remain present is that it disillusions us to see things as they really are. Thomas Merton put it this way, “By making a vow of stability, the monk renounces the vain hope of wandering off to find a ‘perfect monastery.’ This implies a deep act of faith: recognizing that it does not matter where we are or whom we live with. …All monasteries are more or less ordinary.… Its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings.”
By embracing what is ordinary, by becoming ordinary ourselves, by renouncing the chase of an ever more extraordinary life, we encounter something quite surprising and different than what we find in “options-open-browsing.” We find rest. Here’s the thing, we don’t find rest by curating the perfect life, this only sets us up for more rearranging. Rest is found in the loving embrace of what is, the imperfect life we’ve been given. All of this has me wondering, what would it look like to use this language of stability, this choice to remain, as a way to describe and pursue the kind of life I’m hopeful for going forward? What if a life characterized by remaining is possible? A life in which I grow old with my friends. A life where I am loved as ordinary. A life where I am known and seen as I age, as my appearance and thinking changes over the years. In a shaky, unpredictable world, what a gift this would be.
Finally, an important disclaimer. There are times when we must move on and I’m so thankful for the ability to do so. Sometimes the setting changes, a new calling is revealed, or sadly, there’s a valid need to exit from an unhealthy relationship or power structure. The vow of stability should never be used to leverage control over people making good or necessary changes. The vow should be seen as a helpful gift for those who feel home, road weary, and eager to put down roots. So, wherever you find yourself today, whether you’ve just made a big change, or you are considering one on the horizon, as you look forward, once you are able to settle down, I encourage you to look for ways to remain. I believe in our time; stability may be a gift capable of relieving us of the exhausting search for a better life. Remaining may be the way to unplug from the illusion that we can choose our way to glory.
If you are part of Canvas, if you’d like to be part of Canvas, the invitation is to ease into an ordinary life together. Let’s forget about curating something impressive so we have the strength and focus to become the kind of people who go the distance together. In a world currently marked by relational upheaval, breakdown, movement, and change, by God’s grace, let’s learn to welcome stability. Let’s give ourselves to the quiet beauty of a rooted life. It won’t be easy, but neither is constantly looking for what is better. It will be hard and it will be good. It will be countercultural and restful. Most of all, in the end, it will be well worth it. It will be the deep satisfaction of making a home together.
