Be Nobody (6 page)

I am black, brown, white. I speak a different language.

But I must be respected, protected, never rejected!

I am God's child!

I am somebody!

I AM SOMEBODY!
⁷

And, of course, we all are indeed somebody, and we should all be a self-respecting somebody. Each of us has our own personality, shaped by our distinctive genetic makeup, personal history, life choices, and so on—what the Eastern traditions would regard as the fruition of our individual karma. Accepting the cards you've been dealt is the condition of possibility for playing them well in the game of life.

We truly are, each and every one of us, special and unique like a snowflake, and we all should accept who we are with dignity and a certain sense of self-assurance and pride.

The kind of healthy self-respect Mr. Rogers and Jesse Jackson encourage is unquestionably a positive thing. But feeling comfortable with one's individuality is really just the starting point for more advanced forms of self-discovery. Like possessing enough food, proper shelter, and leisure time, having a strong positive sense about one's distinctive individuality is a prerequisite for deeper spiritual pursuits.

The spiritual quest begins, one might say, where many of the traditional therapeutic processes leave off. Mental health therapy in its myriad forms—from the rigors of psychoanalysis to the most user-friendly self-help book—has, at bottom, the same function. The fundamental purpose of the therapeutic approach is
to make us feel better about ourselves
—to make us feel that we're all somebody special.

And that's great . . . as far as it goes.

But the spiritual approach, as opposed to the merely therapeutic, should regard a strong, positive sense of one's distinctive individual identity as the starting point, not the end result. “One should raise
up the self by oneself, and not degrade oneself,” as it says in the great Hindu classic, the Bhagavad Gita. But the text goes on to note, “For the self is its own best friend and its own worst enemy.”
⁸

Building a good, healthy ego is a necessary step in the task of true self-realization, but it is not sufficient in and of itself. The affirmation of the lower, personalized, and individual self is not, according to the religious traditions, true self-knowledge. In the deeper search for one's irreducible core, identifying with and clinging to the ego is in fact the obstacle. The best friend turns into the worst enemy.

We must, as the saying goes, lose the self to find it. We must get beyond the ego—the “special somebody” self—if we are to discover our deeper, more genuine, and more universal identity. In such a quest, feeling special and unique repositions itself as the problem, not the solution.

The journey to true self-knowledge is like climbing a ladder. One must start on the lower, foundational rungs. But to move higher, we must also be willing to ascend, leaving the lower rungs behind. Once we've established a proper sense of self-worth, individuality, and specialness, we are ready to take the next steps.

We must, in a word, have a good, healthy ego in order to proceed with the ego-ectomy necessary to discover our real nature.

“When there is no ‘I,' there is liberation,” as it says in another ancient Sanskrit text of the Hindu tradition. “And when there is an ‘I,' there is bondage.”
⁹
And this truth is repeated in countless ways in the scriptures and classics of other world religions:

 “Since all the disasters, sufferings, and fears in the world come about from the grasping to a self, then how is this grasping beneficial to me? Without abandoning the self, suffering cannot be abandoned, just as without avoiding fire one cannot avoid being burned” (Shantideva, Buddhism).
¹⁰

 
“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self” (Francis of Assisi, Christianity).
¹¹

 “He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man” (Mencius, Confucianism).
¹²

 “There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation and the superficial, external self that we commonly identify with the first person singular. We must remember that this superficial ‘I' is not our real self. It is our ‘individuality' and our ‘empirical self,' but it is not truly the hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes of God. The ‘I' that works in the world, thinks about itself, observes its own reactions, and talks about itself is not the true ‘I' that has been united to God in Christ” (Thomas Merton, Christianity).
¹³

 “Owing to ignorance of the rope, the rope appears to be a snake; owing to ignorance of the Self, the transient state arises of the individualized, limited, phenomenal aspect of the Self” (Shankara, Hinduism).
¹⁴

While our unique individuality serves as a starting point, it cannot function as the end-all of the quest to “know thyself.” To move beyond our fascination and attachment to our particularity, we must gain an appreciation for what we share with all the other somebodies out there.

The need to feel special is not in and of itself special. We all want to portray ourselves—to ourselves and to others—as being in one way or another
extraordinary
. If we don't feel this foundational sense
of specialness at all, it is indeed important to find ways to increase our sense of self-worth—and there are plenty of resources available in the therapeutic establishment to facilitate that. And throughout this book, we'll be discussing some surefire methods for increasing self-esteem.

But what we also may start to suspect is that, at a certain point—after shoring up the foundation of a necessary and beneficial sense of self-worth—the interminable pursuit of
being somebody
can become a heavy load to carry.

If, for example, we believe that our “specialness” derives from what we have achieved rather than from
who we really are
, we will be forever striving to be important enough, famous enough, rich enough, loved enough, accomplished enough.

The eminent psychiatrist Thomas Szasz noted, “People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self,” Szasz argued, “is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
¹⁵
And it is true that most of us peg some important part of our identity to our accomplishments in whatever arenas of life we deem important. But if we overvalue the idea that self-worth is tied to a
created specialness
, most of us will never feel we have produced a special enough self.

If we fully buy into an accomplishment-based understanding of selfhood, we'll be perpetually trying, and endlessly failing, to be
somebody enough
.

When we wholly identify with one or another of the roles we play in the ongoing drama that is life, we may begin to suspect that no matter how successful we are—no matter how many promotions we win, how much money we accumulate, how much praise we receive—it will never be sufficient. If this is the gauge of self-approval, the bar will always be moving higher; there will always be more hoops to jump through and more rivers to cross, with no end in sight.

We often glorify and idealize those who seem to
really be somebody
: the rock star, the Olympic athlete, the A-list actor, the mega-rich or supremely famous. But even off-the-charts superstars like Madonna can never quite measure up when it comes to this kind of achievement-based understanding of the self. As she candidly confessed in an interview, no matter how successful she became, she never quite felt that she was “somebody enough”:

My drive in life comes from a fear of being mediocre. That is always pushing me. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being but then I feel I am still mediocre and uninteresting unless I do something else. Because even though I have become Somebody, I still have to prove that Somebody. My struggle has never ended and I guess it never will.
¹⁶

Madonna fears “being mediocre”—that is, not being “Madonna enough.” Similarly, the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky has complained that “The hardest part of being Wayne Gretzky is that I get compared to Wayne Gretzky.” Cary Grant also reportedly once declared, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I wish to be Cary Grant.”
^II

These testimonials should give us a clue about pinning our hopes for identity and self-satisfaction on achievement alone. If Madonna can't be Madonna enough; if Wayne Gretzky can never quite live up to being Wayne Gretzky; and if even (the real) Cary Grant wanted someday to be (the ideal) Cary Grant, well, what hope is there for us less-than-superstars?