Personal grace is on retreat on all fronts
When you see or hear Donald Trump is ``grace’’ a word that comes to mind? What about when you read one of his tweets? Yes, grace can mean a lot of things. If you are a believer, there is God’s grace and the grace said before a feed (please quickly mumble: Lord bless this gifts we’re about to receive through Christ, our lord, Amen).
We can grace someone with our presence or receive someone’s good grace – reward or favour.
We talk about grace under pressure as something to aspire to.
And then there is what I’d call personal grace – that almost indefinable quality where people respond to events, good and bad, with the right mix of seriousness, humour, understanding for others, thankfulness (without boasting), and a radar for knowing how one’s behaviour affects others.
I’m going to sound like I’m 98, but I fear the notion of personal grace is in retreat on all fronts. What evidence do I have? Some. Exhibit A is the man who is leader (I use the word loosely) of the free world. To Trump, grace is something that should be taken out the back, tortured, and thrown in the nearest dumpster. In Trump’s world, life is too short to admit mistakes, accept success humbly or try to understand others’ arguments.
What’s the point when illiterate rantings in 144 characters or fewer (yes fewer, not less) can be used to demean your enemies (anyone who disagrees) and scream out your own amazingness? Grace cannot exist when your whole life is lived in faultless, angry-face shout mode.
You might say that it matters little how Trump acts. His supporters see it and find a road map for poor behaviour and those who don’t support him start to use his methods against him. A virtuous cycle it is not. To further invite scorn, dare I suggest that social media is creating a generation of competing super narcissists hooked on the immediate sugar rush of likes, shares and comments. Trump adores an audience and Twitter gives him the fix he requires.
Today, we all must buy into graceless self-promotion for the sake of our careers and financial stability – if you are not on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram … ad infinitum, then death to you and your future prospects.
Whether it be announcing one’s appointment to a new job and inviting others to praise you (small beer, I know) to highlighting our wonderful lives, there is an element of gloating (I’ve done it too). The line between justified pride and boasting is thinning and grace is getting squeezed out.
The use of email/texts/Twitter/ Facebook to communicate with others in centralised workplaces has removed the intimacy of a verbal conversation. Nothing creates empathy and understanding for another like face-toface contact.
The electronic world allows for more passive-aggressive rubbish because it’s harder to view the person at the other end as a living, feeling human being.
In workplaces, phrases including ‘‘blame shifting’’ and ‘‘I got thrown under the bus’’ have grown in popularity because some people do not have the good grace to accept they make mistakes. Better to point the finger elsewhere, make yourself look good and make one’s self scarce, waiting for the next opportunity to shamelessly kiss the boss’ butt. There is no grace in puckering up. I was raised Catholic – the church and I don’t exactly see eye to eye any more – and the Sisters of (Show No) Mercy were big on humbleness and grace, both in the God-is-our-Lord sense and on a personal level, as a code for life.
The nuns were right about one thing: personal grace is something that should be part of everyday life. Admit your mistakes, accept success humbly and treat others with care and you are most of the way there.
Compare that way of living with Trump’s supercilious, hubristic, selfobsessed pomposity and there seems no choice about which is the better path.
Dr Sean Scanlon is a journalism tutor at the New Zealand Broadcasting School. He has worked in newsrooms in New Zealand, Australia and China.