Long Live Indifference

Asking yourself about your inner freedom, investigating what your purpose in life really is, is valuable for your personal search for more quality of life. Mildness and humility are important here. It is almost inevitable that we will attach ourselves in a way that can make our inner self not free. As a young Jesuit, an elderly fellow brother spoke to me about white rabbits: a little boy shows his best friend his toy cabinet and says to him: ‘I love you, you can choose what you want, it is a gift for you. Only … my white rabbit, you can’t take that, because it’s really just for me.’

We all have a few white rabbits, big things or small things, postures, dynamics … to which we are more attached than we would like and of which we are sometimes not proud. It’s human nature. It’s a big step if you can admit to yourself that they exist. Maybe as the years go by you can say goodbye to your white rabbit but there is a good chance that something else will replace it.

Excerpted from Living with Ignatius: On the Compass of Joy by Nikolaas Sintobin SJ (pp.36-37)