Over pizza and beers the other night a friend of mine described
an interesting literature course she’s taking at the university this semester,
interesting because the theme is “narcissism.” This concept has
been getting a lot of buzz lately in relation to everyone from the President to
the Millennials (who, interestingly and much to their credit in my view, mostly
didn’t vote for him). Selfie culture is often cited as evidence of our
supposedly increasingly self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing mentality, which in
turn is supposedly evidence of the imminent downfall of civilization, or at the
very least may contribute to ocular strain due to excessive eyerolling. “This class
really makes me think,” my friend said, adding with a grin, “I take a lot of selfies. I
wonder if I’m a narcissist.”
I assured her that being able to ask that question probably
means she isn’t. If you can view yourself critically from an outsider’s
perspective, instead of falling in love with the image you see of yourself as did
the mythical dude who gave the malady its name, a few social media-posted photos
of yourself smiling over a plate of food or sporting a new haircut or cuddling
with kittens seems harmless and possibly even, I daresay, fun. I myself don’t
actually take very many selfies—my phone plan is so bare bones that I can’t do
too much more than call people with it (shocking, I know), plus I’ve never much
enjoyed taking and posting pictures of myself. At the same time, I blog about
my life, which could be seen as little more than verbal narcissism, so you won’t
find me among the eyerollers.
In some ways it may even be essential to examine your own
self-image. The writing I do for my blog gives me a chance to look at things
that have happened to me and try to figure out how they might be meaningful.
The meaning I “discover” is actually a creation—an image. Nothing that happens
to me really “means” anything—it just happens—but by creating that meaning,
life becomes a little more interesting as well as a little easier to grasp. Sure,
you can go too far with any of this stuff—you can get to the point where you
believe in the creation far more than the reality. Narcissus fell in love with
a reflection off of water, not himself, which is what led to his literal
downfall (and subsequent drownfall). Obsess too much about self-image and you
end up living a life with no real substance. (Yeah, you might also end up
President of the United States, but one with a lousy approval rating and a lot
of unflattering memes.)
The criticism given to selfie culture isn’t just because it
leads to self-absorption but because it seems to demand the absorption of
others. It isn’t enough that we live satisfying lives; we have to broadcast the
choicest bits of those lives to everyone we know, even if just barely, so that
they can gnaw their lips to shreds in sheer envy. In other words, the modern
day Narcissus doesn’t just fall in love with his own reflection but instead
gathers everyone he knows around him at a moment when his reflection is looking
particularly amazing and insists they fall in love with it too—or at least “like”
it. Obviously, as I said before, taken to extremes this is unhealthy.
But there’s a positive side to having other people see your life this way, and it comes during times when you’re having a hard time seeing it
yourself.
The pizza and beer I mentioned at the start of this post was
a thank-you dinner I bought for a bunch of friends who helped K and me move our
heavy furniture to our new old house. Yes, we are finally moving in, even though
we’ve hardly done anything to spruce the place up and there isn’t a single
square foot that doesn’t need some kind of work. Moving is said to be one of
the most stressful events in a person’s life, and this particular move has been
a real test of our marriage. On top of the usual stressors of moving (why is it
that every time you go to cancel a particular service because you’re moving, it’s
like you’re the first person who has ever done that because the customer
service people are absolutely flummoxed as to how to handle it?) is the fact
that it will likely be years before this house looks like a place where functioning,
gainfully employed adults live. I don’t know what your Valentine’s Day plans
are, but we’re probably going to spend it making sure the kitchen cabinets are
free of mouse poop before we put our dishes away—that is, if we can find where the dishes are.
Oh, we didn’t go into this blind. We knew it would be a
trial. It’s one thing to know about stuff, though, and another thing for stuff
to actually happen. I know people go skydiving. The hell if I’m ever going to
do it. That said, there have been times in the past two months when it did feel
a bit like we were in free-fall without parachutes, and the day we moved
would be the day we splatted down to earth. And even though most of the time I
look forward to the future ahead of us, when our friends pulled up to the new
old house and got out, I have to admit: I took a look at what we were all
looking at and felt my heart go splat.
Broken windows. Mossy siding. Piles of junk excavated from the attic. A field
not of dreams but of weeds. Whatever image I had created and fallen in love with was suddenly impossible to see.
“Well,” I said wryly to my friends. “Here it is.”
“It’s beautiful.”
I look, startled, at the friend who had said this. I’d
expected some “wows” and a few “cools,” since “wow” can be ambiguous and “cool”
can mean “so cool that you have the energy and ambition to clean up this dump.”
I had not expected beautiful.
His remark was sincere, and it was echoed throughout the day
by the others.
“I so envy you.”
“Can I live here too?”
Even when we admitted how difficult it has been—and will no
doubt continue to be—our friends had nothing but admiration and support. One
noted the great old doors, originals from 1900, and what fabulous details they
had. “Did you notice one of the doorknobs had all these hearts worked into the
design? It’s a little tarnished but with some polish that would look so good!”
I had not noticed that particular doorknob. I went to look
after I got back to the house that night and sure enough, the closet door of
the master bedroom had an intricate design of tiny Valentines. Hmm. Maybe
cleaning mouse poop on February 14th isn’t really that terrible
after all, if we’re doing it here in our beautiful dump.
Sometimes it does take an outside perspective for you to
gain your own perspective. You don’t need to fall in love with the image you
create of your life, nor is it necessary for everyone else to; you merely need
to keep creating, and sharing, as much as will keep it worthwhile.
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