What Gift Have You Been Withholding from the World?

I have never forgotten the observation of a sixty-five-year-old woman who began her therapy some decades ago by saying, “I cannot use the word myself without flinching.” She went on to explain that she had been educated in a strict religious setting, and any child using the word self received admonition and corporal punishment. How those adults thought this helped children grow up into healthy adults is beyond me. Yes, they ensured that their charges would not become narcissists, but they also ensured that the children in their care would grow up fearful, neurotic, and diminished. And the same is true for most sports coaches I have observed. Most youth need a supportive, affirmative parent, someone who believes in them, not another derogating adult who tears down their fragile efforts.

We all wish to be seen, and many, perhaps most of us, are not. The rise of the Facebook era and selfie craze, the many blogs, all point to a desperate need to feel valued, seen, and hopefully affirmed. As Andy Warhol observed several decades ago, in America, sooner or later, everyone is famous for about fifteen minutes. The selfie preoccupation is all about being seen in some context — a celebrity, a historic site. Many of those shots are compensations for not feeling inherent value. I have always believed that successful parenting is found not in the splendiferous achievements of the child, who may only be compensating for the unlived life of the parent, but in the child who understands that he or she is seen and valued for who they are, not what they are supposed to do, achieve, become. It sounds so simple yet proves so rare.

Whether we believe that a purposeful God or random processes govern the universe is virtually irrelevant. What matters is to what degree we can accept ourselves as ourselves, with whatever shortcomings are common to this human estate. How often I have said, in discussing a compelling dream or some symptomatic resurgence, “Where do you think this came from inside of you?” and “What does it mean that something inside of you has expressed itself this way?” How often I have observed, “Do you now see that something inside of you exists independent of your will, your conscious life? Do you not see that something inside of you sees you and asks something of you?” Even the most troubling dream is an autonomous manifestation of something large within us that asks our respect, our dialogue.

Each of us has a gift, the essential gift of being who we are, with all the flaws, shortcomings, mistakes, and fears of which we are all so aware. One of the most pernicious influences of most religions, and a lot of unconscious parents, is the shaming process, the inevitable admonition to be perfect, to measure up to some abstract codes. As none of us is able to live a model of perfection, we wind up swimming in shame, overcompensating or self-sabotaging. When the woman shuddered in using the word myself, she was after all only serving the message that her distorted elders had imparted to her.

When we think of the gift of ourselves, we usually revert to what is accepted, what is exceptional, or what might win approval. The flip side of this impulse may be seen in the desperate acts of the disenfranchised to become something notable through assassinations, acts of terror, or other egregious behaviors. For every thousand selfies, there is one Lee Harvey Oswald or Gavrilo Princip who makes his mark on history. Each act is the same: I wish to be seen, to be valued, to be someone. And as understandable as this desire surely is, how delusive the goal, how precarious the purchase on fame, importance, celebrity. Rather, our gift will best be found in the humble abode in which we live every day. Who I am, who you are, is the gift. No pretentions, no magnification necessary. They are merely compensations for self-doubt in any case.

The humble, brilliant Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins saw it in the nineteenth century. In his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” he describes,

           Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

           Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

           Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

           Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

Some people’s lives express themselves externally through the gifts of intellect, talent, or achievement of some sort or another. The world of selfies, the Guinness World Records, and the need for the fifteen minutes of fame are all compensations for not feeling one’s inherent value in the first place. For most of us, however, the gift we may bring this world is found in moments of spontaneity where we add our small piece to the collective. It may be found in very private moments of reflection where we restrain our narcissistic impulses. It may be found in moments of compassion for others who struggle and falter in the face of their acquired, debilitating messages.

In recently witnessing Pope Francis, I was touched by his frequent pauses in the pageantry to affirm a child, a crippled person, a discarded soul, a prisoner in a concrete maze — all of them of value, all of them forgotten, left behind, but not forgotten in the eyes of this good man. His reminder touched many of us who do not espouse the specifics of his faith because he reminds us of the genuine gift that each being brings to this troubled world. It is not sentimentality to affirm the disaffirmed. It is a remembrance of the essential dignity of all being, and how in its various ways, it brings to the great puzzle a special piece never before seen in human history.