PART I: We Truly Are Insecure
Last week, yet another article (this time from the BBC) appeared warning about the linkage between social media and depression. This was one of a collection of articles written by various journalists over the past year, each appearing about once a month or so from England, US, and elsewhere. As if by some rule, these articles always seem to feature a picture of a generic man or woman with head bent down, hands over the eyes eyes in sadness, and a computer screen open in front of them. Typically, the articles refer to a “recent study” of teens, or twenty-somethings, or older adults, or women, (choose your demographic), and then reports the correlation between increasing rates of depression and insecurity, and the increasing amounts of time spent on Facebook, Twitter, or other Social Media forums. Collectively, these studies usually explain that people who spend a large parts of their day passively watching others tend to feel envy toward their friends and acquaintances, they tend to feel insecure about their own appearance and achievements, and they usually spend even less time developing actual face-to-face relationships. As a result of this cascade of effects, the social media user feels increasingly more isolated and alone.
Last month, I read an article with a slightly different twist on this variation. A doctor in Australia who specialized in treating sexually transmitted diseases reported an alarming increase in clients (whom he described as “regular people”) using dating apps to engage in frequent casual encounters with strangers. I will not advertise the dating apps, but the idea is that people sign up and post their picture and a (very) brief description of themselves to the app. You and other complete strangers access these pictures one at a time, and if you like what you see then you swipe one direction, and if they do not then you swipe another direction. If two people happen to like each other’s picture, then they can communicate directly and set up a “date.” The doctor said this technology enables more opportunities for frequent “casual” dates that rarely last longer than an hour. As a physician treating STDs, he also noted that with the technology was a parallel increase in the number of clients suffering from STDs and who also admit to engaging in casual encounters with strangers every day, and in some cases, several times a day with different people. These people were not prostitutes, but were “normal men and women” who felt increasing lonely, and were attempting to fill the void in their lives through frequent anonymous liaisons.
New technologies make arranging anonymous contacts easier, but the social media apps (and resulting behaviors) can do nothing to ease the sense of personal loneliness. Anecdotal evidence affirms the common sense conclusion that they do the exact opposite. People who engage in meaningless sexual relationships feel more lonely and more depressed. They seek to fill their emptiness with physical contacts but end up feeling like an impersonal object. Sexual contact without intimacy is a form of self-objectification, and that sense of connection that the soul yearns for remains unfulfilled. People meet as strangers, and they part as strangers, and the emptiness only increases. After the momentary meetings, both participants realize that the temporary contact was not enough to warrant any true bond, or any true friendship.
It was a really depressing article to read. I recognize that there is some level of sensationalism in the lurid descriptions, and perhaps the article may be over-generalizing the trends in social media and in the “dating scene” – I do not travel in these circles, so I really do not know. Nevertheless… even if a part of it is true then these are really tragic stories of utter loneliness.
But these are not isolated accounts. We live in a hypersexualized world, and the pornography industry is no longer underground. It is almost mainstream and freely accessible on the internet for anyone to find no matter what age. Standards of modesty and propriety are far removed from the Victorian days of my childhood (were the 1970s Victorian?), and the old virtues of celibacy and abstinence are more often described either as quaint oddities, or as some sort of social defect by our popular culture. Instead, we promote temporary connections over virtual distances, and avoid long term personal relationships. Naturally, we also see evidence of a generalized sense of dissatisfaction throughout our popular culture. Rates of depression doubled from 1991 to 2002, and doubled again from 2002 to the 2014. Perhaps most telling is that the rates of suicide increased significantly in the fifteen years since the internet has become common place in everyone’s homes (up 25 percent between 1999 and 2014). We cannot state with certainty why these trends are emerging, and I would certainly not blame social media or the internet or our more prominent vices exclusively, but… the correlations are difficult to ignore.
It is safe to say that the general sense of personal insecurity seems to be increasing everywhere in popular culture. How many of our cultural trends reflect a lack of personal confidence? If we look just at external appearances, I would say we seem more insecure and not less. Why do people get tattoos? Why do people adopt such unusual hairstyles, and colors? Why do people get piercings in the most obvious and unusual places? Why do people dress in a style that is intentionally threatening – adopting the style of a gangster, or Hell’s Angel biker, or an introverted recluse reminiscent of the Columbine shooters? These costumes are not accidental, and they are certainly not uniquely crafted – they reflect pre-existing culturally defined characters. And they make up the stuff of modern stereotypes because people seem to want to be identified with what the stereotype suggests. For whatever reason, a man who dresses in the “biker costume” wants to be known as a hard biker, even if he is really quite sweet and may never have actually driven a motorcycle. The woman who dresses up like a poster child for the local tattoo shop wants to be seen as someone who is not afraid to take risks, who feels free to express herself in any way, and is not bound by any conventions – even if, in truth, she is constantly afraid of what people think, and how people judge her.
It really is true that you cannot “judge a book by its cover”, but that is mostly because we often choose a “cover” to disguise our real selves. The costume we choose may not accurately or honestly project the person we are inside. In fact, I would guess that the external costume may be in direct contrast to who we feel we are – or it may be the byproduct of the person we wish we were (but believe deep inside that we cannot become, if left to our own merits).
People dress themselves up as they wish. I have to assume that the external “trademarks” of our external costumes – the arm sleeve tattoo, the bull-ring in the nose or eye-brow bars – are all intended to add something positive to our perceived identities, or we would not have chosen to adopt them. In our political correct culture, we are not allowed to question or comment or even publicly notice these marks. Polite society expects us to accept any dress, hair styles, body art, or jewelry choices all at face value and embrace them all equally as personal expressions of individuality. It is impolite to stare, or to even take notice of the most bizarre accouterments. This is largely because our modern culture does not usually believe in truth as an objective or universal standard, and so every attempt at personal expression is held up with equal dignity – and if we fail to appreciate them all equally, then we risk being charged with intolerance, or bigotry, or worse.
In actual practice, our politically correct world is not a very realistic world… and we know better. People adopt striking, or unusual, or even sometimes controversial changes to their appearance precisely because they want to be noticed. You do not put a bull ring in your nose if you are trying to “just be yourself.” Moreover, you do not adopt the costume of the stereotypical character unless you like the stereotype that comes with it. We all want to be noticed, and in some cases we want to be feared, or loved, or respected, and we generally want to be identified with whatever mask we created. It is not honest to pretend that the person’s chosen costume is completely unrelated to their inward quality. The mask may be an artifice, but it was chosen deliberately. Some physical characteristics (such as gender, or facial symmetry, or skin tone, or general body shape) are often outside the individual’s control, and as such do not necessarily reflect a deliberate choice on their part. But, there are many other characteristics that are exclusively under the individual’s control, and these choices speak far more than mere words can convey. They reflect the priorities of the individual, and more often than not, they reflect the insecurities of the individual. We cannot judge a book by its cover, but when the book chooses its own cover, then we can make some educated guesses about the nature of the book.
Again… this is not what the politically correct world tells us. The politically correct world tells us that as our culture becomes more expressive through these various costumes that we are becoming more “liberated” and more “free” to live as they choose to live, and express ourselves as we choose, and to be as different and unique and individual as we like.
And yet, I would argue that the evidence suggest otherwise. These costumes are not all that unique – they reflect stereotypes that the participants have themselves helped to create and perpetuate. In addition, the costumes often include personal demeanors that further affirm the stereotypes. The humor is that these expressions of non-conformity typically also conform to preset standards – almost as if they were prescribed. They are usually very predictable and often reflect not only particularized social roles, but often also reflect specific political or religious beliefs as well. Would we not be shocked to find that the heavily tattooed white girl with the dreadlocks and the rings in her tongue, nose and bellybutton, was actually a conservative Catholic? Or a staunch Republican? Or a Trump supporter? We choose not only the costume, but also the ideology that it seems to represent. There are always exceptions, but these exceptions prove the rule. The girl who chooses that costume wants to be the cliché that the costume presumes. In practice, I would guess the bulk of these non-traditional costumes are less reflective of actual individual freedom and more reflective of an individual’s desire to be perceived, or identified, as free and liberated. Even though the costume may not accurately reflect the person in side… if we give enough time and embrace all the expected habits of the costume, then we can fulfill our internal wishes. We do not really erase our inner identity, but we can come to identify more with our costume than with who we really are.
Please do not misunderstand me. My point is not to criticize our artistic brethren, or our non-conventional identities, or even the political and moral ideologies that they represent. Rather, I just want to point out that a growing number of people are choosing to adopt very particularly manufactured outward façades because, ultimately, they are generally not very satisfied with who they are underneath that façade. They are uncomfortable with how the world perceives them, and they wanted to be perceived as something quite different.
As the number of these outlandish identities/costumes become more commonplace in our society, then I think it is safe to assume that our society is becoming generally less secure.
Insecurity is Universal
We can point to tattoos and piercings and hairstyles to demonstrate growing personal insecurity, but these are only the most obvious expressions of the trend. We all know our own insecurities, even if we do not always proclaim them to the world in the same way. Just as we can choose clothing or external styles, we can also choose behaviors, and those behavior also say something about our choices. We go to a gathering and choose to stand off to the side, and quietly wait to be approached. We hesitate to join a circle of colleagues or acquaintances, and when we do, we just stand mute. Or… we find ourselves getting nervous before calling someone we do not know. Or just as frequently, we feel a different sort of nervousness when we call someone we do know. We prefer to send texts rather than make phone calls. We get really good at talking about the weather, and never share anything of ourselves. We hide behind the label of “introvert” when we are really just too frightened to interact. We may look exactly like the rest of the world, and yet, we find a thousand less obvious ways to hide our insecurities every day.
In my profession, I see examples of self-doubt all the time, though they more often appear to be signs of arrogance than of insecurity. I have worked in other fields and these manifestations are not unique to academia alone. However, I will use the examples that are closest to home for me — though I suspect we might be able to identify these people in all fields and in all walks of life.
If I see a colleague who constantly boasts about their achievements (no matter how small), I usually do not think they are trying to brag as much as they are trying to “prove” that they are at least equally worthy as those they are talking to. These projections are not all that different from other folks who may choose the façade of tattoos and piercings, except that the professor tries to seem more socially acceptable. Similarly, Professors who love to hear the sound of their own voices are usually trying to fit some standard of intelligence and pretense that they hold in their mind as the epitome of ultimate brilliance. Sometimes, these efforts include adoption of vocal patterns and physical mannerism that emphasize their esoteric identity. These, also, are a sort of external costume. And again… do we not see these traits among the non-academics?
Most costumes are generally benign, but not always. I will give a few examples among professors. When we meet for department gatherings, or institutional meetings, it is not uncommon to find someone who seems to be obsessed with insulting the general quality of students. No class is ever good enough, nobody seems to read, and no student ever seems to “engage” the material or otherwise exercise deep analytical thinking. Now, I love my students and I do not join these complaints. Yet, as I drive to these meetings I can almost lay money on the bet that these sorts of common complaints will erupt at some point during a faculty meeting. It is a form of gossip, and it sounds like the participants are highly critical of everyone (which may be true), but deep down, I suspect these complaints have less to do with the professor’s particular prejudices and has more to do with their desire to advertise that “in their day” college was so much more difficult. A faculty member who constantly complains about their students is really just telling the world that they are smarter than their students. We can see similar motivations in professors who take pride in being known as the “hard teacher,” and who is often deliberately inflexible (“these are the rules, the student need to learn to follow them.”). Students may think of them as callous (or lazy), but often they are acting from another kind of insecurity — that they might be confused with an “ordinary” professor. They build an illusion that they are the lone gatekeepers of quality, and that their courses are the necessary gauntlets that define respectable education. This is just a different form of pretense and is based on the same insecurity as the braggadocio. In a slightly different way, this sort of fear is also common among younger professors who worry that if they let their students (or other colleagues) see their errors then the exposure might somehow cause them to lose their credibility. Young professors often justify their every action to the class and resist any change in policy lest it appear that they were somehow unprepared. At heart, we fear that admitting our failure might compromise our credibility.
Of course, this is not unique to professors. In practice, we are just normal people who specialize in particular subjects. We are not immune to errors, nor are we especially brilliant in areas outside our fields. Yet, admitting these obvious characteristics of humanity can be very difficult — not just for professors, but for all sorts of other equally ordinary humans. We all like to over-compensate. Sometimes the people who appear the most self-confident (and even arrogant) are the ones with the greatest senses of personal insecurity. They yearn for public approval, and are simply being proactive in trying to elicit some directly. Quite often, we project our own insecurities and identify our own sense of vulnerability, and go out of our way to hide both with the chosen façade that pretends to be our exact opposite.
Interestingly enough, students (and young people in general) are usually more honest about their insecurities than adults. Certainly, there are those few students follow the path of the braggadocio and pretend that they know everything – or conversely, there are others who just as loudly embrace their own ignorance, as if that justifies any consequences from their insecurities upfront. I would argue that though both forms suggest a certain brazen self-confidence, I think in truth they reveal a much stronger sense of insecurity.
More commonly, though, we find the student who is afraid to speak in class, afraid to speak to the professor, and often even afraid to initiate conversation with other students except their closest confederates. And they are very honest about it. This is not unusual, but it should be only a temporary condition. Unfortunately, such insecurities can become a crutch for students, if they are not careful. The problem arises when a student (or anyone of any age) succumbs to the temptation of claiming physical/psychological impotence in dealing with these insecurities. They might act as if these conditions are completely outside of their control. If we embrace the façade of victimhood, and act as if our insecurities are permanently fixed as a sort of physical or emotional handicap, then we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Among young people, it is increasingly popular to claim the status of “introvert” in order to escape the burdens of interpersonal communication. It is almost a protected status nowadays, and if we claim that it is personality as unchangeable as our race of gender, then we escape all sense of personal accountability for it. And our politically correct world embraces this sort of costume, just as it embraces all others.
Again…the politically correct world is not a very real world. In practice, most students who fear interpersonal communication do so because they have had very little experience with it. Either they spent too much time in isolation (very common among home-schooled kids), or they spent their youth addicted to social media or video games. I have rarely encountered a young person who was truly incapable of expressing themselves, or who truly preferred to seek their own company. We are all social animals, and we usually crave interaction with others. But we are also very frequently afraid. Most often, I see students who are simply overwhelmed by the fears of public disapproval – they fear to say the wrong thing, or that people will think less of them, or simply they will make a fool of themselves. The quiet student is not necessarily quiet by nature, but has become quiet as a sort of defense mechanism. Typically, they are only quiet when and where their non-intimates can hear them. There quietness (or sometimes the complete absence of any external expressions, such as a smile or a look of acknowledgement) is learned and is based on personal insecurities and their fears. It is not an unchanging characteristic of a fixed personality type.
We always have free will, even if it is often find it difficult to express.
When you speak to students in the privacy of our offices, they are often say openly and honestly that they are afraid of something particular — perhaps the rigor of the course, or the upcoming exam, or somethings about campus, and they generally do not think they will do well. Or that they feel they are incapable, or unable to fulfill all the expectations and responsibilities that they are facing. These are the moments of self-doubt, and they are not unique or unusual. We all experience them in one way or another. When students tell me these things, I first reassure them that they are not alone. Almost all of my students feel these sorts of fears in one way or another – and yet the vast majority of them eventually do well. The key is not to give in to the fears, and not to live under the identity of victimhood, but to persevere and do your best. Do not fear the future grade, but rather focus on the immediate tasks at hand and do your best. The grade will follow, as will the final results. Students frequently feel insecure, but the truth is that most people feel insecure about what lies ahead. My most common phrase that I tell my student is “no fears… all will be well.”
The truth is that the rejection that we most fear is rarely real. We are buried under a mountain of petty insecurities, and we fear the consequences of revealing them to the outside world. We build up our defenses, our emotional walls, and outer identities to hide our personal failings. And why do we do these things? Because we fear that if the world knew, then we would lose its affections. If people knew what we really thought, or felt, or believed, or feared, then they would not love us – this is insecurity.
But is it true?
Not usually… in fact, I would say it is very rarely true. More often than not, our human natures respond very positively to honesty and genuine expressions of vulnerability revealed by other people. We do not lose respect for the professor when we discover he is human. We do not lose respect for our colleague when we discover she lives a very ordinary life. When a friend confides in us about an addiction or a weakness, we want to live up to the trust that it represents. We want to help them.
When the student admits honestly about their fears, my first instinct is to bolster them up. When we own up to our fears, and make an honest effort to overcome them, then we have an opportunity to lose some of those insecurities. The student who identifies what it is they are nervous about, and then seeks out help to figure out a plan for fixing it, then they will be far more successful than the one who pretends they are not nervous about anything at all. With the experience of successfully overcoming, or even facing, an obstacle, we become less inclined to be afraid — or insecure in the future. Successfully doing things that are hard for us increases confidence that we truly can do hard things. Challenges can be overcome. And, our memories will remind us how we were able to step up to past challenges and overcome them. If we can be successful once, then we can be successful again.
The alternative is to avoid tasks that are hard for us, and this is dangerous. We can create habits where we always avoid hard things. Taken to extremes, this can be disabling and may actually bring to fruition that which we most fear. At the least, it creates a victim mentality that prevents us from living the life that we know that we could have. If we simply internalize our insecurities, or strive only to mask them with a new façade, then we do not give ourselves the opportunity to form the new experiences we need to grow.
“No fears… all will be well.” And most often it will be. In the grand scheme of things, these assignments and tests and classes (or the other obstacles that face all people of any age) are simply smaller parts of a much larger design. Success or failure in one area does not always determine the outcome of another. Higher education helps students to discern their ultimate vocations in life – both through positive reinforcement, and through negative identification. The goal is not to impose our own fantasies on where we want to be heading, but rather to recognize the reality of our particular gifts and use them to determine where we should be heading. A healthy education requires honest self-development, and humble reflection.
PART II: We are All Children Before God
Our More Subtle Insecurities
Insecurity among students is easy to identify, and certainly easier to identify with but I would say it is (also) hardly unique. Non-students and other regular human beings daily express their insecurities in mostly innocuous terms, and most pass by without notice or comment. When my son plays a piano piece and at its conclusion he turns around and asks expectantly, “How did I do?” Most often, he is not asking for particular criticism, but asking for a general affirmation… “you did well”… “I am proud of you”… “you are getting better”… “this is a good thing.”
When my wife tries on a pair of shoes and asks, “Do these look cute?” She may or may not be looking for a completely honest answer (we will just skip over the “does this make me look fat?” line of inquiries). As all husbands know, these are always dangerous questions: if the shoes are genuinely hideous, then we need to say something (lest we lose all credibility); if they are genuinely cute, then we need to affirm it (because that is, after all, what she is looking for); and if the shoes are (as most men may conclude) genuinely neutral… then we need to agree that they are cute and leave it at that. My wife is not really looking for criticism or subtle analysis, she is mostly looking for affirmation of what she already hopes for. And it is not often related to her fears about how she will appear before others. Often, it is tied to her personal expectations of how she wants to look for herself. Mostly, she is concerned about how she will look when she sees herself later in the day – will she feel dissatisfied, or will she feel like she represented herself in the way that she hoped? These types of insecurities are not always obvious, but they are ever-present and rarely avoidable.
Perhaps the best way to identify our own insecurities is to point to examples where there seems to few (or no) insecurities at all. When a toddler comes running up to mom and gives her a great big hug and a kiss… and then just as instantly runs away as if she was not even there. Or, when the same child runs up to see what you are eating and instantly reaches out to grab and eat it for themselves without asking or even considering that it is inappropriate. Or, when the child demands food and is upset when it is not instantly forthcoming. These may all sound like acts of selfishness, but they also reflect a kind of ultimate security. The child does not have to ask to give mom a hug or a kiss. They do not have to worry that mom will withhold good things from them. They do not worry that parental love is lost if they constantly run off pursuing their own activities… not for a two year old. They live a life of confidence that they are the center of attention, and that mom and dad exist precisely to care for their needs. This is not vanity, but self-assurance. Indeed, we would be very concerned about the sort of home that the child is living in if they exhibited any signs of such fears, or insecurities.
Our insecurities emerge as we get older, and as we realize that we are not the center of the world, and that we share some responsibility for our own decisions and actions. I still recall vividly the day when I realized that my parents were actually different persons from myself. This sounds weird… of course, I always knew they were different people, but I also assumed that we were bound by an unbreakable sort of union. The realization occurred while my family and I were all sitting in front of the television watching some show – we kids were on the floor and my parents were behind in their chairs. I was maybe five or six at the time and I remember hearing my dad laugh out loud, and I turned around to look at him. It suddenly occurred to me that he was his own person – that he had his own ideas and own plans and that he did not automatically know what I was thinking, or even share in my own thoughts. He was different. This did not make me instantly apprehensive, but I did realize that if he was a different person, then he might choose different priorities. He did not have to like the things that I liked. And he may disapprove of what I did – not in terms of following the “rules” (that was not uncommon at all), but simply in terms of who I was. In an instance, I realized that my dad could be a stranger, except that I have always known him.
Obviously, I was too young to fully understand what I was feeling at the time. Later I was able to articulate what happened (much later… like when I was in my 20s or 30s). If my dad was a separate person, then I was a separate person. I was separate not just from my Dad, but also from my mom and my brothers and all my friends. As a separate individual, then it was up to me to show that my thoughts and actions were worthy of approval. I got no automatic certification just because I was a member of the family, or because I was someone’s friend. In the crudest terms, my growing awareness of my unique identity meant that I was required to prove myself to everyone outside of myself. If I failed in this endeavor, then I could lose those bonds and lose their love. That is insecurity.
Fortunately, I never feared that I would lose the love of my family – through word, or deed, or negligence. I was blessed with a very loving and supportive family, and I never questioned that I would lose their love in that way. And yet, it is a short jump of imagination to fear that I might do, or say, or forget something, or even just “be” someone that may threaten the bonds of love from my friends, or my acquaintances, or even from strangers that I do not know. My insecurities grew as I grew, and increased especially as I emerged as an adult to try to define myself in the wide world. My insecurities increase as my sense of autonomy increased. You might say that my insecurity increased as my sense of personal pride emerged. This is why so many of my students come to campus and are afraid. It is a byproduct of their youth and inexperience (older folks already know this).
Of course… I was wrong. Wrong about all these fears. I feared to disappoint others lest I accidently lose their approval and affection. It was a misplaced fear. The loss of love rarely starts from their side, but our own.
As a young person emerges into an adult, we may fear losing the love and affection of our peers, or strangers. But rarely is it true that they cease to love us. More often, I think, we cease to love them. It is not our insufficiencies that cause a break in our communion with others. It is usually our own pride. Our fears cause us to close up, and our fears make us less lovable. We choose not to reach out, and we become unwilling to bridge the chasm the remains between me and thee.
We begin our lives with almost no insecurity. This is partial why Christ encourages us to “come as a child.” 
Nevertheless, we can easily train ourselves to become insecure as we get older. This is especially pronounced as we suffer repeated wounds to our pride. Past failures convince us that we are defective in some way that is unknown to us but somehow obvious to others. The sense of being defective is born from our losses. A broken heart, a failed attempt at some project, a disappointed dream – these create our wounds and they can become tragic to us (no matter how unimportant they may appear to others). We can see such tragedies in our heartbroken adolescents who placed their faith in someone who ultimately rejected them. We might mark it up to a growing pains associated with the first recognition of the evils and pains that dominate the wider world. Of course, those of us who are older know well that these sorts of personal tragedies do not really diminish over time, they only change their scope. Sometimes, we just lower our expectations. When we experience too many broken hearts, we simply refuse to lend our heart out again. We can become cold, or detached, or emotionally distant. We set up emotional walls and barriers to protect ourselves against future pains. If we experienced too many broken dreams, we simply refuse to dream again. We become overly pragmatic, and practical, and cynical. We discount the reality of hope and prefer to presume the worst in the hope that we may surprise ourselves.
If we let them, these insecurities can compound as we get older. That is, if we allow them to define our sense of pride, and if we use them as guideposts for who we can be. If we give in to our fears by preferring the costume of our chosen identity, rather than strive to repair the weaknesses within. If we use these failures as indications that we are actually defective, without making any effort to find the cause of our weakness. If we do these things, we are giving up and simply accepting that our inner identity is permanently insufficient. If we apply all our energies to a pretense and a façade, then we will believe the lie that we are innately unworthy of someone else’s approval and love. We choose our own facades, and we build up our own walls – rarely do people build them up around us.
Our Virtual World
It is not saying anything new to notice that most of our insecurities stem from the fear that we will not be accepted by others. But I think we might go further to say that these fears stem from a deeper conviction that we will not be loved by others. Or worse, that we – for whatever reason (internal or external) – are just not lovable.
If our individual insecurities are a reflection of our fears of being unlovable, then our public expectations of love and the requirements for attaining love are critical to our sense of self-worth. Unfortunately, in many cases those popularly accepted expectations are mostly unreal. Our popular tools of communication (social media), and our entertainment mediums (Hollywood and videogames), and our dominant forms of self-expression mostly rely on those facades that are self-invented and which do not express real identities. We substitute empathy and polite sincerity with caustic or brash cynicism – because a strong offense is better than failed defense (we feel it better to appear offensive right at the start, than to try to be sincere and face rejection). We substitute intimate connectedness with objectified sexuality and anonymous electronic interaction because pretend love is somehow better than real disappointment (we feel it better to accept the role as an object of pleasure than to strive to be accepted as a real person, and still be rejected). With the interplay of our mutually projected insecurities, we strive to make real the fantasies of our external facades. In the process, we bury our honest personhood beneath a jumble of manufactured pretenses.
It is easy to blame our hypersexualized society for blurring the definition and meaning of love. Popular culture mostly thinks only of romantic love when it considers love at all – friendship, loyalty, family, and basic charity are relegated to some lesser form of personal sentiment. And yet, I think it is too easy to blame Hollywood alone. Certainly, our movies, television, video games often seem to thrive on sexual tension and mostly gloss over the subtleties of basic friendship without grandiose conflicts. But that is, perhaps, a symptom of other cultural problems.
The problem lies in our cultural priorities. Many of our current cultural debates presume definitions of love that can only be expressed as base sensuality, or physical self-satisfaction. If we take the debate over same-sex marriage as an example, we recall that it was largely framed around the tagline “love should not be denied.” The unspoken presumption was that all love must involve sexual contact, and that sexual contact was all that was required for a lifelong commitment. There was no mention of love defined as self-restraint, or by self-sacrifice, or by self-denial. In the process, marriage itself was redefined in a way that actually removed love as we know it in its other forms. Marriage became a legal contract between two sexual partners and was no longer tied to a shared commitment to the openness of building a family, or a lifelong commitment to raising children if and when children came, planned or not. Nor is it any longer bound by the biological necessity of male and female sexual reproduction. Same sex marriage does not define love as anything except sexual pleasure and accompanying healthcare benefits.
Our modern culture debates do not recognize love outside of sex. Again, this is obvious in our culture of pornography, which objectifies sexuality as little more than a medium for self-satisfaction. Though mainstream film and television has yet to explicitly promote pornography in the way that our freely accessible internet websites do, the distinction is a matter of degree only. The visual images promote hypersexuality, and our cultural exchanges repeat these priorities even when we are not discussing pornography. We do not need to blame Hollywood alone for overly-simplifying the meaning of love. Our entire culture is permeated with a more subtle set of priorities that generally ignores definitions of any sort of love that do not include sex.
This does not mean we should not blame our hypersexualized society for contributing to our growing sense of insecurity. We have created standards and expectations that exist only on screen, and not in real life. Those stereotypical costumes that we adopt reflect larger sub-cultures that were at least tacitly created (or inspired) by popular hedonism. And this is directly tied to personal insecurity.
If all love is only sexual love, then what about those poor souls who are not sexually attractive (or… more accurately… who do not feel like they are sexually attractive – true or not). Those who do not mimic the established size, or shape, or age, or net worth of our most favored cultural icons? How can they feel lovable, if our culture fails to recognize any expression of love that does not require sex? It is not surprising that so many insecure young teens and other adolescents turn to alternative gender identities in order to escape the pressures of competing in the mainstream pool of sexual candidates. This is a harsh environment. It is better to give up and compete in a smaller venue, than to risk utter failure among the wider population. The option of experiencing love through non-sexual means is not considered as a viable option.
Habits of Love
We overemphasize the importance of sexuality, and underemphasize fraternity, family, and genuine charity. It is not as if our popular culture is totally silent about acts of brotherly love, it is just that we speak about them mostly in terms of conflict and political correctness. “Don’t be a Bully!” and “Don’t be Intolerant!” and “Don’t question other people’s choices!” In this sort of double-speak, we reduce personal relationships and public charity downward to a set of impersonal bureaucratic rules that seek to define the legal expectations of civil engagement. When we speak of “tolerance” we do not speak of “loving our brother.” When the modern world speaks of “family” it does not refer to responsibility or forgiveness or self-sacrifice or humble devotion. Instead, our most popular expressions of non-sexual human relationships are reduced to talking points about “inclusion” with implicit threats of potential litigation of we fail to comply. If you do not accept what you see, then you are a racist, or a homophobe, or you are sexist. This is not the language of love at any level. “Tolerance” is mostly discussed in terms of an expectation of intolerance towards anyone who might threaten our chosen identity (virtual or otherwise). This kind of sterilized bureaucratic environment does not encourage actual love between brothers, and friends, or strangers.
Our popular culture does not really like to think of love in any form outside of its sexual expressions. Non-sexual love requires self-restraint, and humility. And humility is the enemy of pride, which our politically correct society much prefers. More often than not, the “golden rule” is mocked as a naïve sentiment that is too weak to stand on its own. It must be litigated and imposed to be effective. Of course, without love, our society only grows less polite, and less forgiving, and certainly less tolerant.
Perhaps the most unfortunate consequence of our confusion over the meaning of love in all its various forms is that we often hesitate to express it. How often do we feel uncomfortable saying “I love you” to another person – especially when they are not your spouse (or potential spouse)? We hear an untold number of songs that speak of how sexy the girl sitting in the next booth is, but we rarely hear about simple friendship and loyalty. If two men play on the same softball team, and enjoy the same hobbies, and they go out for a quick meal and one of them turns to the other and says, “Man, I love you!” How would that be taken? Admittedly… this example may be a little abrupt, so let us assume the words were said in a more appropriate moment. Perhaps there was some previous discussion of personal insecurity or friendship, and perhaps the friend was really feeling down and alone. In that context, I think most people would recognize the fraternal nature of the expression, and would agree that the words sounded much more appropriate.
And yet… would we… or do we really say “I love you” as often as we really mean it?
On paper we can understand how the non-romantic expression of love fits the setting, and yet in practice we usually hesitate. We often fear how such expressions might sound – or how they would be received. Again… we live in a hypersexualized society, and if your friend tells you they love you, you may not instantly equate “love” and “friendship” – and your friend may not be at fault in the confusion. According to the expectations of our popular culture, we should not be surprised by expressions of love that reflect some sort of latent homosexual overture.
Of course… in real life, we should know better.
Nevertheless, we often fear to tread down unaccustomed paths and more often than not, we would expect our two imaginary friends would simply listen to each other’s woes, slap one another on the shoulders, make some inappropriate comment about something unrelated, and then move on… silently resisting any verbal (or non-verbal) expressions of brotherly love. As a modern society, we have very limited experience with expressions of love outside of romantic situations.
This level of confusion is even more pronounced between friends of different genders. A brother may tell his sister that he loves her, and there is no question of what he means. A coworker may listen to, and may spend a great deal of time with, and may genuinely feel the warmth of fraternal affection without any sense of romantic intention for another. And yet we would hesitate to say “I love you” to them for fear the words would be misinterpreted. We might even hesitate to do the things that loving friends and neighbors often do… for fear that the attention is laced with non-platonic motivations. We do not give the flowers, or the minor gifts, or spend the time because we fear (and perhaps justifiably) that these acts of affection may be misinterpreted. We do not want the relationship to become “creepy” and we might fear that these overt expressions might create unnecessary obstacles to that family-like intimacy that already exists in the friendship.
And the real tragedy is that sometimes these acts of non-sexual love are misinterpreted. We are so immersed in romantic expressions, that it is easy to misinterpret a friendly comment, or a smile, or an act of kindness as an overture for physical contact. It is a tragedy of our hypersexualized society… but do we have to accept these conditions?
I may be a little less reserved than the average person, but I say “I love you” quite often, and I rarely mean it in romantic terms. I say it to my students, and to my friends, as well as to my family. Obviously, when I say it to my wife, I mean the words romantically – but not exclusive of another deeper familial form of word “love.” I also mean it in the deeper context of friendship. My wife is my best friend, as well as my spouse. The context always defines the meaning of the phrase. When I tell my boys that I love them before they go to bed, they know I am their father and that I place their well-being ahead of my own. When I say it to my students, it is usually during a deeper conversation about faith, or abstinence, or fidelity, or some other context that tells them that I love them as a father figure, or as a brother, or simply as a friend. I do not think my students are confused by it. And yet, there is always a potential for misinterpretation because we are, as a society, unused to expressing love in any way except romantically. And again… unfortunately… in our hypersexualized society, there are more than enough examples of people who expressed it in exclusively sexual terms. There is justifiable cause to be reticent.
And yet… it also means that our society does not practice the art of love in its most common forms – fraternal love, familial love, and genuine charity.
The Enemy of Love – Pride
If we fail to practice love, then we all become just a little more uncomfortable when we experience unsolicited expressions of love. In a love-less society, or in our hypersexualized society, we learn to question the sincerity of any expression of love. We doubt the purity of its meaning. Often, these doubts may trigger other defense mechanisms that nullify the power of any particular expression of love. If a girl receives a flower… how often does she worry about what it means? How often does she choose not to acknowledge it? If someone of either gender says they love you, how often does it make you more reticent to draw closer? How often does it make you feel uncomfortable and make you want to be more distant? Maybe these reactions stem from a generalized lack of trust. Or maybe they stem from something deeper. Maybe we simply do not want to be committed to share our love in return. Maybe we do not want to recognize the bond of friendship, or the family-like intimacy. Maybe we act not because we fear our trust will be violated, or abused, or ignored, but because we know it will not be. We hesitate because deep down we do not feel the other person is worthy of our love.
This somehow screams a little irony here. Our insecurities stems from our fears that we might be unlovable, and most of us are painfully insecure. Yet, we often act as if those around us are, in fact, unlovable. We hesitate to treat our colleague as a brother, because we might not really like them. We hesitate to treat the stranger as our brother, because we feel no connection with them. We are not blind. If we hold these sorts of prejudices against others, then obviously we know that other people may hold them against us. It is not difficult to understand how we might project both our insecurities and our inclinations and fear that others hold the same prejudices against us as we do against them.
How often does this prejudice stem from pride? In the practical world, we see pride interfering with our relationships quite frequently. In the most obvious sense, we see know that it is pride that prevents us from saying sorry after we hurt someone. But it may also be pride that prevents us from honestly accepting that apology, and truly forgiving the person who offended us. We also see pride when we lie to ourselves and pretend that we have not really hurt anyone – we can create marvelous justifications for why we act the way we do, and why we deserve to act the way we do. Yet, are these not just pretenses to satisfy some inner pride, in which we tell ourselves that that “no matter how bad, or defective, or unlovable we are… at least we are not as bad as they are. I have a reason to be this way.” This also is a sort of costume, though in this case it becomes more of a filter of pride that we impose over all of our interactions.
There are other more subtle expressions of pride. Why do we hesitate to accept gifts or help? Does an unsolicited gift or an offer of help make us feel somehow beholden to the person who gave it to us? Does it hurt our pride to receive them? We may claim to be shy, but is it not pride that prevents us from revealing our own vulnerabilities? How often do we grow to resent the person who helps us? Or dislike the person who seems to recognize our inner demons? How often do we push those away who seem to identify the personal struggles that we are contending against? This is not helpful or constructive, but it is quite proud. Our pride encourages us to hide our defects, to hide our insecurities, and to hide our desire for help in overcoming any of these things. We may not want to forgive our friend because in doing so, it may mean that we have to seek forgiveness for our own weaknesses. Our intolerance may have less to do with an unwillingness to accept someone else’s flaws, and more to do with the fact that we see those same flaws in ourselves, and we do not want to admit the weakness to anyone, including ourselves.
It is our pride that often keeps us from loving others. It is our unwillingness to allow ourselves to appear vulnerable before others. Fundamentally, since it is our pride that undermines our ability to love (and centuries of Church teaching affirms this), then is it also our pride that increases our sense of insecurity.
If this is true, then our popular politically-correct culture seems to be doubly in error. The world tells us that we need to be proud of our self-chosen identities. The world tells us that our chosen identities are more important and often more reliable than our personal insecurities. It does not matter what tradition, or what nature, or what our moral conscience may be telling us. Popular culture demands that our chosen identities – our external costumes – become the source of our pride, and an affirmation of our worth. Our popular culture is quite open and explicit in this: from the pride of our ethnicity, to gay pride, to pride in our poverty, and our victim status. We hear pride described as a virtue more often than not. How often to hear about humility? The world’s answer to our problems of self-esteem is to encourage pride. But in practice, the development of our pride really creates stumbling blocks for the development of our interpersonal relationships. Our pride makes us less lovable in fact, and in the process our pride makes us more insecure.
Humility is the virtue that most opposes the vice of personal pride. Yet, truly, how often do we hear about developing a sense of humility in our children? Love begets humility, and burns away pride. But our society does not want to officially recognize any form of love except sex, so are we surprised by the dearth of humility? It is no wonder that we are so insecure.
It is a moral contradiction to follow pride to over-compensate for a fragile sense of self-worth. We can try to take pride in our chosen costume or our digital avatars, or whatever façade we choose to present to the world – but those artifices will not improve our self-esteem. They only serve to block our avenues of healing. If we want to overcome our basic insecurities, we need to first avoid the sin of pride and adopt a greater spirit of humility. Humility towards others requires us to truly love others – in the familial, or fraternal sorts of love. If we want to practice the art of love, then we must truly connect with others. Our insecurities do not stem from the obvious fact that we are imperfect, or that we recognize (and dwell) on our imperfections. Our insecurities alone do not make us unlovable. It is the fact that we let our insecurities define who we are that creates the problem. We let our own pride determine how we interact with the world. Our neighbors are, quite literally, members of the body of Christ and when we avoid interacting with them, then we cut ourselves off from the avenue of love that might fill the emptiness and the voids that initially caused our insecurities. As Pope Francis wrote, “The problem is not in being sinners, the problem is when we don’t let ourselves be transformed in love by the encounter with Christ.” It is in the quiet encounter between souls that we truly love one another for who we are, and not for who we wish they were (or who we wish we were).
If we wish to overcome our insecurities, we need to develop habits of love in the form that is most appropriate for the occasion (fraternal, familial… and romantic, if it is kept within the confines of marriage).
Of course… the Church has been teaching us this trick for millennia. The opposite of pride is humility. The more humble we become, then the greater our capacity to love. This is, admittedly, in direct contrast to what our popular culture teaches us. Nevertheless, our self-esteem is not built on our increasing pride, but rather in our increasing humility. Rather than demanding that the world “tolerate” our chosen façade and love us for who we are (or more accurately, who we pretend to be), it would be more practical to practice humility by accepting ourselves and our own limitations, and by accepting the world’s judgement regardless of what it is… and in the process, by forgiving the world for its errors. If we forgo the costume and the façade, and choose instead to love those around us, no matter how particular, or judgmental, or intolerant, or proud, or boastful, or any other idiosyncrasy – if we can love our neighbors like they were part of our own, then we can learn to love our own identity for what it is.
If we can but admit our personal failures, and then we can embrace our neighbors despite their own failures. This is not new. We call it repentance, and it is critical to a healthy spiritual life. If we can but live in humility and thrive in a constant spirit of love, then our personal insecurities become meaningless. This also is not new. We call it prayer, and it defines our vocation in life. It is through our faith that we find our hope and from which we follow a pathway for our love (mercy, charity, and communion).
Conclusion
This may be unrelated, but as I have been thinking about our cultural insecurity, and as I write these words, I keep thinking about the passage in the Gospel of St. John when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. Jesus had already been crucified and had resurrected, and the Apostles had already been given the anointing. They all knew Jesus as the son of God and as the Christ, and Peter especially had been granted that revelation early on. As they were all sitting together, Jesus asks, ““Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Peter affirms that he did. Jesus tells Peter to “feed my lambs.” But he also repeats the question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter does not understand but again repeats his devotion. Jesus tells him to tend his sheep. Then right away he asks a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter is hurt by the question and pleads with Jesus, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus says, “Feed my Sheep.”
Now, this passage is traditionally interpreted (quite correctly) as a way for Jesus to gently rebuke and to forgive Peter for his thrice denying Christ in the courtyard of the High Priests. It is also used to justify the primacy of Peter, and to explain Christ’s charge for the Church itself. All of these interpretations are perfectly valid, but I was not thinking of these things when the passage kept coming to my mind. I just focused on Jesus’ words, “Do you love me?” And even more so on Peter’s reaction – he was hurt that Jesus even questioned his devotion.
This is the very definition of insecurity.
Jesus is the son of God, and Peter understands that Jesus knows all. If Jesus is questioning Peter’s love, then is it because Peter is not worthy of offering such love? Perhaps he is not worthy of receiving Christ’s love or forgiveness. I think this may be an underlying element to all of our insecurities. As a society, we are becoming ever increasingly insecure, and it seems likely caused by the fact the we are increasingly estranged from God. We no longer recognize love as it should be. We misuse the term, we destroy its sanctity, and we dilute its power. But perhaps more fundamentally, as we become increasingly secular, we are denying the very source of our love. We are created with an innate desire to seek out and to love God, and we cannot escape it. I can only suppose that our insecurity somehow originates from the fact that we know what we should be doing, but we deliberate choose to reject that path. We reject God.
How can we learn to love who we are if we cannot love the one who made us? How can we ever feel secure if we doubt that God actually loves us, and that He genuinely, and personally cares for us? I can understand despair in those circumstances – if God is against us, then who can ever be for us?
Fortunately, all is not lost. This is the Lenten season. More than anything this season is a prelude to the greatest act of love in the history of our universe. God the all-powerful and the almighty chose to humble Himself to forgive us — this is a magnitude of humility that no human could ever really comprehend. It is so immense that it causes some men to doubt its reality, and others to choose despair rather than accept forgiveness. Yet we know its truth. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believes in him will not perish.”
This Lenten Season is a wonderful opportunity to consider our own insecurities, and to delve as deeply as possible to discern the underlying cause for them. Are we lovable? Do we love as freely and unreservedly as we should? If we believe (through repentance), and if we love (through forgiveness and prayers), then we can find our source of security once again.
And if we each follow this path one at a time, then perhaps we can become the true non-conformists.
