When I was a freshman in high school, during the fall time of 2009, I wanted nothing more than to go to homecoming with a girl.
I think every guy probably wanted this. No one wanted to feel like the oddball out who couldn't get a date. But it was more than that to me. I wanted to believe that there was truly someone who would say yes to me. Say yes to me for who I was, no ulterior reasoning. To look at me and say "Yep, this will work". Now, while this was in the context of a homecoming date search and might seem a little needy, I think it revealed a deeper pit in my heart. I wanted to be longed for. I wanted to be desired. I felt like I had pretty good self esteem, but looking back, I know it was never truly tested. I had never really put myself out there to get rejected. I had become pretty spectacular at playing it safe. "But no longer!", I thought. I had hid long enough to the point and avoided failure for too much time now, I knew it was my moment to take the risk. So on that shivering cold night in November of the ninth grade at a Friday night football game (sorry for the rambling of prepositions), I took that risk. Now, I had wished at the time it could have been with the girl I was crushing on, or someone I was actually somewhat of a friend with, but it was getting close to Homecoming and I was running out of time. I scanned the bleachers, finally setting my eyes on a girl that I had maybe had one class with all of middle school. PERFECT. She was cute and fun, and if she says no, it won’t hurt that bad. I don’t know her incredibly well. But she’ll say yes, right? I’d just want to go as friends, so she wouldn’t mind going with me. Would she? I’m passable for a date! I walked over to her in the midst of her group of friends, and immediately the sequel to the parting of the red sea occurred. All that remained was me looking up at her, palms sweaty, knees weak (had to), and immediately I began to regret my decision. But it was do or die. Or at least do or not-have-a-date-to-homecoming. So, essentially die. I had to make my move. Fast forward approximately 47 seconds later, I was standing on the edge of the bleachers, pretending like I was intently focusing on the scoreboard, as I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes. “The phrase “Is there something wrong with me?” began to creep around the corner of my mind. You as a reader are safe to make the assumption that she closed the glass casing around the red button and said “No deal, Howie.” I believe we’ve all had this moment in our lives. And if not one moment, then several. Or tons. Or maybe a recurring subconscious principle in our heart. Regardless, something along the lines of… “Am I not good enough?” “Do I matter to anyone?” “What the hell is wrong with me?” Now, maybe an emotional reaction to a rejection from a high school dance is not the best example for this deeper heart issue, but let’s roll with it. Family not treating you well, a scathing comment from a teacher, an abrupt ending to a relationship- all of these and more can cause a moment where we truly question if we’re worth it. Have you not had that moment in your life? Well then, it might not be just a moment for you. Maybe these constant questions are your life: a long series of unhealthy relationships and continual doubt about who you think you are. We start to believe that we are not intrinsically valuable. Once we’ve decided that we at our simplest form are not good enough for others- or even ourselves- things have the potential to go downhill quickly. Then begins the process of trimming and steroiding. We give ourselves a good look up and down in the mirror that reflects our personality, behavior, quirks; and we start the makeover. Suppress the bad qualities. Exaggerate the good ones. Chop. Juice. Chop. Juice. Eventually, we reach a point where we have no idea who we are anymore. We realize we’ve just become a product of whatever we think our friends, community, or world (consumers) want to be around. And this plays itself out in a few different ways. Everyone in the world operates on all different levels emotionally, spiritually, and just in how they deal with struggles. However, I think we can still somewhat generalize people into two groups when it comes to these dealings. The first group:
The second group:
In both of these groups, somewhere along the way, whether through life experiences or a single moment, we came to believe in our heart that what we DO and what we have to OFFER is what will make others love us. To that, I ask this question: Have you ever spent so much time trying to convince someone (subtly, of course (talking to you group one)), that you’re so great, and when they FINALLY encourage you or tell you what they like about you or why they love you… you don’t believe them? Why is that? To quote theologian and author Timothy Keller, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us." Our souls were designed to be spoken to directly. And that direct access to our soul is not something that we like to hand out left and right. For the most part (again, making generalizations here). But if we don't put ourselves in positions to love others fully or be fully loved, we will never be satisfied with any sort of encouragement or affirmation. No praise will ever be enough. We will hear a compliment and think: Yeah, right. They probably say that to everyone. That’s so general. They’re just saying that. They don’t actually think that of me. They don’t know me. What a twisted cycle! We long to our core to be fully known, yet we only give people a shell of ourselves. Of course we don’t buy into that encouragement we got yesterday- the only thing people see of us is what we DO, not who we ARE. And sadly, that is one of the biggest lies we as a people have stapled into our minds: That what we do is what gives us our value. We try to show others how lovable we can be, rather than being comfortable with just “being”. So, back to the title of this blog, which I feel as if I have not made a direct attempt to address at all. Some of you may have read this and at no point have resonated with anything I’ve said, and I applaud you for sticking around this long. I think it’s possible to not necessarily struggle with any of these insecurities to an extreme extent. You think you’re tolerable. Maybe it’s hard sometimes to believe a compliment, but generally, you think, yeah, people probably like you. However, that wasn’t my original question. Do you believe you’re good for people? Not just that people can put up with you. Or that people can have nice things to say about you. Or that they can room with you for a year in college and not murder you before winter break. That you’ve been made to be good for people. In the movie Hugo, there is a scene where the main character Hugo Cabret is speaking with his friend Isabelle: “I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.” Stay with me here, this is good stuff- “...Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose... it's like you're broken.” The word "purpose" immediately can lose someone’s interest only because it’s been shoved in their face by media and motivational posters a few thousand times a day. "Purpose" is defined as “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.” Now, if we’re not so into the whole God-creating-us thingy, then we have the ability to “create our own purpose”, as we've probably heard, also thousands of times. There’s a catch, though. If you are your own creator and want to make your own purpose from this, then you automatically become a slave to whatever can give you worth according to your purpose. What I mean is that whatever you believe you are supposed to do in this life becomes where you receive your value as a human being from. Everything becomes a means to an end. You are nice to people in order to receive the same treatment. You support others for the support you can get back. The list goes on. What is scariest, though, is that you must continue to be well-kept in these areas. You cannot slack. If your purpose is to be the best (list aspiring career field here), then you must work and never stop or you will be in danger of not receiving the affirmation from that being-best position. This can carry over to wanting to be the most “caring”, “funny”, or “dynamic” person in the room. When this purpose is threatened by someone else who is more caring, more funny, or more dynamic, then your value of yourself is threatened. When your purpose is conditional upon yourself, then your value and self-worth is also conditional upon yourself. Everything is dependent upon your own performance. So, what's the alternative? If we say rather that our purpose is given to us and not self-created, then aren't we just a slave to whatever it is that created us or gave us that purpose? Sounds almost worse, the devil's advocate could say. True, but what if that creator tells us that our purpose and therefore our value is not dependent upon our own efforts, rather that creator itself? That we cannot lose our purpose or value, no matter how badly we screw up. That we are fully known by that creator, the good parts and the bad parts, and we are loved through that. How about that? When we fake who we really are, whether by hiding or over-compensating (group one and two), we aren’t doing what we're supposed to do. We probably feel broken. And like we've lost our purpose. When we begin to realize that we not only CAN be good for people, but ARE good for people, this will change our lives radically. God has offered that kind of purpose. Are you tired of pretending? So, I’ll ask again (with a slight twist): Do you know you’re good for people?
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AuthorSenior at The Ohio State University. Full time idealist and part time realist. Archives
January 2017
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