“Will that make me happy?” Why a Rising Politician Is Joining the Jesuits: Cyrus Habib
In April, Cyrus Habib decided not to seek reelection as lieutenant governor of Washington state in order to join the Society of Jesus, the largest order of priests and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church. He’ll move to a Jesuit novitiate in Southern California, where he’ll spend the next two years in prayer, service, and community. During the two years he’ll do a 30-day silent retreat, and a pilgrimage where he’s sent out with a one-way bus ticket and little else but a directive to return, meant to teach him “to trust in the providence of God and [become] comfortable with uncertainty.”
This is a radical departure from the trajectory many people assumed Habib was on as a rising political star. He was heavily favored to win re-election—and to succeed Washington Governor Jay Inslee should Inslee join a Biden administration.
Habib often talks about his “Braille to Yale” story as his motivation to enter public service, to “move urgently toward that day when no one will feel left behind or left out in our society.” He lost his eyesight to cancer at age 8; made his way through Columbia University and Yale Law School, winning a Rhodes scholarship in between. After a few years practicing law, he was elected as a state representative in 2012 and a state senator in 2014. When he was sworn in as lieutenant governor in 2016, at the age of 35, he became the first Iranian-American in the U.S. to hold a statewide office.
But as Habib climbed the ranks, he felt called elsewhere. He loves his work, but didn’t love the “addiction to movement” that politics increasingly requires: the never-ending quest for a bigger platform, the inability to be satisfied with where you are. He finally asked himself: What do I want it for? Will that make me happy? He decided to change his path.
I spoke with Habib in mid-July and again in early August. (This interview was edited and condensed from those two conversations.) We discussed how he finally questioned whether the next political brass ring would actually make him happy; the difference between work and vocation, and why the former is broken; and his search for inner peace, the ability to be in the moment, and his true self.
As you know, we’re speaking for my storytelling project with Eva Dienel called The Life I Want, which aims to reimagine work. We created this project because we see that work is broken for so many people, all along the economic spectrum.
“It’s like the reward for winning the pie-eating competition is just more pie.”
Have you read Daniel Markowitz's book, The Meritocracy Trap? I mention it because he talks very persuasively about how our current predicament has created a dynamic where for the first time, financially successful people are working harder than ever before. As you move up, it’s like the reward for winning the pie-eating competition is just more pie.
It sounds like as you were getting more and more “successful,” it was actually less and less fulfilling. Am I interpreting that correctly?
It wasn’t that I felt less and less fulfilled; I love my current job, actually. But there was this other need: This addiction to movement and to moving up became stronger and stronger.
The more affirmation that I received, whether it was in elections or in profiles or whatever, the more I would want to be even more high-profile. If I was interviewed by Ezra Klein, then I’d want to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper. That mentality I found personally very troubling. I realized it was separate from my desire to serve the public, which was still there, but it became too entangled with this other political ambition.
As soon as you get elected to one position, people start thinking about your next position. Look at Stacey Abrams: Stacey Abrams’s highest elected office is state representative. Yet when you get tapped as a rising star—nobody was dealing with Stacey Abrams as a state legislator—everything is about your upside potential: You’re a futures option; you’re a commodity.
“When you get tapped as a rising star, everything is about your upside potential: You’re a futures option. Look at Kamala Harris: The ink wasn’t dry on her election certificate before people were like, “O.K., she’s running for president.””
I’m not picking on Stacey Abrams: We could do this for Beto O'Rourke, we could do this for Jason Kander. Look at Kamala Harris: The ink wasn't dry on her election certificate before people were like, “O.K., she's running for president.”
I came into politics and that started to happen to me. I started seeing myself playing into it and being like, “O.K., let me get a book deal; let me try to get a national speaking role at the convention.” I started seeing myself wanting that without ever asking myself the question, “What do I want it for? Would that make me happy?”
You look at the people who are successful, who are where I would want to be in politics, and they don’t really seem that happy.
Part of why I am interested in your story in politics is that I see that pattern outside of politics. In Mia Birdsong's book, How We Show Up, she talks about the "toxic individualism" of the American dream, and how we are taught that if you fail—never mind the structural racism and discrimination and the social safety net that we've dismantled over the last 40 years—it’s your fault. It’s all about me, me, me.
To my mind, that issue pervades everything problematic about our current age, which is that we are a country that was founded on these classically liberal ideas of maximizing liberty for the individual as the most important thing. In our country, we always want to frame things first and foremost in terms of maximizing individual liberty instead of the common welfare.
The path you’ve chosen makes even more sense to me now. Our society places so much emphasis on individual liberties, but the path you’ve chosen puts you in a community of people who also believe that there is a common good.
In the Catholic definition, vocation isn’t just how you earn a wage, but also includes things like the married life or parenthood, or a call to holy orders or religious vocation. I like that because it’s much broader, and it speaks to a calling and a process of discerning what it is that you feel meant to do.
Now, how do we recognize that that may sound quite privileged? For a lot of people there isn't the luxury: You just have to put food on the table. That’s a reality, and we should do everything we can to allow people to feel fulfillment in the work that they do, and feel a sense of ownership. Labor unions, pension funds that take an ownership share in companies—there are models that can lead to that.
“People are more alienated than ever before from the capital that is funding their salaries and the enterprise of which they’re a part.”
The forces of de-unionization and then trans-nationalization of our employment, of our employers, of capital, have led to a dynamic where people are more alienated than ever before from the capital that is funding their salaries and the enterprise of which they’re a part.
That makes it all the harder to feel a sense of, “I'm part of this company. I have a place here and I have dignity and I have respect and the CEO will visit and maybe worked his way up from being in my position.” This kind of thing doesn't really exist that much anymore.
That's why in this project we’re thinking about work as a system: so that we don’t end up just speaking to or about those in that privileged position. All of those books that suggest you can be happier at work by fixing your attitude, packing your lunch the night before, only checking mail three times a day—those hacks don't work for people who have to work three minimum-wage hourly jobs and don't have healthcare.
One of the places where that begins—and this is why it's been a focus of the work that we've done in my office—is in our higher education and workforce development systems. There's this huge movement on both sides of the aisle: This shift towards saying, “College isn't for everyone,” and pushing more vocational schools and trade schools.
When people do go to college, the colleges have become obsessed with STEM. It starts with Stanford and how embedded and indebted it is to Silicon Valley: that mentality of, “We've got lots of entrepreneurs-in-residence and we've got to have an education that translates into a job right out of college.”
“Instead of the educational process being one of exploration and discernment, it becomes one of pre-vocational training.”
Instead of the educational process being one of exploration and discernment, it instead becomes one of pre-vocational training for certain private employers. You become commoditized as an individual, like, “O.K., where can I maximize my value.”
You told The Seattle Times about the inner peace that you saw radiate from his holiness the Dalai Lama and other religious leaders. And you’ve talked about how people who you've seen in the Senate and at senior levels in politics seem really unhappy. Do you think that it is possible to be in politics or business and have that inner peace?
I think it is possible. Patty Murray is someone who from my observation is like that; she's fantastic at what she does.
This is why I think about vocation more broadly, because I think your marriage and your kids and these kinds of things are also vocations that you have. If those play a proper role in your life, then your job becomes a job and you take it seriously, but you don't take it too seriously; it doesn't become central to your sense of self worth.
The second thing is, do you truly feel comfortable with what you're doing? If you lost your election or you got fired from your job, would you be fine? Would you be happy with what you did and what you would be able to do next? Or do you need this? And in fact, do you not only need this, but do you need what comes next? That can be distortionary.
Where I see holiness is in someone fully—and I think the Dalai Lama is the apotheosis of this—fully living in the moment, the self that they feel they’re meant to be, and for whom what they do therefore becomes a joy. Because it’s not pointing to some other reference: It is itself where one is meant to be.
You recommended that I read the book Becoming Who You Are by [prominent Jesuit priest] James Martin, in which he writes about the practice of agere contra, or “to act against,” in which Jesuits are given experiences that force them to confront their fears. What is your agere contra?
To do things that are not noteworthy, and to break myself of that way of thinking, which has been so embedded in me. Because even in the religious life, you could be like, “I want to go work for Homeboy Industries [the well-known L.A.-based nonprofit that supports former gang members],” or “I want to go study at the Vatican.” I might feel resistance to a more unremarkable set of activities.
I [also] suspect that it will have to do with getting closer to people with disabilities, because that will cause me to have to confront my own weakness and my own fears.
A lot of work that's involved in the religious life is physical work—not the kind of work that, being blind, I'm able to really excel at—where you need to give assistance to another person in a really physical way. My spiritual director said, “That might be exactly where you need to be, because it could be that person needing to actually see that you need help. It might be uplifting to them to be able to guide you or read something to you instead of the other way around.”
It's not just about being blind, but for everybody to really confront your weakness, and how we are all contingent creatures. For people who come in [to the novitiate] with a lot of power and authority and self-confidence, they look to break you of those unhealthy attachments that separate you from God. Those are the things that say, “I can do it with my own intelligence” or “I can do it with my muscles” or “I can do it with my money.”
By stripping those things away, finding ways for you to lack in those ways, that's when then you have to say, “God, I don't know what's going to happen, but I put my trust in you that you will help me find some grace in this moment.”
None of us were born with bank accounts or job titles or resumes. Our truest self could never be said to be any of these things, because we could have been born anywhere at any time in human history, and we would still be that same person, but with totally different circumstances. So getting rid of all of that and finding moments where your agency gives way to contingency.
Martin also wrote: “The more we live out our true selves and the more we become the person whom God intended, the more we see the spectacular effects of a well-lived vocation.” Have you started to see “spectacular effects” now that you've put yourself on what seems like your true path?
Habib (right) at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro with Kristina Brown, executive director of his office, September 2019.
What I've certainly found is the ability to be mindful, and an ability to take risks and be vulnerable. Climbing Kilimanjaro [which he did in September 2019] meant having to learn how to learn again and to make myself vulnerable and take risks.
I would not have continued down this road if I were not looking for signs of consolation and finding them. If we can listen and notice, we can see where our lives are harmonizing with our purpose and where they're not. But it takes some attention and notice.
In the novitiate, they give you an ordo, which is your schedule for the day and everything is planned down to the minute. In the candidacy weekend and the silent retreats, when I was washing dishes, I was totally present and actually, bizarrely, even enjoying washing dishes because I wasn't supposed to do anything else. I knew that when I was needed somewhere, I would be told where I needed to be. So I had no thought of: What am I going to have for dinner? When am I going to send this email? Have I called this person? I don't think we realize how much we multitask.
It's a completely radical feeling for me compared to my life as it has been for a long time, which has been very self-driven.
Every day I have the thought of, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” But it feels right. Hopefully when we speak next, I'll be able to give you even more concrete examples from having really lived the life.
What changes have you made to your work and life to follow your calling? Tell us at hello@thelifeiwant.co.
Photos courtesy the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
