Gadflying

Of course, self-esteem is not easily achievable.  For one thing, it involves the delicate matter of balancing what one knows of himself against what others think of him.  I always think adverse
comments deserve a full hearing and a good bit of responsive soul-searching. 

I dismiss out of hand the “too tall, too thin, too short, too fat” comments.  Almost everybody is “too something” by someone else’s standards (as a songwriter friend, Kerrigan Black, beautifully expressed it in his lyrics to a song of that name).  I dismiss equally those that ascribe to me virtues I know I don’t have.  They are temporarily flattering, until the un-nuanced light of reality beams in and my failings seem accentuated.  They are no longer being measured against “everyday” goodness, but against the goodness which has been attributed to me.  The disparity is shocking and disturbing. 

But that leaves a huge number of comments which are more than possibly true, all of which require sifting and analysis.  It’s a process made difficult by the need to balance objectivity and subjectivity – after all, about ourselves, the most objective assessments are probably the most subjective.  Who knows more about what we’ve done and why we’ve done it than we?  Others can only speculate, but unless we are troubled by some subtle neurosis or mental ailment, we know.  For myself, I know that my altruism is frequently nothing more than the willingness to part with money (I have very little, but need perhaps even less) in order to escape giving up time or attention.  The results may look good on the rolls of various charities and may sound good when recounted by personal beneficiaries, but I know what I really did … and why I really did it.  Not, to say the least, applause-worthy.

Those who prefer loyal partisanship to weighing and balancing probably have little nice to say of me.  It is not uncommon for me to espouse a position contrary to that necessary to justify my own past or present acts.  I learned long ago that it is death to the soul to redefine virtue continually so that it always manages to encompass all my own activities.  As a child, I tried but frequently failed to “stay inside the lines”.  As I have aged, I’ve shown an equally flawed performance about “staying inside the lines” of my own philosophies of ethics and morality.  I’ve had better luck with the letter of the law – but as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, that’s because legality is absolutely the easiest form of good behavior to achieve.  One can be little short of a monster and still be law-abiding if we accept that “not guilty” means more or less that the acquitted is “law-abiding” – though I’ll admit that some of the monsters roaming freely would probably be behind bars if our system of justice worked a bit better.

I am perhaps spared being an absolute hypocrite of the “do as I say, not as I do” variety only by the fact that I don’t dissemble.  Some things I would prefer not to shout from housetops, but it would not occur to me to deny them as my acts.  I truly do hope that people do not elect to emulate the portions of my behavior I myself cannot justify (and don’t usually attempt to), nor choose to use my bad behavior as a justification for refusal to listen to my good advice — tossing the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

I make a frequent joke of describing myself as “glistening with self-satisfaction”.  That’s ironic hyperbole.  I think I lack the imagination to be a monster and the strength of character to be a saint.  I’m in the great, mushy middle ground occupied by almost everyone else in a state of greater or lesser mental and spiritual discomfort.  But I do believe this:  If one’s self-esteem is low, perhaps that’s exactly where it deserves to be. 

There is, after all, a point at which psychological scab-picking and perpetual resifting of past injuries cease to be beneficial.  When they serve to entrench us more firmly in self-excuse than to spur us to straighten up our acts, I’m in favor of purging old files.  My father opted not to pay the doctor who delivered me when he discovered I was a daughter instead of a third son.  I subsequently paid the doctor myself and overcame the sting of my father’s decision by remembering that he was “old country” (Greece).  He might have left me for wolves on a mountain-top in older times, or sacrificed me for a favorable wind.  Ultimately, it’s all a matter of perspective and considering the alternatives.  Remaining an unpaid COD for a number of years is hardly an enduring excuse for anything I’ve done or failed to do.  For those acts and non-acts, I alone am responsible. 

For recognizing that, I’ll confess I esteem myself at least a little.