Honesty is Ugly.
22/09/08 11:43
All that I’m about to express is something ugly to
me. It is something I wish weren’t true of myself. I
wish I could mature past the point of having to deal
with these little personal battles that seem to
plague me from time to time. But I haven’t, and maybe
no one really does.
I manufacture my own personal tragedies. My mind, like a prosecutor before a judge, builds a case against myself, as if I wanted to be weighed in the balance and find myself lacking. I remember when I was about 15 or 16 years old, lying in my bed at night, recounting the day. I would weigh my social successes against my failures-- did someone think I was funny today? One point. Did I say something stupid? Subtract one. Did someone else seem interested in me? Add a point. It wasn’t actually a literal point system, but I would essentially stack up my pros against my cons for the day, and that was how I determined if it was a good day or not. That was how I decided whether or not the day had been worth the effort.
Now I know these things are meaningless. When I come to the end, and I’m looking back over the years of my life, these stupid questions will seem so ridiculous. Standing on the edge of life and whatever comes next, these social games and little systems for determining worth will seem so frail and empty.
But I still do this. I still continue my case against myself. I look around me and find that I’m incredibly unspectacular. I can specifically pick up each aspect of my person, examine it, and determine it unsatisfactory. I can do that right now: I speak some Spanish, but I have friends who do it much better. Plus, having spent so much time away from Mexico, I’m losing my accent and fluency. I play the guitar, but nowhere near as well as my roommate Jonathan or my 15 or so other friends who play (and sing) much better than I do. I look in the mirror and see a body and a face that doesn’t reflect who I am. In this game of comparisons, I always fall short of someone else. I’d like to think of myself as a gifted writer, but I reread my own work and it always sounds childish and overwrought. I read Faulkner or Steinbeck and realize that I could never write on the level of those authors I admire. I sometimes have a sense of humor, sometimes seem interesting, sometimes seem intelligent. But every little victory I ever win feels so slight, and every failure is so devastating in this game of who thinks I’m valuable. Who can ever win in this contest where the bar is set at perfection?
Most of us will spend our lives fashioning an idol, an icon created to commemorate ourselves. We’ll shape it and shine it, build it up and support it and tell all our friends about it. We hope that by the end of our lives, we’ve studied enough so that our self-idols are smart enough, we’ve lived and thought enough so that they are wise enough, exercised until they are strong, practiced wit until they are liked, worked until they are rich. But could it ever be enough?
What a hunger we all feel! Do you feel it? I think it may drive everything we do. I think every goal that is scored, test that is passed, every cigarette smoked or girl kissed, I think this need to prove to ourselves and to others that we are valuable can drive everything we do. We are such desperate people.
And so what is it? What is the satisfaction to this hunger? If I say that our hunger is simply a craving for someone to recognize the value inherent to our souls, then I think I am simply saying our hunger is for Love. After all, isn’t that what love is-- two people who wordlessly feel the value of the other? It’s a feeling like Faith; a somewhat irrational belief that there is value and kinship there in some other person. That beneath the mess of skin and bones and personality and thoughts there lies a soul very much like our own. All of this is almost too delicate to say. What is the stuff of that blind Faith which is Love? What is the name of that mysterious substance that we crave? Maybe it is far more accurate to leave it nameless. Haven’t I described it already? It is that Faith, and it is Love. It is the Mystery and it is Good. It is the Meaning that would fill our lives, the perfect thing that our idols imitate.
1 John 4:8
I manufacture my own personal tragedies. My mind, like a prosecutor before a judge, builds a case against myself, as if I wanted to be weighed in the balance and find myself lacking. I remember when I was about 15 or 16 years old, lying in my bed at night, recounting the day. I would weigh my social successes against my failures-- did someone think I was funny today? One point. Did I say something stupid? Subtract one. Did someone else seem interested in me? Add a point. It wasn’t actually a literal point system, but I would essentially stack up my pros against my cons for the day, and that was how I determined if it was a good day or not. That was how I decided whether or not the day had been worth the effort.
Now I know these things are meaningless. When I come to the end, and I’m looking back over the years of my life, these stupid questions will seem so ridiculous. Standing on the edge of life and whatever comes next, these social games and little systems for determining worth will seem so frail and empty.
But I still do this. I still continue my case against myself. I look around me and find that I’m incredibly unspectacular. I can specifically pick up each aspect of my person, examine it, and determine it unsatisfactory. I can do that right now: I speak some Spanish, but I have friends who do it much better. Plus, having spent so much time away from Mexico, I’m losing my accent and fluency. I play the guitar, but nowhere near as well as my roommate Jonathan or my 15 or so other friends who play (and sing) much better than I do. I look in the mirror and see a body and a face that doesn’t reflect who I am. In this game of comparisons, I always fall short of someone else. I’d like to think of myself as a gifted writer, but I reread my own work and it always sounds childish and overwrought. I read Faulkner or Steinbeck and realize that I could never write on the level of those authors I admire. I sometimes have a sense of humor, sometimes seem interesting, sometimes seem intelligent. But every little victory I ever win feels so slight, and every failure is so devastating in this game of who thinks I’m valuable. Who can ever win in this contest where the bar is set at perfection?
Most of us will spend our lives fashioning an idol, an icon created to commemorate ourselves. We’ll shape it and shine it, build it up and support it and tell all our friends about it. We hope that by the end of our lives, we’ve studied enough so that our self-idols are smart enough, we’ve lived and thought enough so that they are wise enough, exercised until they are strong, practiced wit until they are liked, worked until they are rich. But could it ever be enough?
What a hunger we all feel! Do you feel it? I think it may drive everything we do. I think every goal that is scored, test that is passed, every cigarette smoked or girl kissed, I think this need to prove to ourselves and to others that we are valuable can drive everything we do. We are such desperate people.
And so what is it? What is the satisfaction to this hunger? If I say that our hunger is simply a craving for someone to recognize the value inherent to our souls, then I think I am simply saying our hunger is for Love. After all, isn’t that what love is-- two people who wordlessly feel the value of the other? It’s a feeling like Faith; a somewhat irrational belief that there is value and kinship there in some other person. That beneath the mess of skin and bones and personality and thoughts there lies a soul very much like our own. All of this is almost too delicate to say. What is the stuff of that blind Faith which is Love? What is the name of that mysterious substance that we crave? Maybe it is far more accurate to leave it nameless. Haven’t I described it already? It is that Faith, and it is Love. It is the Mystery and it is Good. It is the Meaning that would fill our lives, the perfect thing that our idols imitate.
1 John 4:8
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