How To Advertise Your Flaws, In Ten Steps Or Less
There are good questions, that have lately begun to seem less-good, because they've become commonplace and rote. Once asked of the young and the seeking, but now asked mainly of the recently-met, of the newest member of the coffee group, and of the interviewee, they have regressed into mere icebreakers. Light trivia, with no real thought required or expected in the asking or the answering. Their meaning has been diluted through casual use, and hearing them constantly in shallow conversation has stripped them of the depth they actually hold. But I think it is exactly that fact - that they've assumed a throwaway quality - that makes them questions worth asking again, in a more-considered light:
What would you try, if you knew you couldn't fail?
Who would you be, if you knew you'd be a success?
What would you do, if someone gave you enough money to do it?
As much as they seem uncomplicated and straightforward, they aren't, really. As a somewhat-cynical critic of much of today's "Ten steps to a fulfilling life" -style of self-help marketing, they're questions I could easily overlook myself. I've argued in the past that what we do is far less important than our motivations for doing it. And I've argued that "success" as it is defined today, isn't a worthy nor logical prize upon which to assign the meaning of life. I haven't changed either view.
But these questions, to me, are sneakier than they first appear. They cause us to access regions of our minds we normally don't like to visit. Because they are not truly about our deepest desires, as much as they are about our deepest fears. Read them again: What would you try if you knew you couldn't fail? Who would you be, if you knew you'd be a success? What would you do, if someone gave you enough money?
These questions have power because they pry past our defenses to gain a truthful response. To get to the substance of our thoughts, they first strip away the qualifiers. The knee-jerk excuses, listing all the reasons there's no use considering the answers. They ask us to put aside the things we tell ourselves, that make us afraid. They require us to consider possibilities without first considering our fears: Failure. Loss of security. Being humbled. Risk itself.
Fear has much more control in our lives than we want to believe. We are so accustomed to operating within the confines of acceptable appearances, that we stop realizing fear drives virtually everything we do. How we behave. What we believe about ourselves. And not one of us is alone in this reality. Fear is something so shared by all humans - so universal - that lists are made of the most common of them, by authors, bloggers and psychologists. Normally just below death, the fear of public speaking often ranks second. But I don't believe that's an accurate assertion. Not exactly.
The reason it makes regular appearances toward the top of such lists, is simply because public speaking is a routine requirement - faced by most of us at one point or another - in which we run the risks inherent in showing our true selves to people, in real time. It's merely a ready example of that which is one of our greatest fears: The possibility of being found out, and having nowhere to hide.
The fact that this fear is so widely-held is a boundless irony: Of all our desires, the most insistent, hidden, and deeply-rooted is that we want to be known. And the reason we hide and suppress that desire, is because it is mutually-exclusive with our fear. We believe we can't have it both ways: We wish our gifts could be recognized, but we don't want to take the risk of revealing them. We yearn that the kindness in our hearts, however fleeting, would be appreciated...but we lack the confidence to show that kindness in the face of an unfeeling world. We deeply wish we could be sure, without a doubt, that all of our relationships would remain as they are, if people truly knew all of our flaws...but that certainty cannot come without first being seen bare of the decorations and the ironed clothes and the smooth words and the easy laugh. We wish we could unburden ourselves of hiding our selfishness and bitterness and mistakes, yet be confident people would still befriend us in spite of them.
And if we were able to do that, would it be worth it? What would life look like, if we got completely past the fear of embarrassment? The fear of shame? The risk of someone truly knowing us? The truth is, we'll never know by simply wishing we knew. It requires honesty. And looked at in light of a reputation, honesty is a gamble.
If we refuse to risk honesty, there is only one other choice: To remain prisoners in the fragile houses we've built for ourselves, for all the wrong reasons. We soldier on in numb oblivion, without ever knowing how availing ourselves of the complete truth would actually play out. Of how it could potentially relieve others of the burdens they thought they carried alone.
The stakes are too high to risk it, for most of us. If we're wrong about the reaction - if people don't respond to our unsightly truths with understanding - if they lose respect and drift away after seeing us in our unadorned failures, all is lost. Or at least we're afraid it might be. Our truths, once we speak them, can't be taken back. The revelations are on the table, for all to see and judge. Everything we've worked for, the image we spent years developing and cultivating, would be a waste, if we bet poorly on letting others see the warts and lies and anger; the exhaustion, sadness and frailty, of the flawed person behind the mask.
We tell ourselves that our instincts are always correct: Fear is a valid emotion - a reminder to not stretch our necks too far. We begin to accept that the only thing saving us from public humiliation and abject failure, is that voice of doubt - disguised as common sense - that is keeping our actions in check. We get this idea from the fact that our fear is sometimes telling the truth. It is, after all, a product of our instinct for self-preservation. It's what keeps us from bodily injury. But the problem with the fear of being wrong - of embarrassment - is that it is very seldom honest. Even when it absolutely seems to be. Awkwardness, public scrutiny, whispers behind cupped hands...none are truly the soul-killing monsters from which we so easily shrink and cower.
Edwin Stanton was the Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln. As such, he oversaw both the civil war and the reconstruction of the States afterward. And in life, he was rarely complementary of Lincoln. He criticized him at every turn, at one time calling the president a 'baboon'. He called his actions 'imbecilic'. And Lincoln was introspective and keenly aware of his flaws. Biographers have chronicled his self-doubt. His propensity toward depression because of it is well-documented. Stanton's words would've held weight with Lincoln. Their venom, and their humiliating intent, would not have escaped him.
To those around them, it was likely a mystery that Lincoln kept Stanton at his post. For a cabinet member to openly insult a sitting president, and to do it loudly and often, would've seemed absurd. Suicidal, even. But Lincoln valued Stanton's judgement and skill above his own self-importance. And perhaps he saw something in Stanton's character that others did not: After years of disparaging criticism, constant argument and vocal mistrust of and with him, Stanton had only this to say upon the death of Abraham Lincoln :
"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen."
The image we choose to show the world is an effort to reveal a bit about who we are. Or at least, who we wish we were. But showing only the glossy side of ourselves - an impression manufactured from our best moments - doesn't give others the credit they deserve. People know honesty when they see it. And they also know fraudulence. It is, and will always be, the honesty that elicits the more powerful response.
Airs of pretense, and our resulting failures to tell our own stories, do not allow others the freedom to share their true stories with us. By withholding our flaws, we may gain temporary reprieve from embarrassment. But it comes at the cost of depriving others of forgiveness, and the chance to live unrestrained by guilt and regret. And it deprives those we know of the chance to offer the same freedom to everyone else.
We have one choice to make in life, which governs all other choices: Who we will be. But to make that choice, we must first decide who we will follow. As for me and my house, we will follow Jesus Christ. It is not an easy choice, or one to be taken lightly. But it is a simple one. The requirements are few: To love Him, and to love others as ourselves. It requires an element of daring. Not because it requires giving up things we hold dear...but because it requires we risk it all, by placing everything - our futures, our hopes, our dreams, our very being - in the hands of the unseen.
And it is also those hands, which gave us life, that also give us confidence. And the freedom to reveal our flaws in the pursuit of helping another.
And that confidence speaks the truth to us: That it is neither an act of the truest love, nor is it the slightest bit daring, to offer words of encouragement and kindness and hope to others.
If in so doing, we are not also willing to include among those words, our deepest failings.