Friday, August 14, 2009
the myth of fixing ourselves
Since childhood, I thought I could make myself be perfect. Everything would turn out just like the fantasy books; all I needed was to work harder and smarter. Many years of frustration and heartache exposes some holes in this ideology. Many people seek validation through their performance, of which I am chiefest of sinners (Just for the record: an excel sheet contrasting virtues to vice one commits in a week is not an effective way to create growth.) Performance becomes the modality in which everything is judged. Some of this modality occurs because many westerners buy into the illusion of a meritorious society. However, we secretly (and rightfully) hope that we do not live in a meritorious society; because that would infer that if you are on the "top of the ladder," then you are intrinsically and extrinsically good. Conversely, if you were hanging out on the bottom rung, you are the scum of the earth. Now, is this reality that you observe in real life? A meritorious system suggests that if you work towards perfectionism, you will obtain it. Thereby making it beneficial to create a narrative of personal improvement as something that we should all internalize even concerning faith. Yaconelli (2002) phrases it this way, "Some of us actually believe that until we choose the correct way to live, we aren't choosable ,that until we clean up the mess, Jesus won't have anything to do with us." Then, if not a meritorious system, what then is an alternative. Yaconelli (2002) suggests, "Until we admit we are a mess, Jesus won't have anything to do with us." Several Christians recognize the messiness existing in their lives. However, do we own up to just how messy it is? The constant failures, repeating relational faux-pas, and the clutter that fills up the inbox of our heads? I admit to you I do not. Yet, it is within the daily admission of my own messiness through my actions, words, relationships, and random musings that I can find wholeness. But, it honestly, I'm not sure we want to be people who are available enough to be messy. I think we like the idea of it. But it becomes too personal, life-altering, demanding, to do everyday. I realize that I can do very little in the grand scheme of things. I need you and the greater community of faith to come in and be those people that can love my messiness. I hope to do the same for you. And hopefully God will show us a thing or two during the process.
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I, too, subscribe myself to measurement of self through measurements of merits. After coming home to live, I can EASILY see from where this comes. My whole childhood expierence was based off of how happy/mad my parents were at me for doing or not doing x, y, and z. Soon, I learned to place this same pressure on myself.
ReplyDeleteI read once somewhere (who knows where, citations lost) a certain amount of depression is beneficial to a person. A society is created by people and a depressed person decreases the amount of work they have to do. A society is much more eager to pick up someone elese's slack than to risk having to fill that person's position in society. In the same way of thinking, it's much easier for me to accept my parent's beratement of me than to seek another family.
Contrast to how my family sees me (a screw-up who just happens to accidentally succeed in a few minor things, but continues to be not nearly as meritous as needed or expected), friends embrace the duality of my nature, or my "messiness" as you say.
From a scientific point of view, why is that? Why is the trend always with the family putting so much pressure on the person to shrug off the faults, while the friends love the person for the same faults?
In my very limited understanding of earth, human nature, and all things present in the world, it seems to me the meritous society begins, and ends, with the family.
How hard it is to love and accept oneself when the people who know you better than perhaps you know yourself, berate you for things that no matter how hard you try you can't fix and, even worse, no matter how hard you think you want to, you can't care that you can't fix.
Oh, silly, silly, silly human nature. Certainly, the cosmic joke is on us.
-The Woman Who Once Was East Coast
To Formerly East Coast -
ReplyDeleteYou asked "From a scientific point of view, why is that? Why is the trend always with the family putting so much pressure on the person to shrug off the faults, while the friends love the person for the same faults?" Object relation theorist would say that your family has created and ideal Liz. There objective is to refine this Liz until she does need become perfect. This may stem from a worldview which is laiden with presuppositions about life and success. They also may be using your as their offspring as a measurement of their own esteem and when you do not succeed in their eyes, then they too do not succeed.
However your friends do not need you for their own validation and esteem. They are seeking you for normalization and affirmation. So, in a way, they need you not to be perfect to justify their own issues. And, its also this thing called unconditional love.
The great existential reality is that one day we will die. So everything we do will ultimately not matter. So, we attempt to construct as much organization to the world as we can to make it better or meaningful. But the more we construct new things the more meaningless they become. The only true meaning comes in the one thing we cannot produce artificially. Love.
Maybe this is this the greatest cosmic joke.