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Viewpoint
Who's Looking?
by Bente Mirow
Over 2000 years ago, a young and beautiful manfell in love—not with any of his many lovely female suitors, but with his own reflection in a pool of water. One of the cruelly rejected maidens prayed that he may feel what it’s like to love and not be loved in return. Her prayer was heard and granted. Every time Narcissus tried to get closer to the mirror image in the pool, it moved away or shattered, only to restore the handsome face mocking the longing in his heart. He could not understand why, in spite of returning again and again and smiling back at him, he was shunned by the object of his love. Slowly Narcissus withered away from the lack of nourishment to his heart. He died from self-love.
About 100 years ago, Sigmund Freud chose Narcissus’ name to label the psychological phenomenon of excessive self-love: narcissism.
For a long time, the only recognized love for oneself was an unhealthy, depraved and exaggerated self-interest. However, somewhere in the 80s arrived the message that it was okay to have self-love. We were taught to look in the mirror and say it out loud: “I love you.” Self-love became a sign of healthy human beings in balance with themselves and their social surroundings.
Then came the age of the Internet with major changes in the social setup. Much direct communication between people was replaced by electronic correspondence, and people were suddenly alone more than they had planned or foreseen. Difficulties reaching out and being with others became a new social phenomenon. Suddenly solitude’s two faces were staring each other down—one for the health of our souls, the other for our detriment.
Fortunately, just as the Internet had begun isolating people, dating sites were born.
Next appeared the newest generation of yet another expression of self-love. Facebook and MySpace have become the connectors between the members of this generation. To be on the inside, you must create an image of who you are through words and photos. At first, it would seem that many “healthy” self-lovers of the 80s and today’s times would have trouble with such exposure, feeling reluctant to toot their own horns. Yet, the “older” members of society now engage in large numbers in online meeting and dating sites, where it is necessary to create profiles of what is primarily self-praise. All of these online socializing places could be considered a form of forced narcissism.
So who is this self that we should love? And why?
Is the self the one on the inside looking out or on the outside looking in?
Many of us in the “older” generation—shall we say over 30—have acquired a pretty good idea of what it means to love oneself. More than falling in love with ourselves like Narcissus, self-love is related more to honoring ourselves and constantly working on self-actualization and self-realization. Through self-awareness and self-reflection, we continuously try to improve our relationship with ourselves.
But how then is it possible for this new generation of young people to understand themselves better—or at all—through the need to profile and define themselves to a computer screen, spreading their self-definition with the wind?
I asked a few young people how they relate to their “selves” through Facebook and MySpace.
“It’s about creating oneself and marketing it,” says 22-year-old Julie. “How you portray yourself is how you sell yourself to others.” She affirms that she is aware of her profile on Facebook being a snapshot of her life for anyone to look at. Therefore, she keeps her security settings very high, making sure that everyone who can view it knows her first in person.
“For many people though, I think it is the main channel through which they express and convey themselves to the social world,“ she explains. “The more pictures that they put up, the better they feel about themselves. A lot of people post their ‘status.’ For example, ‘so and so is sad.’ This way, everyone knows what’s going on right now and believes they live active and exciting lives.”
For many, it becomes an addiction to post what they’re doing every day, which must involve a healthy sense of self-importance.
But let’s explore this topic according to the older ones who say that you don’t have to market yourself to have value.
Bill Cumming, 30-year coaching and consulting veteran and founder of the course, “What One Person Can Do” (www.oneperson.net), says: “MySpace is about proving how I am cool. Young people are bombarded by things of no value and may get the twisted idea that their value is related to external stuff or accomplishments and that happiness and satisfaction comes from those things, whereas in reality, our value is a given regardless of what we do, have done, or have.”
What happens then if someone who is comfortable in their own skin enters the social networks?
How is our value marketed if we are secure with ourselves, but still in need of some companionship and love? Who is looking at whom?
According to the ancient Toltecs of Mexico, you are who you believe you are.
The important thing now becomes separating who we believe we are from the synthetic personalities we create for online self-marketing, which can never fairly convey who we are without us there in flesh, blood and soul.
How do you know this “I?” The harder we try to figure out just what “I” represents, the harder it becomes to localize. Needless to say, trying to authenticate “I” can be a lifelong endeavor.
It is worth remembering and repeating that we are not by ourselves, but with ourselves. We may be good at being with ourselves, but long for outside connections. Or we may be comfortable with being out in the world, yet long for inner solitude. Loneliness is different from solitude, depending on whether we are looking from the outside in or from the inside out.
Solitude, a deeply valuable tool for self-discovery, represents for the younger Facebooker a friend-less loser.
Bill Cumming observes, “All the damage in society comes from people who do not feel well, healthy, or whole in relationship to themselves.”
So it would seem that rather than withering from self-love like Narcissus, the 21st century’s approach to self-understanding poses a bigger risk of our withering from lack of self-love. If only the visionaries of our times could find a way to combine old knowledge with new tools to help the next generation achieve inner peace and self-care. Calling all visionaries...
Bente Mirow is a freelance writer who writes what her heart and mind demand. She can be reached at laumedreams@gmail.com.