Too often, I judge myself negatively or put myself down. So many of us seem to feel this nowadays. I read a statistic from The Cybersmile Foundation saying that 9 out of 10 young people view themselves negatively. I’m not of the GenZ or Cyber generations, yet I still can do this. Why is that? Usually, I become aware of it when it happens and know not to allow myself get kidnapped by such thoughts and hopefully let it go. But why does it arise so easily?
And I think these two experiences are related, although I didn’t realize it at first.
When I was a child, I had the unusual thought that I might be the Messiah– or maybe that I should be. Not a Divine figure, as in the New Testament; not an Ideal King from the lineage of King David who would establish justice and universal peace on earth, as in the Old Testament. But someone anointed to stand up for a just and good God, or for what is just and good; or someone ready to suffer to bring about a better world. This was partly from parental expectations, but even more from hearing about the holocaust. I couldn’t understand how a purportedly good, just, all knowing and powerful God could allow such a thing. To my young mind, He clearly needed a champion.
When in my late twenties or thirties, I remembered I had had this notion and wrote a story about it called The Boy Who Thought He Was the Messiah. The writing helped me see and understand a powerful and impossible expectation lingering in my psyche.
Of course, when I was young, I had a very childish notion of God. I thought of Him, Them, or It in a very spatial way. He was The Man or the Being Upstairs looking down on us all. And even though I had never met Him, at least not face to face, or not clearly, I was very curious. And I wondered what it could be like to be so different from everyone and everything else, so above us all, and to know so much. I felt that He must be so lonely.
I had also watched all these movies and read heroic novels, and I wanted to be heroic, or to live at least one moment, one moment where I was a hero, for God or justice. I wanted a moment of perfect clarity about who I was. Wouldn’t that be something? To live a moment that was so full, so real and profound? It took years to realize that was quite an expectation to live up to. I was set up early for disappointment and for judging myself negatively.
We expect ourselves to be something that’s definitive, delineated from others; that stands out in some way. And that persists. Something beyond not only our body, but beyond our sensations, emotions, memories, maybe beyond our mind. A soul, maybe. Yet, all these change; they can’t be the “who” that we look for. Clearly the sensations we feel, the emotions, the thoughts and other content streaming through our mind is always changing. They’re there, right there, and then gone. We can’t find something other than consciousness, maybe, that has or that experiences all of these. But the nature of consciousness is perpetual change. Looking for a self beyond the moment-by-moment reality can hide what’s true.
Our culture pushes this distorted expectation, emphasizing the material, what we accumulate, what separates us from others over what unites us. And with social media, and the constant comparisons with others, how they look, what they’ve done, how many friends they have, this just makes it impossible to notice and value what’s true in ourselves.
So, by expecting that we ourselves are a thing that can be defined and delineated, that persists, we expect something impossible. It creates an unreal expectation of who we should be. And this leads us to feel, in the words of Buddhist philosopher David Loy, lacking in some way. Wrong. Unattractive. Unlovable. No one can always be good, knowing, or courageous.
So, what do we do? When I wrote the story of my childhood, it was a powerful experience. I realized that an idea I had buried in my mind was wrenching my heart in painful directions; and then I was no longer captivated by it.
Recognizing there’s a history, a broader context to our feelings makes understanding them a little easier. This is a first step. A space can then open to feel tenderness for ourselves, care, compassion. We realize what a wonderful story we had lived in our mind! And it’s this openness, this tenderness that gives us the ability to be fully present in our lives and to our feelings. To not put ourselves down for putting ourselves down. And then we can uncover and let go of other ideas, tendencies, ways of responding that cause us to feel bad about ourselves.
So, when we do feel an impulse to attack ourselves, we can try to remember that emotions have causes and are not solid but fluid. We can try to remember to create a space for tenderness. To pause and feel what we feel, or what in THAT moment we can allow ourselves to feeI. We might sense our breath or our belly or our feet on the ground. We might listen to the sounds around us. Maybe we can notice any sensations we feel, and where they’re located. Then the quality of sensations, whether they’re hot or cold, heavy or light, loud or soft. We feel present. Only then do we listen for the thoughts and stories we’re telling ourselves.
And we can talk to people face to face, only those we trust, like a teacher, counselor, friend.
When we try as much as we can to look at whatever’s going on with an attitude of learning from it, this transforms what we notice from something solid, unchanging, to something fluid, interesting, maybe, more manageable. It becomes something we can deal with. Instead of feeling lacking in some way, inadequate, powerless, we feel larger than we might imagine, more powerful, valued.
We look more closely at what we’re looking at. We might not be, thankfully, a Messiah. But our moments can be, in their own ways, very full, present, and profound.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
