When It's All About Me.

Not long ago I did a radio show on the topic, “why I cannot be satisfied when it’s about me.” It has turned out be one of the most powerful fundamental truths for myself, those I counsel, and anyone who wants to experience real lasting joy in life.

We were not designed, never intended to be self-seeking. And, if you are an atheist it still doesn’t work. Popular self-help phrases such as “You must love yourself before your can love others,” “You must forgive yourself before you can forgive others,” seem suspiciously circular yet they are pleasing; and so we accept them at face value without thinking them through. If we did, we would realize they are a ploy of redefining of principle terms. However, they put “me” first, which is just where we all want “me” to be. And the excuse for not feeling good about life is “I guess I’m still not putting myself first enough.”

To be fully human, we require not only intimacy with God, but also intimate human relationship. Intimate human relationship requires vulnerability and allows exchange. Vulnerability always has a degree of risk. However, the more vulnerable we can be the more fully human we can become. Being in the image of God, as we were created, means being fully human as we were intended; open horizontally to others andvertically to God.

Here are five reasons why “I can never be satisfied if life is about me.”

When life is about me everyone else is by definition a distraction from my best interest. Others are the enemy, a threat, an inconvenience, an annoyance. Because I know I am mortal, if life is about me, it is chiefly about my survival. If this is true, then the alternative to self absorption must to some degree bring us face-to-face with our mortality; make us feel vulnerable. Distraction from my own interests is direct trade off of personal value, control and power. This mind set demands a sense of entitlement and generates competition anxiety and develops a defensive, fear and shame-based disorder of personality.

When life is about me there can be no fixed or ultimate purpose. In the poem, “As the Ruin Falls,” C.S. Lewis describes himself as the scholar's parrot that is able to speak Greek, but ”self-imprisoned, always end where I began.” When the purpose of life is me, if "me" is the point of refence the search for meaining becomes a circle. One cannot tow his or her own line. This frame of mind may result in impulsivity, instability, fragmented thinking, mood swings. In extreme cases it can result in schizoid-like personality traits.

When life is about me there can be no hope in the future. If the value of life is defined by my existence then life only has a reliable value in my past. I do not own the future, I cannot control the future. I do not exist somewhere in the future to make promises and insure their keeping. On the other hand, if the locus of life is understood to reside elsewhere - beyond myself, then life is always a journey outward and its purpose, the reason of hope, always lies in the objective future. Ultimately, the true hope in life must give meaning to every aspect of one’s life journey and to life itself. We can not make up, or superimpose that kind of hope. It must already exist as self-existent and self-explained. In fact, it resides in the Creator who is the source of life. Having no hope results in depression, melancholy, fatalism, often addictive, avoidant personality.

When life is about me there are no absolute virtues such as love, trust and so forth. In fact, I wrote an article and also did a radio show on “The Love Triad: trust, forgiveness and communion.” Accordingly, forgiving and “forgetting" rely on giving and receiving, that exchange cannot even be experienced when life is about me. So, the next time you struggle to feel forgiven, it might be that life is too much about receiving and not enough about your giving. If life is about me, everything is relative to me: my limited life experience forms my personality, affirming myself and passing judgment on others. This mind set leads to the conclusion that others are hypocrites, that virtues are pretentious. It leads to amorality. It leads to a pessimistic outlook that results in opportunism and abusiveness, and leans toward the antisocial personality. This is the familiar road to the breakdown of a marriage. The fatalistic views of secular existentialism and socialism, the cruelty of nihilism and the debauchery of hedonism all begin here.

When life is about me I cannot grow. Human growth is spiritual growth. Spiritual growth involves integration. Vulnerability is fundamental. In his book, The Different Drum, Dr. Scott Peck talks about "soft individualism." We need community to be human. Dr. Peck states that the self that evolves in isolation cannot integrate successfully into a community. The self that evolves in community evolves as part of the community. It's uniqueness is by virtue of community. You are who you are in relationships. Your “self” your “personality” your “growth,” all simply imply the degree to which you offer yourself in service to others, and to which your life is intertwined in the community.

Read past issues of CCF