Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sense that to gain the approval of people I like, I need to submit my opinions and beliefs to theirs. When they describe a certain social or political problem, (like the issues of bias and inequality I was reading about before I began this post,) I just have to take their word for it. But the people I like don't all think the same. Some of them have opposing views. It would be impossible to submit to all of their ethics at once. And even if I worked out what I was supposed to believe, I don't have the power to control my own beliefs.
This is where I take things out of proportion, probably fueled by the fear that the people whose approval I want will find out who I really am, and then turn against me and hurt me.
The inner monologue runs something like this: How completely do I need to submit? How deep inside my mind do I have to let them, how far beyond my normal level of awareness, how far beyond the borders of my Self?
DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: You don't.
Yeah, how can I go about to meet the standards of those people, if it requires me to reach down to the basic cogwheels of my mind? How can I make a conscious effort to change the very components of my consciousness?
DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Are you listening to me at all? You can't. Now I advice you strongly to stop talking for a while, because this is offensive to the people whose approval you want, making them out to demand such absurd things of you.
Dear reader: This is the Disclaimer Goblin. He's the part of my writing voice that inserts itself when I grow uncomfortable with my own words. The way to answer him is to examine that discomfort; that's usually how I learn from my writing.
But in this case, I'm a bit uncomfortable with his words, because isn't it offensive in itself to presume what other people would be offended by?
DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Yeah, there's that. I guess we're in the same boat on this.
So rather than offensive, let's say I'm being unfair to the people whose approval I want.
A lot to ask
It is unfair to them partly because I need their approval just a little too much. With those insecurities I talked about before – the fear that I never belong, the fear that I have a disgusting side to my personality that I'm barely able to hide – I would need more than a bit of convincing before I believe in someone's approval.
That's probably one reason why I worry about intimacy in general. When people get a closer look at me, I begin to concern myself too much with their approval. I have been on the other side of that, I have a particular case in mind, with someone who concerned themselves too much with my approval. At its worst, in that person's eyes, I felt like nothing more than a substitute for those whose disapproval he had met with in the past.
But on the other hand, people are allowed to have needs. We are allowed to be insecure. Intimacy in particular makes room for both of these. The problem is when need come up against boundaries. When we go along with things because we are insecure, or when we disregard the other person's boundaries because their disapproval makes us too afraid to deal.
It looks like I am becoming better with boundaries, in great part because I've learned how criticism isn't always fatal judgment. Maybe I can relax a bit more now, around the people whose approval I want.
Standards to live up to
I was also being unfair above because I made a straw man out of other people's social? interpersonal? ethical? values – I'm not exactly clear on what kind of standards they are, only that I made a straw man out of them. No one has called on the thought police, no one demands that I should edit my every thought, at least none of the people whose approval I want, they're not like that any of them.
Unreachable standards are in a way comfortable to deal with, because they are so very easy to disregard. That could be one motivation for making them out to be impossible, unfairly imposed, a call for complete submission. I suppose some people do that: Look for a reason to disregard those standards because they just aren't that interested in meeting them. On the other hand, it could also be that someone doesn't quite understand the standards in question. Things that aren't properly processed can often appear unreasonably black-or-white.
I hope I belong to the second category, that I do, honestly, want to reach for a higher standard. Why would I care about the approval of those people in the first place if I didn't see the value in their social, interpersonal, and ethical standards? I've noticed a thing about myself lately, that sometimes I state my values in a way that just sounds a bit too right. Like I'm quoting some pamphlet. Or performing for an audience. It's the way I seen other people speak that way when they are new to a certain way of thinking, still glowing with the discovery, not yet able to work from the deeper reasoning behind. I hope proper understanding is a thing that comes with maturity.
It's really about myself
I am not really sure. Whether I deserve the approval of those people or not. They do seem to approve of me, mostly. Maybe they just haven't found out who I really am yet. Or maybe I should trust their judgment. I mean, I do. Trust their judgment. Just not when it comes to me, apparently. What I know is I want to deserve their approval. It's not just their approval I want, it is to be worthy of it. I think that's one criterion for the kind of people I want in my life: People it would be worth it to be worthy of.
Because it's not really about their standards, it's about mine. Their standards are not imposed on me, they are an inspiration to me.
I don't know how to edit my opinions or beliefs. Not to mention my perceptions and immediate judgments. I suspect, if I were to line them up... I wouldn't quite like what I found. There would be social, political, ethical trends that went against my own standards. A bias to what people I liked at first sight, or trusted at their word. If nothing else because such biases are common, they exist below awareness, and I have no particular reason to believe myself immune.
Am I doing enough about that? Am I doing too much? Trying too hard? The approval of the people I like would be a measure that I am moving in the right direction.
I know I have values, strong ones even. And that they have been mine all along. As I said, they are not imposed on me. They are also not new to me: Issues like bias and inequality are things I have been concerned with for years, although not very loudly. If anything is new, maybe it is that I am engaging more with the people whose approval I want, as I am engaging more with people all over, and that makes me vulnerable.
Or, as isolation has its own set of vulnerabilities: It makes me vulnerable in different ways than before.
It could be that just that kind of vulnerability is what I need to learn a more mature approach to values, to have values of my own, not just try to live up to other's. The kind of vulnerability that makes me open to criticism, correction. But also more receptive to the approval I actually get. Scary as it might sound, vulnerability means I put more trust in other people's judgment when they see some good in me as well.
