Thirty-four years ago when I launched this column, I would never have said this: restlessness is not something to be cultivated, no matter how romantic that might seem. Don’t get Jesus confused with Hamlet, peace with disquiet, depth with dissatisfaction or genuine happiness with the existential anxiety of the artist. Restlessness inside us does not need to be encouraged; it wreaks enough havoc all by itself.
But I’m a late convert to this view. From earliest childhood through mid-life, I courted a romance with restlessness, with stoicism, with being the lonely outsider, with being the one at the party who found it all too superficial to be real. Maybe that contributed to my choosing seminary and priesthood; certainly it helps explain why I originally entitled this column “In Exile”. For most of my life, I have equated restlessness with depth, as something to be cultivated.
