Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

What Everybody Seeks in Life
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

A staff sergeant is a general in his small domain. He commands. As it turns out, this is a role that has heady rewards for humans. It feels good to us to command.

It’s a grand experience to have a hundred men on a parade field for close order drill, marching forward and back, left and right, moving and halting in response to your vigorously shouted commands. They respond instantly, with precision, without argument. It's a great experience. I remember it fondly.

I had a related experience in elementary school. The third grade teacher assigned us the task one February of writing a poem about George Washington. She told us that the best poems would earn a handsome American flag sticker, and would be placed on the front wall of the classroom.

I found the task a wonderful challenge. Nobody had ever asked me to write a poem before, and the idea had not occurred to me. I worked diligently that night, got totally absorbed in the task, lost myself in it, and created my first poem. I was filled with pride by its quality, its music, its beauty, and turned it in the next day with enthusiasm.

The following day, George Washington's Birthday, there on the front wall was my poem, marked with a glowing American flag sticker. When it was time for recess in mid-morning, the teacher said she wanted to speak to me.

The other kids streamed outside, as the teacher, giving me a hard, beady-eyed look, said, "Where did you find that poem?" I told her proudly that I had written it myself. "Humph," she said with a sour face. She clearly did not believe me, but what could she say? What could I say?

We left the matter unsettled, and I was gripped by a mixture of feelings: first, anger, outrage at the injustice; then second, a swelling sense of pride that the teacher thought I had copied the poem from the work of a professional writer. My first poem.

What is the common theme in these stories about myself? It is the theme of my address today. In each of the stories, I experienced an enhanced sense of my own worth.

This is a key to understanding ourselves and others: we will go to extraordinary lengths, will move heaven and earth to gain this soul-satisfying sense of our own worth and importance. Or to disguise and deny a diminished sense of worth when this oppressive feeling appears in us.

This is a major motivating force in human life: the quest for this feeling of the worth, the value, the significance of oneself. It’s comparable to a natural force, like gravity.

II. A Crucial Human Need
Every human being wants at all times, night and day, awake or asleep, to feel an assured sense of personal worth. It is the quest for this feeling that makes humanity's world go 'round. It is a fundamental motive power in human life. A key to understanding ourselves and others is the awareness that we think, feel, act, wish, and fantasize in ways that will protect or enhance that sense of our own worth.

Each time we lose it (as we will from time to time), we die a little. The way we choose to go about meeting this basic, human need can make our lives a heaven or a hell.

If we fall into the habit of gaining a sense of worth by dominating, controlling everyone we encounter, our lives will be full of conflict, tension, combat, will be severely limited in rewards, will be devoid of warmth.

We may seek a sense of importance by working to gain power, status, position, wealth: by getting ahead, becoming a success, in the terms in which our society defines success.

We may be so intensely devoted to the achievement of this goal, so driven by the need for self-worth won in this way, that we neglect all other areas of our lives -- love and leisure, family and physical health. Mental health.

Politicians gain a sense of importance by winning elections, by getting appointed to key committees, by winning debates, by writing and passing legislation that affects the quality of life in their domain.

Dancers, actors, musicians strive for a sense of personal worth by winning recognition from colleagues, audiences, and critics. A negative review will plunge them into the depths of despair, will sharply depress their sense of worth.

All human beings seek to feel in themselves a sense of their own worth. This can be restated as the fact that every one yearns to be loved. Love, freely given to us, brings us an assurance that we matter to others. Friends, family, lovers, by their affectionate regard for us, enable us to be fully alive, fully ourselves. When the love is withdrawn, when a relationship grows tense and tangled, it can be extremely painful.

Because this is so, we give a lot of energy and attention, not only to achieving a sense of personal worth, but also to defending ourselves from attacks that may diminish it. We defend ourselves almost instinctively in this regard. If someone speaks or acts in a way that threatens our sense of worth, we will be moved to fight or to flee. Consider, for example, this brief encounter between long-time lovers.

"Ralph, I have asked you five times to take out the garbage, and it still sits here smelling up the house. What in heaven's name is the matter with you?"

Ralph is quick to defend himself from this harsh attack on his worth. "Aw, get off my back, will you? What a Dragon Lady! Quit nagging me. I'm not your slave."

In fact, we often slash at each other's self-worth in both attack and defense. It is one of the games we play: you depress my self-esteem, and, by George, I will depress yours in return. It is a decidedly no-win situation. All of the players lose. We have all of us, since early childhood, played this game with some frequency.

Consider another example. Ralph might look up at her as she comes into the room, laugh out loud, and say something like, "Well, where in the world did you find that strange outfit? At a rummage sale? You look like an overstuffed chair in it. When are you going to start dieting? Or are you going to let yourself be balloon-shaped for the rest of your life?"

To which she replies, getting into the game: "Oh, shut up rubber mouth! Anybody as bulgy as you are can't afford to raise the issue of dieting. And your taste in women's clothes has always been abominable. You know it and I certainly know it. Why don't you hole up in the basement, and work on one of your funny little projects?”

Or we can be much more subtle, and attack the self-worth of others with sly remarks like:

• Don't you ever think about other people's feelings?
• Even you should be able to follow this argument.
• If you really loved me, you wouldn't be nagging me all the time.
• What will the neighbors say when they find out about that?
• If you really wanted to succeed, you'd be out there hustling.
• Don't you even care about your children?

Then, we also have a wonderfully rich vocabulary for slashing fiercely at other's sense of worth: phony, fag, nigger, whore, stupid, wimp, geek, gook, idiot, creep, dummy, bird-brain, butter-fingers, fairy, fatso, big-mouth, queer, pig, honkey, kike, numbskull, and dozens of others, all of which may be used to depress people's sense of worth effectively.

When the terms are used regularly, they generate bitterness, anger, loathing, hate, hostility, and violence which may go on for centuries.

Drugs and alcohol provide a means of escape from profoundly uncomfortable and persisting feelings of worthlessness. Both substances are anesthetic and analgesic, and also, unfortunately, self-destructive when used to excess over time.

Researchers have noted regularly that a common characteristic of those who abuse drugs or alcohol is a persisting and especially depressed sense of their own worth.

III. Society and Self-Esteem
This need in us for a sense of worth, of importance is so profound, so pressing, so persisting and pervasive that our species has instinctively developed methods of meeting it on a mass scale. This indeed is one of the major functions of traditional, popular religion in all parts of the world.

In society, in this world, an individual may be of the lowest status, may be oppressed by powerful people, may be abused regularly by others, but as a believer, the individual may be able to see herself or himself as important in the eyes of God, the ultimate Lord and Ruler of the universe. In the tradition, believers can see themselves as children of God. We are all of us important, of worth in God's eyes.

This centuries-old pattern of traditional beliefs does not speak to me, though it clearly does to millions of good people. I have myself, even as a child growing up in the tradition, never been able to find meaning in this widely cherished form of religion. Like many others in the late 20th century, I have had to find other ways of gaining a sense of worth.

Being a minister has been helpful in this regard, of course, as has growing in understanding of myself, others, and the world. Taking care of my body, my health, governing my life so as to promote a sense of well-being.

Being close to others (wife, family, friends, parishoners), feeling warmth, affection, approval from them. Then, also, from time to time experiencing the world intensely, all at once, as a living whole, as a vast and richly meaningful unity, myself an inseparable part of it. All of these sources have mattered to me.

Even so, there have been dark times when my sense of worth has plummeted downward, and there have been such times in your lives as well. It is, I think, an inescapable part of the experience of being human and alive and aware.

Such times of darkness occur in the spirits of even the most devout believers in the religious tradition. No human being is forever spared feelings of worthlessness. We each of us need to find ways of living with, of working our way through the feelings.

It helps a lot to avoid the temptation to conceal them, and instead share them openly with others. We need each other's support and caring at such times. Just being held tenderly by someone who cares about us is life-giving when we are feeling a depressed sense of our own worth.

IV. What We Can Do for Each Other
Having a sense of our own worth enables us to feel fully alive, at peace, to be energized. It's life-enhancing. When the level of self-worth drops markedly in us, our energy drops, our perceptions are less keen, our interest in the world fades, and we may sink into ourselves, be barely in touch with reality.

We need each other in this regard, need help from each other in maintaining self-worth. What do we need to know about helping each other and ourselves to keep alive a sense of personal worth?

One thing is very clear. We do not gain a sense of our own worth from others by manipulating them. We do not gain it by demanding it, by debasing ourselves, begging for it. By seducing others into giving it.

We do not encourage self-worth in others by flattering them, by fawning over them, being obsequious, groveling. We do better in both cases by being ourselves freely and openly, by being in touch with our real feelings and sharing them.

This does not mean, of course, that we should pay no attention to the quality of our communication, that we should not try to contribute to the well-being of others. To contribute to the well-being of another person is one of the central meanings of love, and is at the same time one of the most effective ways of enhancing self-worth in us and others at once. Hence, to help each other with self-worth, we should develop the habit of caring about each other's well-being in addition to our own.

The quality of the communication between us profoundly affects the level of worth we feel in ourselves. When you look closely at what passes between us in our communication with each other, you find that it falls into four general modes or categories, springs from four sets of tacit assumptions:

1. I matter -- You matter. That is, when we speak to another person in this mode of communication, we assume that both of us are important.
2. I matter -- You don't matter. Here we work from the assumption that we are important, but the person to whom we are speaking is of little or no consequence..
3. I don't matter -- You matter. People with little sense of personal worth will often assume that they are of no importance, but that the person they are addressing decidedly is.
4. I don't matter -- You don't matter. Those who are experiencing depression or despair may work from an assumption that neither they nor those they address are of any consequence.

Unfortunately, because of the prevailing egocentricity of human creatures, communication more often than not falls into the "I matter -- You don't matter" mode. The "I'm important -- You're not important" category. This is the mode in which we are certain we are right and the other person is wrong, so we are going to win and they are going to lose. We are determined to control the situation.

We care less about the quality of the relationship than we care about winning. This is a pattern that is repeated endlessly in human relations at all levels, from intimate to international. It is enormously destructive and self-destructive. It is also brainless and immoral. There is no moral imagination or intelligence in it, no awareness or sensitivity, no caring.

On the other hand, there is the "I matter -- You matter" mode of communication. We are both important. In this mode, we each of us get in touch with our feelings toward the other, and feel sufficient trust in each other to reveal them. We feel a sense of commitment to each other's growth and well-being.

When conflict crops up between us, as of course it will from time to time, we deal with it openly, directly, valuing the quality of the relationship between us more than we value getting the upper hand. We share the feeling that we are both important to the relationship, and that together, if we turn our attention in this direction, if we are committed to doing so, we will work things out. This "I matter -- You matter" mode of communication is, without doubt, the most effective approach to encouraging self-worth in ourselves and others.

And always, the quest for this inner conviction of personal worth is a major motivating force in human life. The means we choose of achieving this end will go far to determine the quality of our lives.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com

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