My sister and I used to chuckle at
my mom when during a lull in the conversation she would just out of the blue
say, "I don't know." She said it a lot and we always wondered,
"What in the heck is she talking about?" The older I get the
more inclined I am to shake my head and say the same thing!
There are certainly things in this
life that I don't know about. I am far from an expert on anything.
I think the longer one lives, the more aware you become of the things you
just don't have an answer to.
One thing that is a mystery to me is
something that appears to be counterintuitive in principle. It is the idea
that we have become a society that cares too MUCH about what other people
think; while at the same time, caring too LITTLE about what other people think.
Confused yet? Here is my
theory. I believe that most, if not all, human beings want/need to be
loved...or at least liked. However, no matter what we do or how hard we
try some people are just not going to like us. Heck, we are not going to
like everyone either. At the same time, some go through life pretending
they don't need others and it is their world and they are just allowing us to
live in it. They really don't care what anyone things.
I think the ills of our society and
the world could all be fixed if we cared both less and more about what others
think of us.
Point Number One: As a teacher,
I see students who daily hungry for attention. Their desire to get this
attention is manifest in a variety of ways. It is easy for me to gaze
with my adult eyes and see how futile some of the attempts really are.
The boys want the girls to think they are cool or hip; whatever the latest
slang word for acceptance is these days. The girls want the same of the
boys. Likewise, the boys want to impress other boys, and girls want to
impress other girls.
None of this is news. It has been
going on for centuries. At issue: impressing the wrong people, for the
wrong reasons, at the wrong time. I have witnessed the class clown stressing
to get attention from his classmates, seeking their acceptance and approval
while not understanding that they are actually laughing AT him and not WITH
him. He truly cares what a person, who will only be in his life for an
instant, thinks of him in the moment; all the while ignoring how he is being
perceived by others that have a much broader impact on his future.
Another student will walk into class late thinking he is exempt from the concept of time. He receives the laughter of his classmates because of his self-perceived coolness, NOT caring what the teacher, who holds great impact on his future, thinks about him.
Point Number Two: It is just not our youth that
struggles with this. Our society cares too much about the cars we drive, the
houses we live in, the clothes we wear. We care about appearances.
We want to be up-to-date, with it, cool. We want to fit in, be accepted
and to feel a part of something.
The reason we care so much about these things is because we care about how we are looked upon by the world. We care about having it...we just often don't care HOW we get it. Much like the child in the classroom!
One can lie, cheat, stab somebody in the back. Some can be unethical, dishonest, and ruthless. People can treat individuals with contempt and disrespect while seeking to gain the admiration of others. We can sacrifice our own character in an attempt to gains someone else’s approval.
I grew up in a very modest setting. Having shared my background with someone once, I was later described as “having grown up poor.” I never thought of myself as poor and I still don’t think that way. But to the person describing me I was. Sadly, this person put great stock in wealth and social status…on appearances.
When I had the opportunity to attend
some social functions with the so-called “socially privileged” I discovered
that many of these people were well-dressed pretenders, snobs and slobs. There was the woman married to a surgeon that
was so drunk that she embarrassed the entire table where we were sitting. There was the man who had schemed his way to financial
“success”, only to have landed in prison for fraud. There was another businessman who conducted
his career like a “three-card monte” shyster, moving his business and companies
around to stay one step ahead of the feds. They care so much; and at the same
time care so little!
I have written about my parents in
some previous blogs. I miss them both
very much. My mom had her own version of
the Golden Rule: “You aren’t any better than anyone else; but no one is better
than you!” It was her way of trying to
keep us grounded but at the same time confident. It was her way of acknowledging that no
matter what one has or doesn’t have, at the core, we are all the same.
It seems like she knew quite a bit. She knew: We all want to be well thought of by someone. We all need affirmation. We all need to be respected. We all need to be acknowledged. We all need to be loved. The question is: How are we going about getting it?
Then again…I could be wrong. “I don’t know!”
Thanks for reading.
