We have seen that the realisation of our unique identity as an individual in the society around us balances precariously on the three prongs of caring relationships, a fulfilling livelihood, and an ability to participate creatively in the life of the wider community by means of hobbies and various social activities. The importance of the second of these, a satisfactory occupation, in establishing a healthy self-esteem, can hardly be over emphasised. One's image of oneself is built up in no small measure in terms of one's daily work.
In the recesses of the mind, half conscious and half unconscious, there is often to be found an exalted personage, based usually on a real person who meant much to us when we were very young. It remains a constant companion, both comforting and critical, standing in judgment over us and the conduct of our lives. Whatever we do and say is calculated to impress this figure who provides us with a standard of inner approval. This censorious figure is, of course, an element of the Freudian superego, and its sex is determined by that of the real person who provided the psychic material for its construction many years previously. It may in some instances represent the dominating figure in the superego, which is of immediate relevance in one's life. Alternatively, it may act as a symbol for the entire superego in its most approachable form. Here it is almost tangible physically while being fully available emotionally. A life-size artefact can be of comfort to us when we are lonely and feel alienated from the society around us, but it eventually tends to assume a dominating role that impedes the free development of the personality. The reason for this interference is that it irrupts into the focus of our true identity, so that we tend to see ourselves in terms of this superego figure instead of our true individuality. When life is going smoothly for us and the auguries are favourable, the figure can be dealt with summarily and put in its place; but when all is awry, the figure assumes a judgmental role. It seems to reproach one for one's own inadequacy and taunt one with one's failures. The figure has to be expunged, indeed exorcised, from the psyche. Paradoxically, this cleansing function may be achieved by an identity crisis which seems to cut away the very ground from under one's feet.
It is important to distinguish between a crisis in identity and a basic failure to establish a viable ego awareness. The identity crisis occurs as a dramatic event in which there is a tearing down of what appeared to be a stable identity with its imposing outer façade, the image we show to the world. By contrast, a failure in basic ego-structure is with one from one's conception; it is carried along as a constant incubus until one grows in self-esteem. The person in an identity crisis suddenly finds himself bereft of the identity he once assumed was his own; it is as if his shadow or his reflection were subtly stolen from him and his inner substance emptied out and dematerialised so that a hollow shell is all that is left. He becomes a wraith-like figure, like the inhabitants of the Old Testament place of the dead, Sheol, who were insubstantial ghosts devoid of any of the properties of living creatures. This shattering of one's old way of life, that one so took for granted and on which one's identity rested so firmly and proudly, can follow a number of unheralded events of disastrous consequence: an especially topical one is redundancy from work at an age considerably below that of customary retirement. The breaking up of a long-established friendship due to betrayal is another event that may empty one's life of something that was previously its mainstay. And then there is the tragedy of bereavement. To this list there must also be added the inroads of bodily disease and dysfunction of the special senses that put an end to many previously held presuppositions about one's place in the world and the future ahead of one. The pleasant experiences of life serve to round out our personalities, but growth follows hardship. The rounding-out process is like a cosy Sunday afternoon's nap after a heavy lunch - it is enjoyable, but its aftermath is slightly depressing. It contains within it a vague presage of the passage of time bringing with it an aura of disintegration and death. Growth is vigorous, like a solitary walk through the bare fields on a cold winter's morning. It is indeed a journey through death on towards the new life ahead. `No one who sets his hand to the plough and then keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God' (Luke 9:62).
The greatest privilege of responsible adult life is having a rewarding occupation. 'The reward is not merely a financial one; much more significant is the confirming, substantiating effect that employment has on the ego. It makes one feel of importance in one's social milieu by virtue of what one achieves, and it also eases one's attention off one's own immediate problems by focusing it on to an outer, manageable interest. Admittedly to many people work is simply an unending drudgery made acceptable only by the periods of rest and recreation that punctuate it. Little do they realise that if the work were suddenly removed and all their life could be spent, if they so willed it, in an atmosphere of relaxation or on a never-ending holiday, a terrible hiatus would open out menacingly in front of them. When one's employment suddenly comes to an end, one is brought face to face with a meaningless existence in which one colourless day succeeds another. Even if every comfort is laid on, one is enveloped by a terrible boredom so that eventually one may yearn, however shamefacedly, for something to happen, even a disaster if need be, that might shatter the cold, barren monotony that embraces one like a funeral shroud. People who are wealthy enough not to need to earn a living soon come to detest the gilded prison that money can provide, and the more enterprising lose no time in breaking free by engaging in constructive work. Money is a very equivocal aid to personal fulfilment: its absence can leave one miserable, but its presence even to excess seldom brings happiness with it. The investment of his riches can provide a diversion for the wealthy man, but it does not help him to grow into a full person. On the contrary, this way of life can help him to evade the great issues of existence, to the extent of being effectively barred from entering the kingdom of heaven. To enter here we have to bring ourselves alone, naked of all guile. The presence of wealth in whatever form prevents our entry. 'The path that leads to eternal life is narrow to the point of accommodating the person on it alone. All else has to be left behind.
At one time the call was for work that fulfilled one as a person. Nowadays the need is even more basic: to have something to do. The unemployment that follows enforced redundancy threatens the lives of millions of people. The moral threat it presents to the young is itself a terrifying spectre of the wrath to come. The disillusionment and desolation that face many who have given years of their lives to their work is a human tragedy. Where the social services are adequate, at least the basic requirements for respectable living can be maintained - food, clothing and housing. But the aspect of poverty that is not so easily counteracted is the silent humiliation of the personality faced with rejection. The person without employment, ceasing to play his part in the world's round of work, lies like a discarded piece of debris on a scrap-heap of public apathy and private despair. His self-respect has taken a severe beating; in terms of his use to society and the expectation of his own future life, he feels he might as well be dead. The tragedy of unemployment brings one to a direct encounter with the springs of one's integrity. In the end, if we are to survive this up-rooting of our assumed, illusory identity together with the painful scrutiny of the superego that sustained it, we have to grow into a very different person. This is in fact a variation on a cosmic theme; without the experience of crucifixion there can be no real understanding of resurrection.
Our identity is a joyous awareness of our own significance in the scheme of life. It is at its peak when we can take it for granted and accept it unconditionally. It seems especially strong when we are anchored firmly to some occupational or professional role. This role determines our life-style, giving us a secure place in the society to which we belong. It decrees with a splendid precision the routine of our life from the time of rising in the morning to retiring at night. Our role in society is what we believe we are. For a long time we may be able to maintain this façade of identity; while a mechanism moves evenly, it remains harmoniously poised within its environment.
And then comes the end; with shattering finality the work is taken away and the routine within which one lived is disrupted. Now it does not appear to matter when one arises or when one goes to bed. What one does with the day is immaterial, indeed irrelevant. Time is there to be expended; the rather terrifying expression of `killing time' becomes meaningful with an urgent force. Time is now one's greatest enemy, and the less clamantly it reveals its relentless presence and slow passage, the more secure one feels. The attraction of drink and drugs can be almost irresistible, since they deaden, albeit temporarily, one's awareness of the present situation of futility and the future menace of depersonalisation. Entertainments have a hollow resonance since at the back of the scene lies the darkness of personal blight and an all-embracing futility of purposeless life. A drive through beautiful scenery is a glorious experience provided one has a destination to reach. It is a piquant human paradox that as one proceeds through the attractive fields and forests of the countryside, so one secretly inveighs against the speed necessary to reach one's place of call. It would be so much more desirable to spend unlimited time in these beautiful natural surroundings than to pay a visit to some friend living in a comparatively prosaic dwelling-place. The journey seems more rewarding than the destination; indeed, our expectations in life are often more enjoyable than their ultimate fulfilment, which usually has a deflating quality about it. All this is, needless to say, a juvenile, immature approach to reality, but few of us choose to grow up; adulthood on the emotional and spiritual levels is forced on us involuntarily by the vicissitudes of life.
When one has no work to do, the unreal quality of entertainment shows itself starkly and pitilessly. A drive taken simply to relieve present monotony loses its delight even when the most picturesque countryside is traversed. This applies especially to the person who is alone in his plight. The fantasy of spending endless time in a situation of natural beauty is exploded summarily when one is confronted with its realisation. The appeal of natural beauty, like any other aesthetic experience, depends on its transience. If it is with oneself as a sole companion, it soon loses its attractiveness and begins to pall rapidly. In the same way even the greatest music becomes lifeless with too frequent hearing, especially when we have little else to stimulate our interest, and we would not choose to read the same book over and over again, no matter how much we enjoyed it on first acquaintance. In this respect it is a tribute to the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture that it never ceases to fill us with the knowledge of things eternal no matter how often we read it. Its contents are so vast that they illumine the full range of deeper human experience and never fail to speak to our present condition. There is admittedly a paucity of humour in most of the world's great spiritual treasury; this seems to be given one personally by God as one moves beyond life's tragedy and enters the realm of holiness where the fool is king and a little child leads all God's creatures.
From all this it is apparent that our life is fulfilled according to the destination we seek. Once the clarity of the end-point becomes blurred, and the destination recedes, the journey assumes a threatening meaninglessness, since the place of return is simply where we started from, but without any intervening fulfilment or enlightenment. Likewise, a holiday becomes an essential part of each year's routine by taking us away from our work and allowing us to relax in different, pleasant surroundings. But when the holiday has spent itself, we are relieved and glad to return to our work once more, refreshed and renewed for the undertakings ahead of us. If there is no work, every day becomes a holiday but without the prospect of a return to creative existence. Such a perpetual holiday is rather like an epitome of hell; there is a terrible, impersonal apathy with no one available to care for the desolate soul of the newcomer. Man was made for an end, and if this is thwarted he lives in a limbo of unrelieved discontent and ill-defined menace. Where there is no progress the person moves perilously on the path of disintegration. Christ, as we have seen, is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He is every step on the way, and the destination of our human existence is His full realisation in our life. In Him alone is the truth that sets us free from illusion, especially the illusion of false identity. In Him alone is the life of abundance in which we are loosed from the anchorage to a false or incomplete image of ourselves, so that we may enter fully into His identity transposed to our own naked individuality and made effective in our own personality.
All these considerations should impinge themselves on the counsellor when he is confronted by a person facing the threat of self-revelation that comes when redundancy strikes at the heart of his security. In this respect, his situation differs from that of the normally retired person, whose sufferings are much less acute. He is older, and should have enjoyed the full thrust of his creative impulse. The combination of respectable age and a livelihood pursued diligently and profitably during the fertile seasons of active life before the autumn of retrenchment and the winter of immobilisation and decrepitude have struck, make a normal retirement not only acceptable but also comforting. Now at last one's time is one's own; the clock ceases to dominate the speed of one's activities and the hard, taxing routine of duties that determined one's daily life is now at an end. Time is at last available for one to pursue one's private interests, and a more direct part can be played in matters of social concern. In this freedom that is the fruit of a lifetime's work and service well bestowed, one can begin quite spontaneously to enjoy the vast range of nature's beauty and grandeur throughout the seasons of fecundity as well as the months of barrenness. The destination is the moment in hand, which might quite logically be the last one for the person if death were to strike a sudden, welcome blow at the gates of eternity, so that they might open to receive the newcomer. It is then that God is seen in every step of the way. But His presence is the destination also, which has at least been glimpsed and the way forward dimly revealed to the elderly person now happily retired.
Life on earth should end when we have completed the work we came here to do. The greatest work is ourselves and our place of operation is wherever we find ourselves; the tools are the means at hand. Every experience is a stepping-stone towards completion, the dark no less than the bright. Each moment is here to lead us away from self-centredness to self-dedication, a dedication to God Who at once throws us back to the people around us. The essence of divine worship is loving service to our neighbours who are seen ultimately to be all living forms. When we are somebody, we have to learn that we are nobody - the humiliation of redundancy teaches us this lesson loud and clear. When we are nobody, Christ dwells fully in us and we can start to do the work that God has appointed for us. Then at last we are properly about our Father's business.
What then is the work ahead of the person made redundant? The work is to listen to what God is telling him about his past life, his careless attitude to people and things that was a product of ease and complacency. We start to meditate on the past when its present fruits emerge, and begin to see that we played our part also in the upheaval in front of us. Had work been regarded as a joy and a privilege in the past, it is probable that the dire economic consequences of irresponsibility and apathy that confront nations no less than individuals would have been averted, or at least mitigated. Of course, these sobering thoughts cannot relieve the present distress, but they do serve to put us in the right frame of mind for coping with what lies in store for us. It was the threat of imminent death that made the Prodigal Son wake up and come to himself; he contemplated the past with shame as he saw how he had wasted his money in debauchery. Then the Holy Spirit deep within him led him on to a return home, humiliated and defeated but with a faith in the acceptance of his father, who symbolises our eternal Father. When one surveys the indiscipline and apathetic moral standards that over the last few decades seem to have undermined the entire international scene, we can scarcely marvel at their consequences in terms of human dereliction and economic crisis. God is indeed not to be fooled; as a man sows, so shall he reap the reward of his actions (Gal. 6:7-9).
The way forward for the person who has tasted the bitter fruits of humiliation and despair is to look to the immediate present and be available to serve those in greater need than himself. Obviously he would like to return to the type of work he was forced to relinquish, but this desire is seldom likely to be granted, at least until a substantial period in the wilderness has been endured. One's self-esteem has to be grounded on something more substantial and durable than one's work and the money that it earns. Indeed, one's estimation of oneself has, at least for a time, to be swallowed up in one's concern for those around one who are less fortunate than one - the maimed, the mentally ill, the criminal and the drug addict. The end of this concern is a complete identification with the apparent failures of society. This is the moment of birth of a new identity: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:19). We have quoted this insight before on more than one occasion; it is thus that the ideal grasps attainment. The way of complete identification with human life - and perhaps all life - was the way that Christ showed as He completed His ministry on earth. His last companions were two criminals nailed on either side of Him on a cross. We too have to undergo this precipitously downward journey before we can know who we are and what we should be doing with our life on earth - as a preparation for eternal life. Not everyone is destined to undergo extreme privation or terrible suffering, but each has to descend into his depths before he can raise them to God in aspiration and prayer. In fact, of course, it is the divine initiative that raises us up to Him, but we have to be completely open to His embrace, concealing nothing of ourselves. Only then can we be completely open to all conditions of men, and help to bring them also to God for healing and resurrection.
An identity crisis, whether it is precipitated by redundancy, bereavement or incapacitating illness, takes us out of our customary rut of comfort where we may protect ourselves from the outbursts of discontent and agony of the world around us. We then find that we have identified ourselves far too intimately with that rut which we may call our profession, our social position, our reputation or even our dependence on another person whom we believe we love passionately -just as Peter sincerely believed that he loved his Master, before His betrayal, sufficiently to give up his life for Him. Only when the object of our dependence, whether it is a personal quality or gift or a deep human relationship, has been taken from us can we descend to the depths and discover who we really are. As Psalm 130 says `Out of the depths have I called to thee, O Lord; Lord hear my cry. Let thine ears be attentive to my plea for mercy'. It reminds us that but for God's forgiveness none could hold up his head, but God does forgive and therefore He is revered.
This is the moment of truth, the truth of God that sets us free from all illusions, especially that of ownership. In God alone is our safety. Nothing belongs to us in this world; at the most we are given custody over it. Our role is that of a steward, but in due course all earthly things recede from our control, and we have to move out fearlessly into the unknown. This does not mean that our custodianship was of no importance; on the contrary, if it was undertaken with serious intent it will have helped us to grow in responsibility and caring. We in turn by our concern for even the most simple object help to lift up its substance to something of eternal value. And when the object of our caring is a fellow human being, both of us rise to unprecedented heights of self-sacrifice and nobility.
In these thoughts we can begin to glimpse the meaning of the resurrection of the body that plays a central role in the Christian hope: not simply continued life, but an entry into the being of God as the perishable thing is raised imperishable. Sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory; sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown as an animal body, it is raised as a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:42-3). In the great work of resurrection God is supreme, but in His sublime courtesy He works through us, at least in our little world. When one phase of life has been completed, a new one opens up for us. In this way we can begin to face the consequences of a shattering of a past identity pattern which was based on the work we used to do or the relationships that we once enjoyed. As the past is cleared away, so a vista of the future opens out for us. Its essential qualities are simplicity and service rendered out of loving concern without any consideration of worldly rewards.
Two destructive attitudes that may rear their heads as part of an identity crisis are resentment and fear. The resentment that floods the mind with intense bitterness, a bitterness that rails against the premature termination of employment or the death of someone close in relationship, can be frighteningly destructive in its fury. It is exacerbated when one compares oneself with one's contemporaries who have been fortunate enough to retain their position, and one's juniors who are assiduously ascending to the ranks of power where one too once enjoyed security and the esteem of others. The fear of the future, that has a numbing, depersonalising character, is in essence a dread of annihilation, since one's life can no longer be identified and justified by some special routine of work. It is especially gripping during the small hours of the morning when all our adverse emotional responses assume gargantuan proportions and the darkness around us, spiritual no less than physical, seems impenetrable. Later on in the day our normal waking consciousness cuts the fear down to size as the rays of God's hope shine on our psyche and we are given the courage to venture on new paths of affirmation.
The counsellor can play an invaluable part in infusing hope into the desolate psyche of the person who is out of work or bereaved. While he himself has to find a new niche, the moral and spiritual support of one who cares can supply the person with the necessary impetus to move ahead with determination into the future. Work can seldom be supplied to the one in need, and indeed it is important that he should discover for himself where his true interests lie. Where there is heavy unemployment those who look for work cannot choose too fastidiously what they would be prepared to undertake. They have to be constantly open to the voice of God, to find out what His business entails. At least in the early stages, this is very likely to involve service to others. The work is not to be seen in terms of material reward so much as fulfilling a deeper need for human relationships. As we give ourselves fully in concern for other people, so the fears and resentments of the past gradually fade from our view, being supplanted by a faint glow of hope as the future unfolds. Eventually that hope may blaze forth into a new zest for living as a purpose for life shows itself. And this purpose will almost certainly be of a different order from the livelihood that was once the focus of one's identity.
The important lesson an identity crisis teaches us is that, although we are bound to make mistakes in the perilous course of mortal life, nothing is irremediable. Provided we have the humility and wisdom to sit down at our place of greatest perplexity, as did the Prodigal Son when he had to survey the fruits of his improvident life-style, the voice of' God will show us how to proceed. The past is forgiven, and in addition the experience that accrued from its many misfortunes will be of great value to us in the future as we direct the remaining portion of our life on earth more profitably to our own concerns and those of our neighbours also. For as we grow in identity, so we can identify more completely with the society around us.
But there was another man who also came to himself at his place of greatest perplexity - Job the righteous. His identity was that of a sage, a philanthropist, a perfectly just man. Could any of us want a more seemly image than this? But only when this identity was apparently stripped from him by the advent of bereavement, financial disaster and a breakdown in health, did he come to himself. He saw that he was nothing when he had pleaded all the substance of his case with great eloquence in the debate with his comforters. Then there was silence. That is our true identity: the mute incomprehension of our crucifixion and the faith to say with Christ, `It is accomplished'. Only then we are ready to receive God into our conscious life, as Job did when all the debating had ended in the stillness of ignorance. Then at last we can know our true identity - that of a son of God, in the image of God's only-begotten Son. When our weary souls find their well-sought rest in God, they become like Him, and at last our identity exceeds even that of our native society. It embraces all humanity, indeed all life. As we have lost ourselves in the service of God, so we have found ourselves in Him and in all creation.