As charming as my typical long-winded stories about nothing sometimes have the potential to be, I have recently been working on attributes like “brevity”, “intention” and “clarity” in communication so as to minimize those situations where I simply stop in the middle of a sentence because my brain and my mouth are in two totally different worlds. (It’s really quite embarrassing to constantly try to tell Bryan from work about “the, um, values for that, uh, thing for that one project” as he stares at me with an expectant smirk that can smell my portrayed incompetence from a mile away.)
I share this update both to give you a brief glance into my professional life and to explain that I have been having trouble figuring out how to begin this post. As I was writing, I felt like I was trying to connect a lot of big issues that were floating around in my head, resulting in a jumbled amalgamation of quasi-formed ideas attempting to be revolutionary.
Therefore, since this corner of the Internet belongs to me (well, me and the freaky toenail fungus ads that refuse to subside I suppose) and I have already spent three paragraphs claiming attempted brevity, I will simply dive in. Today’s themes: conformity and failure.
In the book of Romans, Paul advises against “conform[ing] to the patterns of this world” and instead suggests being “transformed by the renewing of your mind”(Romans 12:2 NIV). I’ve always liked this whole concept of refusing to conform because it makes me feel unique and special. I kind of like feeling unique and special. (If I had to guess, I would venture to say we all do.) But what is this “world” Paul alludes to and how can we possibly refrain from conforming to it?
When assessing “the world”, I tend to classify the particular things I think of as trivial or unimportant as “worldly” and, by default, differentiate myself as “renewed”. This approach tends to work well for my ego because it’s relatively easy to avoid conforming to patterns that don’t hold much allure in the first place. For example, I have, on occasion, patted myself on the back for not caring about certain trends or brands or social media platforms.
“Look at me!” I have thought to myself, “Everyone has those shoes but I refuse to buy them because I am too mature to care about fitting in and I am too morally advanced to fall into such wasteful consumerism! Look at how successful I am at not conforming to the patterns of this world! Huzzah!” However, these mental self-exaltations tend to focus on things I don’t care about and conveniently avoid the areas of my life that often look pretty similar to the rest of this world that I’m so good at condemning.
For example, “the world” often tells us that busyness, productivity, and achievement are inherently good and things like slowing down or taking a nap reflect laziness, lack of passion, and incompetence, which are inherently bad. Most of my life, I have been guilty of conforming to this ideology and have often lived as if my productivity or success was equal to my worth.
I think this “productivity binary” is present in the hearts of most people in our western culture and as backgrounds and upbringings shape each of our individual values, a wide array of symptoms result to create a culture of comparison, restlessness, and desperation. The student who complains about a B+, the Instagrammer who spends hours editing the perfect post, the fitness enthusiast who only eats “clean” foods, and the blogger who takes days to perfect each witty “stream of consciousness” post are all, I would venture to guess, suffering from the same range of deeper soul problems.
The other day, as I contemplated the possibility of this phenomenon, I asked myself a cute and fun icebreaker question. Bring this one up the next time you find yourself at a gathering of distant relatives, on a first date, or at lunch with your socially awkward coworkers, I bet it will go swimmingly:
What are my deeper soul problems and why do they manifest in the particular ways that they do?
I took a few moments to sit in silence and allowed my brain to pick apart the intention, purpose, and outcome of every decision I’ve ever made. That was fun. Through the process, I realized one glaring reality that has both consciously and subconsciously influenced much of my life: I am terrified of being perceived as a failure. Because in my mind, being seen as anything less than perfect in any area of my life is pretty much the most shameful thing that could happen.
As cute as fun as this exercise was in a hypothetical format, I am a practical gal, so I continued to explore this realization and asked the only follow up question I could think of: So what? What happens if people see my flaws?
Historically, when faced with this question, I have justified my worth by reminding myself that I have achieved success in some other area of my life. I’m not good at gymnastics? That’s okay, I’m good at school and that’s more important anyway. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t do a great job of alleviating the shame that tends to accompany failure. Rather, it has led me to bury these feelings of insignificance at the bottom of my soul and attempt to cover them up with worldly trophies.
As healthy as that sounds, I decided to explore the possibility of a new idea: acceptance. However, I am rather stubborn and inquisitive in nature and I don’t tend to accept things without analysis. So let’s analyze.
Claim: I am a failure. We all are.
(Disclaimer: My mind often works in extremes so any sense of a flaw automatically goes straight to “failure”. However, for those of you with more spectral mindsets who are able to differentiate between “flawed” and “failure”, I recommend replacing this claim with “I have flaws. We all do”.)
Support:
- The Bible – “As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands...All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one....for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10-12, 23 NIV)
- My own life – I have failed at many things. I have experienced other people fail at many things. I have never known a single person who has never failed at something.
- Disney superstar Hannah Montana – “Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days. Everybody knows what, what I’m talkin’ bout, everybody gets that way...nobody’s perfect”
Instead of taking up precious time unpacking the authority of the Bible or the authenticity of Hannah Montana lyrics, from this point forward, I am going to conform to the perspective that these three sources share (I feel it unwise at this current moment to disagree with the apostle Paul, my own life experience, and Billy Ray’s songwriting genius). The question, therefore, is not whether I am a failure, but rather: how do I allow this inherent part of my human nature to impact the way that I live?
The approach our world often takes is to attempt to compensate for this failure with quantifiable achievements like diplomas and dollar signs and social media influence. We spend so much time and energy attempting to prove that we don’t conform to this inherent aspect of humanity, that we are somehow different from every other person that has ever lived. So we strive for what we have deemed success: prestigious colleges, shiny cars, organic food, and schedules so packed we barely have time to slip into our sustainable athleisure for a fancy yoga class.
The problem with this method, however, is that every aspect of our lives we tend to find our worth in (reputation, body, income, relationships) can fail us in the blink of an eye. And then what? What happens if we get laid off or someone we love is hit by a drunk driver or we receive a scary diagnosis telling us we can no longer do the thing we love most in the world? What’s the point if these things we have allowed to define us no longer exist or ring true? Where do we go when the fount of our significance dries up and leaves us desperately, desperately thirsty?
Desperate thirst tends to lead us to search for the only thing our minds can crave in this dilapidated state: water. One time, a woman was in the midst of this very search as she hung out by a well in Samaria. This woman was, as the kids say, thirsty. (And I’m not just talking about lacking electrolytes if you know what I mean.) Jesus happened to be passing through Samaria, and he approached this woman and asked her for a drink, an interaction that was simply unheard of between a Jew and a Samaritan.
When she responded with befuddlement, he told her about some “living water” that will make it so the drinker “will never thirst”. Naturally, this caught her attention (and probably befuddled her even further). When she inquired about said water, instead of telling her more about it, he pointed out evidence of her more worldly thirst, i.e. her broken sexual past that no random Jew passing through Samaria would ever have known about.
Interesting. Could Jesus have been indicating that this living water had nothing to do with physical thirst at all? That maybe it’s there to address the thirst we all attempt to quench with impermanent identities that will, in some way or another, ultimately fail us? Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it, there is quite a lot that I don’t know, especially when it comes to the power of Jesus. However, in regards to this living water, he does say, “Everyone who drinks [the water from the well] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14, NIV)
This is a pretty bold claim so whether he’s referring to physical hydration or the deeper soul-crushing dissatisfaction we’re all pretending not to run from, it feels like a concept worth exploring.