The Words Unspoken

In the wake of Robin Williams' death yesterday, my brother posted this article to his Facebook wall. In it, the author, a comedy writer himself, details why our culture has such a long, sad history of watching some of its favorite comedians kill themselves. To nutshell it, the author makes the case that the majority of hilarious people are using their comedic gifts as a shield: that something traumatic and/or humiliating happened to them at a young age and, in response to the sensitivity they developed in response to that event, they have discovered that making people laugh is a sure-fire defense against revealing their true selves to the people around them. Rather than broadcast who they really are to the world and risk almost certain disparagement, ridicule, and judgment, they instead project a version of themselves that people will embrace and accept. Alas, in many cases, the pressure of keeping up a false front while struggling privately with what seems like increasingly insurmountable odds gets the best of them and they choose death as an alternative to continuing on through a tortured and malfunctioning life.

I have no reason to doubt this writer's statements. So, let's shift gears for a second instead and contrast this reality with something different that has been gnawing at me for the last few weeks. I offer two examples.

First, at a concert my wife and I recently attended, the talent took a moment to introduce an upcoming song. Through this monologue, she attempted to encourage those of us in the audience to believe in ourselves, reject the judgments of others, and to go and be & do whatever it is that we feel created/led/put on earth to be & do. Fine sentiments, to be sure, but woefully encapsulated when the singer issued the statement, "You're absolutely perfect just the way you are!"

The next example comes from the Twitterverse, wherein a friend of mine re-tweeted a sentiment from an author-teacher masquerading as a Christian leader that stated that the Bible commands us to love ourselves and therefore, we should never ever say anything negative about ourselves. (Side note: the Bible never commands anyone to love themselves; it assumes that you already do in certain contexts, but I am unaware of it ever explicitly stating such a thing.)

In both of these instances, I have no doubt as to the purity of the intentions of the people delivering the statements. If I had the opportunity to extract some further clarification from the people who said these things, I do not doubt that we may even reach some point of agreement on a more complete meaning of what they were trying to say. Then again, maybe not. My point here is not to impute or assume motivations on the part of these people. My point is to deal with the statements themselves, as I believe them to be presently endemic in our culture and a large part of me believes that the comedians discussed in the story mentioned earlier would side with me in my reaction to both of them when I say, what a sick, unfunny joke.

Here's the thing: you're not perfect. You're not alright. You're messed up, broken, and needy. And so am I. And so are your parents and so are your friends, your spouses, your pastors, your teachers, your bosses, your brothers & sisters, and, yes, your favorite musicians, actors, writers, and painters. The very nature of the human condition is dysfunction itself, and to insist on anything else amounts to nothing more than an exercise in pretense.

The simple fact is this: there is nothing unique about suffering or special about imperfection. In regard to these things, we're all in it together.

The way I see it, everyone senses on some level that we're all a bunch of screwups to one degree or another. But, for some reason, instead of everyone admitting it and agreeing to walk along the jacked up roads together, we decide to become mask wearers and game players. Whether it be through Bible Belt religiousity or the never-ending photoshopped celebrity media frenzy or some other self-glorifying charade, most of us have ascribed to the notion that some kind of perfection is, if not realistically attainable, able to be believably projected. It's one of the worst lies ever perpetrated on mankind and we have no one to blame for believing it but ourselves.

I have said in discussions many times that a cultural revolution could be had if people simply dropped the nonsense and started interacting with and relating to each other according to what we all know to be reality: namely, that we're all far, far less than perfect. See, the dirty little secret is that no one has it all together. No one. Nobody has it all figured out. And the ones that do seem to have it mostly figured out often times end up being the most out-of-whack. So, the moment you're tempted to believe that you're a worthless peon compared to ________, remember that you have no idea what goes through that person's head at any moment of the day. You have no idea what the depths of their motivations are for doing what they do. You have no idea as to the intensity of their insecurities. You have no idea how much pressure - real or completely imagined - they feel throughout their lives. And they have no idea about you. And while none of these things should prevent us from being willing to stand for what we know to be right and true, it should also help us to remember that no one - no one - has been inoculated against brokenness & dysfunction. When it comes to people, these things are the name of the game, par for the course.

If we have learned anything from the tragedy of this week and the history of celebrity culture in general, it should be that all of the things that the world wants you to believe bring completion and wholeness and purpose to your life do no such thing. Money, fame, power, and popular respect do nothing to answer our most pressing questions or solve our most serious problems. True hope and peace cannot be found within ourselves - we're far too mangled and out of order for that to be the case. We all need help.

So instead of pretending like being messed up is a-ok ("You're absolutely perfect just the way you are!") or that there's nothing negative to be said about ourselves, maybe we should start trying to live in reality. We're not perfect and there are loads of negative qualities about each and every one of us. We all have foibles, sins, faults, and shortcomings. We all have things we need to be working on and aspects of our lives that need improvement. But these things do not and should never isolate us from love. Quite the contrary, actually. Precisely because we're all in this broken situation together, we should be all the more willing to accept and love and be compassionate towards one another. Imagine if all the Williams' and Belushi's and Farley's didn't feel like they had to hide their true selves from the world. Imagine if perfection and having-it-all-togetherness was not the standard we all held ourselves and one another to. Imagine if we didn't feel like we had to tell lies in order to encourage one another. Imagine if we all began to understand that every single one of us is fighting battles, dealing with internal demons, and constantly struggling to find our place in this world we all share. Imagine if all the masks came off, all the walls came down, and we all started to look for answers outside of our own incapable selves.

For me, that's an imagining actually worth writing a song about.

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