In praise of a (situated) non-decision

Yesterday I read about yet another catholic saint. Eugenie became a nun at 20. She was very obedient, and very good at teaching schoolchildren. She died at 28 from TB. One guy with lung cancer invoked her a couple of years after she died and he recovered miraculously. She was beatified and might be canonized at some point in the future. If she had lived longer, who knows, she might even have founded a new monastic order. But that doesn’t matter; she was faithful and dutiful in the little things. Tell you what: most catholic saints are boring.

But that is of little concern to us. In all likelihood, I will never share the desperate plight of millions. How do you get yourself into that position to start with? This is why the movie City of Joy is the closest thing I know to sainthood as I would define it. It happens despite the guy. He has no intention of being a hero but he becomes one because, despite himself, he cares for some of the inhabitants of the City of Joy. When they reproach him they say: “you are not one of us, we cannot trust you, you are a rootless tree, if things get bad you can go back to your privileges, we have to live with the consequences, you don’t”. At that moment, even though he’s been around for years, he knows they are telling the truth.

There isn’t a point at which he bites the bullet and decides to stay, but he never does leave. His friends' reproach stays with him until the end. He is and remains privileged because he could leave them. At the end, it is the people from the City of Joy who incrementally, warily, begin to adopt him. All he’s got to do is to postpone his going home until he finds that he doesn’t want to go home any more. All he’s got to do is to not choose to leave. Maybe true heroism means burning your bridges once and for all, destroying your privileges as much as you can. And stil Dr Max's stance, cowardly as it may be, is also valuable. He ends up staying because of love.