Me, Me, Me

Hi,

This is Alan Lurie, author of “Five Minutes on Mondays”, and this is my very first blogging experience… (It took me a while to get a cell phone too). I hope that you enjoy.

My wife and I subscribe to NewYorker magazine. We ordered this magazine hoping that the sophisticated articles, witty fiction, and list of goings-on around New York City would make us more cosmopolitan. In truth, though, each week we place the new issue in the magazine rack in the bathroom where, when I have a spare moment, I only read the cartoons. One cartoon has stuck with me: A man is sitting at a table across from a young woman. He is well dressed, his hair is carefully combed, and with a dapper expression on his face, he leans forward to talk to the woman. The first frame shows him speaking, with the caption, “me, me, me.” In the second frame he continues talking with again the caption, “me, me, me”. The third frame repeats this pattern. Finally, in the last frame, he sits back and says, “Well, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”

We laugh at this self-involved man, who only seems to care about himself and how he appears to others, but most of us do care very much what other’s think of us. We care because in our hearts we have a deep need to belong to a community. This need is built in to our very structure; we crave the warmth and safety of community, and dread the possibility of being abandoned and rejected. None of us can live alone, and this need to belong begins in childhood, when we are totally dependant on others for our very survival. We are inherently communal creatures, so we naturally care what others think of us in order for us to understand our role and position, and to know that we are valued and safe. As demonstrated in the cartoon, though, our care for what others think of us can manifest in unhealthy ways when, from feelings of inadequacy and the anxiety that comes from the possibility of loosing security, the need to belong leads to fear: the fear of judgment and rejection, of being labeled in a way that is counter to our desired self-image, and of the uncertainty that would result should we need to change.

These fears put us in the position of either living our lives as puppets to the perceived opinions of others, or as a drive to dominate others so that we can feel safe. Either way, our relationship with others becomes one of control of controlled - controlled by the perceived opinions of others, or controlling others so that they will think well of us. At the extremes, we can loose our identity in the desire to please or the drive to manipulate: clearly not a good way to live, and certainly not a path to health and growth.

There are many New Age teachings that tell us that we should not care what other’s think of us; that, according to a popular saying, “What others think of you is none of your business.” At the level of control/controlled this is absolutely true. When we feel inadequate we tend to project these feelings on to other people, and we will then constantly be on the vigil for confirmation of our worth. In order to change this pattern we must first learn to stop worrying about what we think other people might be thinking of us, and instead remind ourselves that we are inherently worthy as human beings, with the capacity to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. On the other hand, we do live in relationship to a community, and what others think of us reflects how well we interact, our impact on others, and personal areas that require attention and growth. So, how can resolve this dilemma? Are our only choices to care what other people think of us and become neurotic worriers, or stop caring and become insensitive and irresponsible? Not exactly wonderful alternatives!

The good news is that these are not our only choices. As individuals we can engage in three basic categories of relationships. The first is an internal relationship with ourselves - an I-I relationship. Here, we introspect and look inward so that we can better know ourselves. Meditation practice helps us to grow this relationship. Since this relationship, essentially, is a monologue, it has limitations, though. If we only rely on our interior conscious to guide us, we can develop blind spots (those things that everyone sees in us, to which we seem strangely unaware), and if we truly stopped caring what other people think of us, we could fall in to solipsism, in which we only recognize ourselves as real, and become oblivious to how our actions affect others.

The second type is an I-It relationship. This is the relationship that we have with inanimate objects, but also can be how we relate to others - as objects of our needs. One who cares about the opinions of others out of fear of abandonment is relating in this way; relying on other people in order to feel better about himself and to confirm or reject his worth (me, me, me). Although it seems that I-It is a two-way relationship, like I-I it is also essentially a monologue, since the only feelings that objects have are the ones that we project on them. Here, the advice to stop worrying about what others think of us is absolutely right. The Bible displays this dynamic in the famous story of the spies: Moses sends twelve spies in to Canaan in order to bring back a report of the inhabitants. 10 of the spies return in panic, saying that the land is filled with giants. “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them”, they say. Of course there were no giants, but the spy’s own self-perception as small and weak led to them believe that others saw them the same way, sapping their confidence, and undermining the needs of the community. Because of this negative self-image, the entire generation was deemed unworthy to enter the Promised Land, and the Israelites had to wait for the next generation, born in the wilderness, to enter the next stage of human development - freedom.

The last type or personal relationship is I-You. Here, we engage others as fellow human beings who have the same needs and desires as we do. In this way, instead of looking to others for self-validation, we can create healthy relationships of support and nurturing where we care about what the others think because we value their opinion, and know that their input is for our benefit. This is the only relationship that is truly a dialogue. The great teacher of this type of relationship is the theologian Martin Buber. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay, Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou. Buber asserts that I-You relationships happen when people meet without agenda, without pretense, in honesty and authenticity. Buber says that such encounters are powerfully transformational because in those moments of deep connection we experience the Divine in the other. That spark of recognition is God’s presence in the world. At that moment we are quite literally looking at the face of God in the full presence of another human being. Buber writes (in a style that is poetic and mystical);

The basic expression, I-You can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, and can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become me; becoming me, I say You. All actual life is [this type of] encounter.

In other words, the only way that I can truly know myself is in relationship to another. I am incomplete alone because I need the dynamic of a deep relationship with another to become myself as an image of the Divine. In this way, I do care deeply about the regard that others have for me, but not in order to control or be controlled, but so that I can rise to my true self.

Imagine truly living in this consciousness - in the awareness of the Divine in other people and, consequently, in yourself! In this way, you would hold other’s opinion of you in high regard, as a vehicle for growth, without fear or rejection. This can be very difficult, even in romantic and family relationships, since we tend to shield ourselves from this level of intimacy. This type of connection is especially difficult in business, since most of our relationships are transactional, and we naturally tend to fall in to an I-It approach. But a more profound connection will create a stronger bond of loyalty, and help us to better understand the deeper needs of our co-workers, clients, and peers; to feel their concerns as our own, and to grow together. It requires the courage and existential confidence to drop our shields of defense, and let another person see us fully, so that we can see them fully. This is a connection of love, and is the only avenue we can choose if we hope to create a better world for ourselves and for our children.

Wising you well,

Alan

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