Not Rejection for Rejections’ Sake

One of my favorite obsessions is those military-style shows.

I believe it’s called Special Forces, or something of that nature. And the premise of the show is that they bring these celebrities to do these physical challenges, testing their intellect, strength, determination, and team-building skills.

Each season is littered with former athletes, singers whose careers never materialized, influencers, and reality stars who need to find themselves beyond the bright lights and high viewership. The intriguing thing is that they all have some trauma that they are struggling with.

One young woman’s story really sticks out to me. She was a former model, a beautiful Black woman who wasn’t even 40 yet, and she spoke of things that, to most, sounded archaic. She described how hard it was to break into the modelling world in America and in Europe because of her race. She was rejected a lot, turned down throughout her life. Her own divorce didn’t help, but this test, this show, was a means for the model to regain a sense of agency.

Spoiler alert: the model didn’t stay long in the season. Despite the best efforts, her physical fitness wasn’t on par with her other, more athletic fellow participants. The constant running up and down hills that looked like mountains, swimming in treacherously deep waters, and the lifting and carrying of crates 3/4 her body weight, soaked everything within out.

Her words stayed with me, even as the season drew closer and closer to the end. Even as other contestants left for their own realization they were out of their depth, and I still found myself thinking of the model, who felt the total of her life was rejection.

Some people would be perplexed. She is a woman who eventually tasted the highest of highs; doesn’t that rejection anchor and fortify her in her person?

Let me give you my perspective.

Our Society’s Introduction To Rejection

As men, our fathers, our brothers, our uncles, or our friends will impress upon us the need to engage in the cold approach when we are young.

Young boys, if they see a girl they think is pretty or attractive, will be thrown into the deep end to go speak to her and engage in dialogue that garners her interest in getting to know them further.

It is a dreadful affair when you are young, you may not have your lines together, and you’re afraid she won’t like you, all of the things that are in the minds of the early teenybopper. And on the opposing side, the young women with whom you may be engaging in dialogue may just want to get on with their day, uninterrupted.

The wisdom that our elders and peers wanted to impress upon you and me was that continuous rejection will eventually lead to success. Overall, it is a net positive to put yourself in positions where you are up for the sole interpretation of people who have no evidential record of your personality or interests. The thought is that first, you won’t be as scared to go after what or who you are interested in, and second, you will have learned from the first few or numerous failures. And third, if you never engaged in this process, you never would have gotten into a relationship with that person.

Let’s expand it further. You never would have gotten that job if you listened to the 40 “unfortunately, we are going with another candidate” emails. You never would have gotten the funding or investment if you had stopped at the first three investors who didn’t see the vision. You never would have gotten into that prestigious school or organization if you had listened to the other two you applied to that felt you were not a great fit.

But this raises a dilemma about conversations about rejection.

Rejection to an Outcome vs. Rejection for Rejection’s Sake

The dilemma of this conversation is that rejection itself is a means to an end. Not a process that truly is hoisted on our heads, that is central to the callus building of the heart and the mind for its own sake.

Let us say that one of our young teenyboppers meets the girl of his dreams in the mall, and she is immediately infatuated with him. They go on to get married and live a happy life. A beautiful story, maybe one that deserves its own rom-com, but we cannot say that our young man learned what rejection was. His first attempt was a home run or a buzzer beater.

And on the opposite, what if someone keeps trying, and they continue to fail to galvanize? They never earn their just due, or they do, but their every waking moment is a manifestation of proving they are worthy of that role. What does that do to the psyche?

The case of this model illustrates that it isn’t about rejection that gives one resilience or toughness; it’s about experiencing it and coming out the other side with opportunities to show it never broke you. But, for some people, for many different reasons, they are locked out of such experiences, so all they associate with being told “no”, “I’m sorry”, “maybe next time” is the degradation of their own self-worth. Continuously every day, in every position of life.

But why?

Why is rejection such a hard pill to swallow?

Why Does It Hurt

To some, it could be the death of possibility. The stories you told yourself would happen when you met that person, and your best foot was put forward, and in an instant, all of that went away with a glance.

To some, it could be a lack of respect. The spouse who cheats on you and defiles a union is rejecting the image of you when they lie down, sleep, text, or engage with another.

All of these have merit, but I would add something else.

Rejection itself isn’t the ultimate prize; it is a necessary brick on the path to the outcome we desire. And the hope is that our best efforts and our immediate pain will pay off in the end.

Rejection, in my estimation, may be a far more nuanced emotional endeavor than just being disrespected or the instant death of long-marinated ideas. It could be a reaction to very real feelings and fears about the human experience.

We must put down the dogmas for a second. We must abandon the new age principles and the rugged individualism that provides comfort at times. The truth that we run from is that humans are social beings. We stand on shoulders, and we are arm in arm with others; no soul is an island. This is why community is so important.

To be rejected deep, deep down within us hurts our hearts because we associate validation from an individual or a collection of individuals with our personal standing. Our appearance, our strength, our charisma, our qualifications, our worth, just to name a few. And those individualistic dogmas cannot erase the fact that how we are treated by the community shapes our personal interpretation of ourselves.

If you are rejected from one job, it wasn’t right for you. Several, you may state:

“I am unemployable.”

One cold approach may not work; maybe it was just something off about you with the individual, multiple times, and you state:

“I am ugly.”

One bad relationship, and you find fault with the person. Multiple times where you are cheated on and disregarded, you may state:

“I am not worthy of relationships and love, because I continuously keep finding myself in this position.”

To not be validated by the group, to be deemed ugly or deviant, carries with it an explicitly dangerous realization. Maybe subconsciously, we are running from a quintessential human flaw.

To be rejected continuously, much like that model, means you are deemed ugly by the society you live in. And given the history of the human condition, to be ugly means you are more likely to be dehumanized. Your destruction and denigration are excused in the name of maintaining positive aesthetics. You will not be protected, your calls of abuse will not be heard, and you will become invisible to the world and yourself.

Where We Are

I know not where that young woman is. The one who tried desperately to fight for herself, and was asked to leave do to an inability to keep up with her team.

Continuous rejection can harm the psyche and put holes in the heart, as you grapple with people’s perception of you. It lingers for a little longer and grows after every instance of denial.

This is a situation that is misunderstood by those who, from the outside looking in, have never experienced continuous rejection, paired with degradation, or have immediately found themselves in the midst of another situation, another relationship, another opportunity to do better and obtain better.

The pain from rejection can be psychological, it can be moral, it can be a breaking of contracts and vows. Perhaps it is also rooted in how we see and observe those society deems worthless, deviant, and ugly. And that “no” standing in conjunction with other negatives means we are that much closer to being branded with those titles.