About a month ago, for reasons that I can no longer remember (probably boredom or a desperate attempt to postpone some work I had to do) I started to google information about Ayn Rand. I first read Miss Rand over the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and at the time found her perspective fascinating. I didn't stick with her (not sure if that's as obvious to you as it is to me, but really I didn't). But it made my college years a little more interesting, because for a brief time it put me politically at odds with all of my friends. (sigh)
We all know that Google can suck you in for hours, because from one article you find links to another, and then another. That's what happened to me: I went from Ayn Rand to Nathaniel Branden, and from him to self-esteem.
"Self-esteem" is one of those topics that makes people roll their eyes when the very name is mentioned. As a concept, it seems built for mockery. I'm pretty sure Garry Trudeau summed up the popular opinions of self-esteem in his series of cartoons on the California Task Force for Self-Esteem back in the 1980's.
I think the mockery comes from assuming that "self-esteem" means unearned self-esteem: in other words, just the feeling without anything to back it up. But Florence King points out in her essay "The Age of Human Error" that real self-esteem begins with "one tiny seed": doing something — anything — superlatively well. And when Aristotle talks about "pride" (which appears to mean pretty much the same thing) he says explicitly that it is a virtue, one which he defines as follows: the proud man is one "who thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them." (This is in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book 4, section 3.) In fact, Aristotle goes on (in the same place) to say that pride can actually keep a good man good, arguing that "it would be most unbecoming for a proud man to fly from danger … or to wrong another; for to what end should he do disgraceful acts, he to whom nothing is great?" Clearly he is talking about something far removed from Garry Trudeau's jokes. Or anyone's.
So if real self-esteem means justified self-esteem — thinking you are good because you really are good — what steps does it take to get there? And also (not coincidentally) am I doing any of them?
I found a couple of articles to look at: one by Branden, and one that just summarized his ideas more schematically. And it appears that in Branden's system there are six regular practices that you have to undertake to build a sense of justified self-esteem. They are as follows:
- Living Consciously
- Self-Acceptance
- Self-Responsibility
- Self-Assertiveness
- Living Purposefully
- Personal Integrity
Living Consciously: I think I do better at this than I used to. Specifically, I think it is something I have learned from meditation, to be more aware of what I am doing and why I am doing it. I'm no sage yet, but I do think I am part of the way there.
Self-Acceptance: Again, I think I have something of a handle on this one. There were times in the past when the contemplation of my own faults made me feel terrible. I could fall into deep depressions over them. Now I'm more likely to shrug and think, "Yup, that's one of my faults. I know that one." I don't have to like them, but I know they are there and I don't expect them to go away any time soon. I have tried to be pretty open about my faults in this blog, in particular. So writing here has helped me on this point.
Self-Responsibility: I guess so, but this one is not as clear as the last one. On the one hand, self-responsibility has an intellectual component: that you understand yourself as responsible for what you do, rather than seeing yourself as helplessly buffeted about by forces outside your control. I think I've got that part covered. But it also includes "own[ing] our abilities to manifest our desires," and that's an area where I know I am a little weak. It's one of my faults. 😀 And I know that when I really have to, I can decide to make a big change and make it. That's what I did with the decision to leave my marriage. It wasn't easy, and it took a long time. But when it really mattered I could (finally) do it.
Self-Assertiveness: Most of the time I don't feel very assertive. But Branden connects this with the practice of living authentically — living as yourself and not playing a part. I just talked about that in my last post, so maybe I am farther along with this practice than I realize.
Living Purposefully: Nope. This means using your powers to create and implement a plan of action to attain a goal you have selected. And long time readers have heard me talk about goals at great length over the years (for example here). I don't see my life as having been very goal-oriented.
Although maybe I have to qualify that. On the one hand I never set clear professional goals, but followed paths that opened themselves up. (Just recently, since the onset of quarantine, I have started thinking I'd like to write a book about certain aspects of my work that I see differently from other people. I've got a draft, but have no idea where to go from here. So I don't know if that counts yet. Anyway, that's about the first concrete professional goal I can remember thinking of.)
On the other hand, Branden also includes "raising a family" or "sustaining a happy romantic relationship" as goals a person might try to achieve. I certainly wanted to be a good father, from the moment I knew Son 1 was on the way. I'm not sure I ever had a clear action plan about how to achieve this, except possibly on the topic of sending the boys away to boarding school when they reached ninth grade. But every day I thought about what was the best way to handle whatever was going on that day, and I tried hard to learn from my mistakes. Also, on a broader canvas, I really tried for many years to be a good husband to Wife. In the end it all fell apart, but I worked at it for a long time.
Maybe those are the purposes I set out to achieve, and all this professional work has just been a sideshow to pay the bills. I don't know for sure.
Personal Integrity: I try. God knows I try.
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Wow. I actually scored better than I thought I was going to. (I hadn't figured this all out before I started writing.) In particular, I was sure that I'd give myself a flat zero for "Living Purposefully," because that's what I've always told you about me and goals. It was only while writing that I realized maybe the truth was a little more nuanced than that. But then, as I said way back at the beginning of this blog (in the third sentence of the first paragraph of the very first post), one of the reasons I write this is that I figure things out in the process of trying to explain them. So stumbling across surprises is the way it's supposed to work, at least once in a while.
So does that mean I have self-esteem? Let's say that many of the building blocks are in place. So there's an opportunity. I'll accept that as good enough for now.
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