ACT. . .ACCOMPLISH PART II . . .

Over time I learned that when I began to be too impressed by my accomplishments I embraced an erroneous conviction that ‘life’ is one gigantic game being watched over by a large scoreboard. A variety of people list the points I have accumulated and these points measured my worth. My self-esteem, my worth as a person and as a professional was determined by these many point-givers (or grade-givers). I found that I was not only in the world; I was ‘of’ the world – I was becoming what the world named me to be.

I was intelligent because I received ‘good’ grades. I was helpful because someone said ‘thanks.’ I was likeable because someone(s) like me. I was important because someone said I was ‘needed.’ In short, I was worthwhile because of what I accomplished. I found that the more I allowed my accomplishments – which were the results of my actions – to frame and name my self-esteem the more anxious I became. I would ask myself: ‘How am I ever going to continue to live up to the ‘grade-givers’ and their expectations of what I am to accomplish?’ The more ‘successful’ I became the more anxious I became.

Our culture is a success-oriented culture. Our lives are dominated by superlatives. We brag about the highest building we construct. We brag about the super-star athlete. We brag about the . . .well, gentle reader, you can certainly fill in the blank many times over.

There is a darkness to our light. In spite of our successes, how many of us suffer from a nagging fear that we are not, in the end, good enough or bright enough or successful enough? How many of us are fear-full that someday we will be ‘found out’ – someone will unmask us and we will be seen as we truly are – inadequate or incompetent or worse? Perhaps, we fear, that we are not as loveable or as smart or as successful as we believe we are. Perhaps we have heard another say – in a moment of transparency – that: ‘People think I am full of self-confidence; oh, if only they really knew the truth.’

We are also a culture of ‘self-doubters’ and so ‘depression’ flourishes; at times it seems to me to be running amok among us. Because we have sold our soul to the ‘judges’ our insecurity continues to increase (for example, depression and suicidal thoughts and alcohol and prescription drugs too often manifest themselves in our over/high achieving high school students).

There is little room in a culture of success for the person to reveal his or her ‘hidden self.’ It is as if each of us is confined to an isolation room and are left alone to encounter our own anxieties, fears, and demons. The result is catastrophic.

I am thinking of the musical refrain: ‘When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?’