It was only a couple of months into what has commonly been called “all this” that I found myself in a pandemic-induced bought of self-centeredness. I had succumbed to a deep awareness of my own insignificance in the universe, and although it was not the first time I had come to such a realization, it was the first time it had produced such an intense sense of lostness. I could have used this opportunity to reflect on why my smallness was so personally devastating; instead, I embarked on the task of determining what significance I did have. There is such a thing as healthy self-examination in the midst of a crisis—this was not that.

It may seem self-aggrandizing to blame such an episode on a pandemic—especially a pandemic that the entire world was experiencing collectively. “Surely,” you might say, “you have a selfish nature that cannot be attributed to the novel coronavirus”—and of course you would be correct. However, isolation enabled my worst instincts in a way that is likely familiar to many by now. If self-obsession was the outdoor swimming pool in my hometown, then I was the child standing tentatively on the diving board peeking over the edge. The pandemic was simply the parent on the side of the pool, urging me to jump in.

Selfishness is always just around the corner for me. My keen awareness of this fact is perhaps one of the reasons I can get a little too caught up in monitoring my own goodness—ensuring that I am doing enough, being enough, giving enough. After all, what is the alternative? If I can keep myself busy with the preoccupying habit of justification (my own, of course), then perhaps I can avoid encountering my true nature at all.

“I think I’m getting a little self-involved again,” I remember saying to my husband sometime in AprilMayJune (the name I’ve given to the springtime part of “all this”). My comment was a feeble attempt at articulating a condition likely first coined by Augustine of Hippo—Incurvatus in se, or “curved inward on oneself.” Martin Luther expands on Augustine’s work when he writes, “… our nature is so curved in upon itself at its deepest levels that it not only bends the best gifts of God toward itself… but it does not even know that, in this wicked, twisted, crooked way, it seeks everything, included God, only for itself.”⁠¹

I used to think of selfishness like blinders, keeping one’s focus on only that which affects the steps in front of them. However, the image of one’s spine curving—of the human body being so re-oriented that all one can see is one’s own existence—is even more fitting. Selfishness does not clarify the path ahead of us; it obscures it. The times in my life marked by an intense inward focus are also marked by disillusionment in my own ability, convictions, and identity. Selfishness, rather than being linked with an inflated view of self, is most often a conduit for a very particular kind of self-loathing; not the kind that encourages me to improve myself, but the kind that lies about who I am. After all, when you look too closely at something the image inevitably becomes blurred.

Besides reading “Confessions” in my first year of undergrad, I hadn’t allowed Augustine to occupy much space at all in my mind, limited as that space is. In fact, I still don’t; the feminist in me (nay, the woman in me) can’t help but furrow my brow at at least a few things that found their way from Augustine’s troubled mind to the pages of works that are read by millions. But alas, as a personwho recommits herself daily to the spiritual practice of nuance, and as a theology student determined to be well-acquainted with the theological giants (even those I find mildly annoying), I had tucked a few of Augustine’s words away in my heart for time to age. Thus, when the world around me seemingly came to a halt—when I graduated from university on my living room couch and in my pajamas, and when the temptation to deal myself undue attention and criticism knocked at my door, Incurvatus in se became the self-diagnosis that kept me moving forward.

There are, of course, many things about a global pandemic that make one increasingly aware of one’s place in a community—things that turn one’s gaze outward. I remember taking myself for a daily walk every evening in March and encountering more of my neighbors than I had ever seen while out walking before. Families dragging children out for some fresh air, elderly couples dressed sensibly and walking hand in hand, women who had the specific expression of one who is determined to conquer isolation running with their dogs—these people were a daily reminder of how not alone we all were during those first months. And yet, when I trudged up the steps of my building and unlocked the door of my apartment and unwrapped myself from the layers necessary to defend oneself against a cold March in Alberta, it was my own future (what am I adding to the world?), my own body (is it good, is it enough?), and my own inner turmoil (how do I find peace?) that kept my brain whirring. If selfishness was physical matter, it would surely be gaseous—for an ounce of it expands to fill every crevice of one’s mind.

I’ve come to realize that it’s the particular combination of increased distance from others and increased isolation with oneself that fosters the kind of self-centeredness that can sound so outlandish on paper. “I think I might be the worst person in the world”—another comment to my husband made a couple of months ago (as the person I live with, he receives almost all of my self-indulgent laments as of late). Such a remark is laughable, demonstrating such a delusion with self and others as to discredit me as a reliable narrator of my own life. This is what happens when one is incurvatus in se—the self becomes larger-than-life, blurred, out of proportion. All the while, the other becomes distant, idealized, and impersonal. How unfortunate it is that both are happening at once. When we become overwhelmingly self-aware, when we are curved inward and alone, we need nothing more than to be close to others—to have friends sit beside us, and hold a mirror before our face, to tell us that it’s time to sit up straight again.

I’ve always had bad posture. I was raised a swimmer, a reader, and a violinist—none of which was a benefit to the curvature of my spine. I’ve also always had parents who tell me to sit up straight, friends who remind me to take a break from the books and stretch, companions who make me laugh in a way that points my face to the sky. The remedy to incurvatus in se, this evergreen signifier of the human condition, cannot be administered alone. This particular kind of healing begs for companionship, attentiveness, and care for one another. It demands that we sit up straight at least long enough to look our neighbor in the eye, and to realize that we are not alone in our suffering nor our selfishness.

Selfishness has been my companion this year, and it will join me again in the future. In moments of change, insecurity, or grief, the instinct of incurvatus in se will be almost irresistible. I have learnedthat the medicine I need is not found within—not in the depths of my own effort, or in the reserves of my best attempts at goodness. Rather, it is found in the particular wisdom of those people who know me well enough to see me in my insecurities and selfishness, and who have the bravery to share their insecurity and selfishness in return. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in receiving the pain of others as our own that we are healed, and it is in raising our heads and looking ahead that we see both ourselves and the world more clearly.