Megan then said she had to leave, but before doing so, hugged me. I’ll never forget the relief that washed over me as she did so. Whether she realized it or not, Megan gave me the biggest gift she could have possibly given me that day. Because after that experience, I knew what it felt like to have to ask for mercy. I never wanted anyone, not even my worst enemy, to have to feel such pain on my account.
Some people believe it’s impossible for love and hurt to coexist. In my opinion, these people are overly idealistic. While I certainly don’t believe that love is always destined to share a bed with severe wounds, there will always be smaller wounds, like forgetting to call or mixing up the date of a loved one’s birthday.
Whether the wound is small or large, most of us understand that forgiveness is a necessary part of life. We’re humble enough to acknowledge human imperfection, while at the same time strong enough to accept it. But not everyone shares this point of view.
Imagine there are two very different girls: Mary is mild-tempered and cheerful. She is so timid that she stands against the wall during parties, then before the night ends, heads for the nearest exit without speaking a word. Evelyn, with her dark hair and fiery temper, lets no one push her around. The one thing these two girls share in common is that their reputations have been ruined by the same internet rumor.
The girl responsible for starting the internet rumor did so out of jealousy. But after watching the storm she created unravel on social media, remorse overwhelms her. She visits Mary and Evelyn at their homes, asking for forgiveness.
“I’ve put out a video, telling everyone the rumor’s false,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything I can to fix it.”
Mary does not want to forgive the girl. She’s cried every night since the incident, for the initial bad rumor has escalated into cyberbullying from hundreds of anonymous internet users. There’s no putting the rumor back in the bottle, no chance of convincing the entire internet of its falsity—the rumor has already gone viral. Her reputation will never be the same. Mary wants to shout at the girl. She wants her to feel the same pain she’s felt. But instead, forcing all of the hurt aside, she says, “It’s okay. I forgive you.”
Evelyn feels the exact same anger towards the perpetrator. An apology isn’t enough, not even close. When the girl comes to ask forgiveness, all the pain and rage Evelyn’s been feeling comes to the surface. “You can’t fix it, you dumb bitch,” she says. “You’ve already ruined me. I can’t believe you’d even come here and ask.”
Some of us may think that Evelyn is justified in denying forgiveness. But in a way, since all humans are imperfect, refusing to forgive is no different than saying “others should have to suffer for their faults, but I shouldn’t have to suffer for mine.” Like Evelyn, those of us who are unable to forgive might seem strong and confident on the surface, but what none of us can claim is that Evelyn has more strength than Mary. Evelyn’s weakness becomes obvious the moment a girl like Mary comes along.
However, forgiving someone in no way means that our relationship with them has to return to normal—to how life was before the person made the mistake. In fact, if we so choose, we never have to speak to the person again. Depending on how big the mistake was, we’re completely justified in cutting them out of our lives. Despite what some people may believe, forgiveness isn’t the same as absolving a person of the need to take responsibility for their mistakes and to make amends.
The reason forgiveness is so important is that it can do much to motivate a person to be better. In giving others a second chance, we’re giving them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and to make the right choice the next time around. If we deny them forgiveness, however, it might cause them to believe they’re irredeemable. They might even give up, riding the downward spiral all the way to the bottom.
As a whole, I think we can all agree that the world today is not a forgiving place. We are punished for mistakes that we made decades ago, and sometimes we’re even punished for mistakes that we didn’t personally make, but that someone we’re associated with made. Most of us no longer want to forgive, we only want to judge. The last thing on our minds is turning our judgements inwards and examining ourselves. Perhaps we’re too afraid of the darkness that we’ll find.
But the truth is, in a world of imperfection, forgiveness is always going to be necessary. If others are too weak to forgive us, despite us being sincerely sorry, we have no choice but to make peace with the fact that we tried our best. Our remorse, our will to make amends, and our desire to be better puts us in the right. No matter how bad the mistake we’ve made is, few deeds are so bad that they can’t eventually be paved over with good ones.
10
“You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people.”
—Fulton J. Sheen
Self-Worth on Steroids
The volleyball court echoed with shuffling feet. Behind me, a teammate intercepted a hit from the opposing team and passed the ball to the setter. The setter teased the ball gracefully into the air using the tips of her fingers and shouted, “Five.”
My number. “Five” meant she was positioning the ball to the left side of the net. I angled towards the ball, swinging in for a quick approach, cocking my arm in preparation for a hit—when suddenly, a second body appeared at my side.
“I’ve got it,” Lana grunted. She pushed me out of the way and spiked the ball into a well-aimed corner, scoring a point for the team.
My teammates came in for a group high-five, everyone except for Lana. She remained up at the net, her eyes bright at the roaring applause.
“Stop being a ball hog,” I muttered to Lana, as I returned to my spot on the court.
“It’s not ball hogging,” Lana said coolly. “It’s called being a better player than you.”
My hands clenched at my sides. I itched to fire back, but in the end, decided that starting drama in the middle of a game wasn’t worth it. Our coach was all about discipline, and I didn’t feel like running makeup laps after the game.
As the game wore on, Lana continued hogging the ball. Worse, she screamed at our setter every time she failed to set her up with a perfect hit. Screwing up during a game was never Lana’s fault; it was always the fault of another player. Soon, most of the teammates were complaining about Lana under their breath.
“Let’s give her to the other team as a trophy if they win,” one girl suggested.
“Why won’t coach just sub her out?” another complained.
The game wound down. Lana again stole the ball from another girl and scored the winning point. The crowd leapt to their feet, cheering. As I joined the team huddle on the edge of the court, collapsing into a chair, my frustration reached a tipping point.
The cheering crowd swarmed Lana, who was now thoroughly smiling. She pumped her fists in the air as they lifted her on their shoulders, content to accept all the glory and disregarding those who had helped her to achieve it.
In my author’s note, I mentioned that one of the main issues girls struggle with is too little self-worth. However, some girls, like Lana, struggle with the opposite: too much self-worth. Girls who make themselves the center of the universe not only dote on themselves in excessive ways, but they expect others to do the same. Unfortunately, in the same way that we can’t love others when we lack self-worth, we also can’t love others when we have too much. Our focus is constantly drawn inward, our minds constantly absorbed in admiring our own talents and in satisfying our own desires. Of course, this type of girl has no time to consider others.
Nowadays, a lot of celebrities appear to have big egos. This impression might be accurate in some cases, although in my opinion it probably isn’t one-hundred percent honest for the most part. More likely than not, it’s a persona the celebrity has adopted in order to make themselves more famous. If they were really so conceited, no one would like them or want to be around them, at least not for friendly reasons.
Certain profess
ions seem to be a magnet for self-important people: modeling, sports, acting, singing, YouTubing, and of course, politics. Looking closely, we find that the underlying factor in these different professions is the same: money and fame.
Let’s say that you’ve managed to attract half a million Twitter followers. A few of your followers send you hate every now and again, but for the most part, you’re showered with compliments. Day in and day out, your followers tell you how great you are, how beautiful, intelligent, sexy, talented and humorous. At first, the compliments bounce off because underneath the glamour, you know your own flaws. But one day, after achieving a particularly huge goal, you’re in a good mood and you allow yourself to entertain the possibility that your followers might be right. Their compliments start to sink in, distorting your vision of yourself and reconstructing your reality. Soon, you are convinced that you’re superior to others.
There are more than a few self-important people in my political network. These people are so accustomed to being admired that they get upset when they attend an event where one of their fellow political activists receives more attention than they do. Since they’re in the habit of receiving daily attention from their fan-bases, they can’t conceive of being overlooked. They don’t know how to process anonymity.
What’s more, they begin to view the world through an artificial lens. They, along with other famous and wealthy people, appear to themselves to be standing on a higher level than their fans. Of course, this is a skewed perception. No person, not even the most famous person in the world, is of inherently greater value than anyone else. Granted, our roles in life might have unequal value. For instance, our sacrifices might never equal the sacrifice of a soldier who gives his life for his country. Or we may not bear as much responsibility as others, like the leader of a country, and in this way, we might deserve less admiration. But where we are equal is in our souls.
On the other hand, we can’t be too hard on self-important people. Perhaps they haven’t decided that they’re better than others of their own volition. Their lofty perception of themselves might have been built up solely by admirers and fans. This is why, in many cases, whenever their followings lag or even drop, so does their self-esteem. Some go to extreme lengths to regain their popularity—sometimes with crazy videos, attention-seeking scandals, or even dangerous stunts. Pride and vanity have the potential to poison even the best of us, particularly if we don’t have people in our lives who are willing to pull us back down to earth.
Self-obsession hasn’t posed much of an issue for me throughout the course of my life. In truth, I suffer more from the opposite. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was sometimes tempted to grow a big head. If we ever find ourselves in a position where we’re repeatedly showered with praise, we should take a second to remember that we’re not perfect. The positive opinions of others can most certainly be true, but this is not always the case. Such a mentality can also prove helpful when we’re on the receiving end of negative opinions, for we’ll be able to identify them as subjective and brush them off more easily.
Fortunately, God blessed me with a good family—good parents, brothers and sisters who are willing to lovingly pull me back down to earth whenever I get a little too big-headed. Although some people might regard this type of honesty as harsh, I regard it as necessary. My family knows what’s best for me. They’re aware that, without humility, all my accomplishments would lose their nobility. They understand that if every now and again I don’t have a hand helping to keep me on the straight and narrow, I’ll inevitably stray off the path.
How many of us know a person who thinks so little of us and so much of themselves that they take the time to contact us only when they need something? The majority of us likely know at least one person; it’s the kind of person we never hear from, sometimes for months at a time, but then one day out of the blue, they descend back into our lives with some new request. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with asking for favors in general, but if the person asking is never willing to give anything in return, only the saints among us will want to oblige.
If we aren’t willing to offer ourselves for the benefit of others, if we’re only willing to use others for our own benefit, our very existence becomes parasitical. Unfortunately, becoming a user is the most common symptom of self-obsession. Since we’re incapable of loving others, our only option is to exploit them as a means to our own selfish end. Slowly but surely, people morph from human beings into instruments, like chess pieces in a game. While certain people might pretend to like us, their love will never be authentic. The reason for this is that, ultimately, we attract the type of people that we are. If we’re users, we’ll also attract users—who will abandon us the moment our beauty, talent, money or fame runs dry. We’ll end up unloved and alone.
11
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
—Oscar Wilde
It’s All About Balance
Have you ever been so consumed with work or with personal projects that you didn’t even allow yourself a break to celebrate your own birthday? I have. I’ve missed out on celebrating birthdays, holidays, and even family vacations.
Six years ago, my father planned a family vacation to Montana. Yellowstone Park is one of his favorite places in the world. Weeks he spent organizing horseback rides, hikes, water-rafting, camping. For weeks he excitedly anticipated having the family all together again. Everyone in my family, myself included, agreed to go.
But as the date of the vacation drew near, I started to panic. I still needed a few more weeks to finish the draft of the book I was working on. Fearing that going on a vacation would interrupt my flow or even cause me to lose motivation, I pulled my mother aside two days before the vacation and told her I couldn’t go.
“What?” my mother asked. A look of surprise eclipsed her usual pleasant expression. “But this trip means so much to your dad. You have to go.”
“I know, and I want to go. But I have to work,” I insisted. “If I don’t finish writing this draft within the next three weeks, I won’t be able to query agents in the fall.”
My mother sighed. “It’s your choice. I won’t force you to go. But your dad’s going to be disappointed—not only him, but your brothers and sisters as well.”
I knew she was right. Most of my seven siblings weren’t living at home at this time, so I rarely saw them; it would be at least another year before we’d have another family get-together. Even so, my obsession with work won out. Looking back, I hugely regret my choice. I don’t remember the happiness of writing those pages, but I would’ve remembered the happiness of making memories with my family. I would’ve had the opportunity to strengthen my relationships with them, and even more importantly, I wouldn’t have hurt my father.
What I hadn’t yet learned is that moderation is the key to a stable life. I didn’t understand the need for delegating specific time to work, to family, to entertainment, to religion and to myself. I also didn’t understand that being too obsessive or too extreme always comes with a price. Whether that price is a deterioration of personal relationships or experiencing a mental and physical burnout, the question isn’t if it will come, it’s when.
I’ve experienced two burnouts at two different points during my time as a political activist. The burnouts were largely due to the fact that I didn’t know where to draw the line. I agreed to take on every project that caught my interest. I answered “yes” to every favor that others asked of me. Soon, I was in over my head, buried under a workload that made it nearly impossible for me to celebrate Christmas with my family last year. Trips to London, Budapest, Dresden, Halle, and Frankfurt to cover political events and demonstrations. Weekly videos, including dozens of interviews and even an in-depth video series.
The work never ended. I had little time to eat and sleep. Nights I spent in a dazed stupor, trying to be productive. The quality of my work suffered. So did my mental and physical health. Thankfully, my mother, my twin sister and fian
cé took note of my state and intervened, convincing me to take a breather and lay low for a few months.
Of course, moderation applies to more than our jobs. It applies to all areas of our lives, including our personal relationships. For example, let’s say you meet a young man you’re interested in. He asks you on a date, and almost immediately, you form a special connection. This connection becomes attachment, which eventually devolves into obsession. You find yourself dedicating every waking moment to either spending time with him, doing him favors, planning romantic gestures or thinking about him. As a result, you ignore your family and friends. You also ignore the fact that it’s impossible to maintain a long-term relationship at such a rate. After a few months, you wake up and find yourself exhausted. You assume that the reason for your exhaustion is because relationships are demanding, when in reality, you’re not actually in a normal relationship. Or you might think you’re exhausted because you’ve contributed more than your boyfriend in the relationship, when in reality, you’re far too extreme for any normal male to match. Ultimately, your fatigue will detract from your interest in your boyfriend. You might even decide to end the relationship, just to get a break.
No matter the area of our lives, if we hope to achieve long-term success, the answer is almost always through moderation. Moderation is the key to finding a balance between lack of self-worth and too much self-worth. The most successful people in the world have at some point worked to establish moderation in their lives—a specific routine that they follow and rarely break. They know the inestimable value of a balanced body and mind.
What Makes Us Girls Page 9
