Chapter 9: Personhood Within the Tragic Gap: Between Reality and Possibility

Being a person is difficult, but attempting to be otherwise is tragic. To be a person is to acknowledge that a gap exists between what is and what could or should be, between reality and possibility. To be a person engaged in meaningful leadership endeavors requires one to stand in that gap, honestly engaging with the world as it exists in the present while remaining open to the possibilities of a better future.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pursuit of personhood proves all the more pressing and essential. Representative of this sentiment, Historian Dr. Kate Bowler remarked”, …in a world that promises endless progress, even now in a pandemic, I realized I just need to be a person” (2021a). Endless progress—or endless anything at all—runs counter to the essence of personhood. To be a person, after all, is to be finite, limited, and in need, and yet somehow to avoid concluding the impossibility of wholeness, meaning, and purpose. Indeed, it is false to say that anything is possible, but such limitations need not be cause for apathy nor despair. The precarity of personhood unearths possibility.