Finding my Self

I'm reading Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard right now and feeling inspired to write again, especially on the issues of self-centeredness vs. selflessness. This post follows up on one I wrote a while ago on Compassion by Henri Nouwen. These thoughts are still in formulation, so please forgive any lack of clarity or focus :)

Here's a good quote by Willard which first got me thinking:

"Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something, to be held irreplaceable, without price." (15) [emphasis mine]

This thought seems so counterintuitive to me. Usually if someone is so exceedingly self-centered my reactionary desire is to show them that they really aren't all that and a bag of potato chips. Even when dealing with my own selfishness - whether I'm attempting to combat or prevent it - my typical response is that I need to accept that it's not "all about me." But instead, Willard says that I need to realize, and what all those crazy egomaniacs out there need to realize, is how loved, how significant, how important, how valued we all are - that we really are something special. The truth is so refreshing, that we are loved sufficiently, that such fulfillment is not beyond our grasp.

And Willard says that this desire to have meaning, to be significant, in itself is not self-centered. In fact, it is actually outward:

"Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny." (15)

In Compassion, Henri Nouwen seemed to say that to actually have compassion on other people, to really understand the suffering of those who hurt, we need to empty ourselves of the desire for social acceptance. At first I was having a hard time reconciling the arguments of these two authors, but after some thought I can see that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. To really have compassion, to mourn with those who mourn, we must let go of this struggle to prove ourselves to others. And perhaps Willard is uncovering that the key to this "letting go" is in the realization that we are already loved, accepted, valued, before we could even prove ourselves.

However, Willard extends this further to say that this desire for significance, to do something good for the world, is how God created us to be.

"Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity's enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them." (15)

It's so good to know that God has greater purposes for us - he sees us as having greater significance than we could even imagine for ourselves. Think about it: since we only can see our lives as they gradually unfold, we often miss the bigger picture, how we are impacting people and the world. But God sees the whole act. He sees how our work in the past is effecting others now, and how what we do now will continue to bring about meaningful change in the future.

Amidst the craziness and uncertainties of life, it's nice to know that we are highly regarded by an all-loving, all-knowing higher power.