Is Our Self-Esteem Blowin' in the Wind?

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, some people were excited, applauding what they believed was a well-deserved, “outside the box” choice, and some were upset.

Here it is, weeks later, and he hasn’t returned the Academy’s phone call informing him that he won the prize. 

(Shortly after I wrote this Bob Dylan did respond affirmatively to the committee, but I don’t think it changes the substance of my message.  So if you’d like, please read on…)

Some think that’s a real chutzpa – I mean, who doesn’t pick up the phone when the Nobel Prize committee is calling?

Others think that this is a tribute to his artistry.  He doesn’t want to be categorized by anyone – he wants the freedom to be himself, to define himself.  He doesn't require the validation of others.

Today is Shabbat Bereishit – the Shabbat associated with the creation of the world on which we read the story of creation.

In the first account of creation, human beings are the climax – created on the last day before Shabbat.  Given the scriptural context, I’d like to explore the question, where does our value come from?  To what extent does it come from the e-valuations of others, to what extent does it come from our own sense of who we are?  How does all this impact our self-esteem?

It’s curious that in one night I read about Bob Dylan’s refusal to call back the Nobel Prize committee and saw a clip of an interview about the fixation that politicians have with external validation.

Now of course – it’s hard to determine to what extent people are drawn to politics because of their need for such validation and to what extent the process itself creates a need for it.  If you’re constantly checking polls for the latest trends, it’s got to have an effect. 

In some respects it’s a good thing for us to look beyond ourselves for validation.  For one thing, it’s important to rely on other people’s expertise.

When I was in college, and I handed in my first few papers, I was shocked when I got them back to discover that the professors had a different sense of what I had handed in than I did.  Once I took a few deep breaths, kvetched to some family and friends, absorbed the disappointment, I was able more fully to accept that my professors had expertise to share.  Overall their evaluation and comments were quite helpful.

When we listen carefully to the feedback of a teacher, a coach, a physician, an advisor of one kind or another – we are appropriately seeking validation for our work and our plans from other people.  After all, we lack certain expertise.

Moreover, we tend to lack objectivity.  We generally can’t be objective about our own ideas, our own work, our own decisions.  We don’t necessarily need to consult experts – sometimes speaking with a friend or a loved one, assuming they will be honest with us, can be helpful.  That’s tricky too – but it’s worth it to try to cultivate connections where others can give us honest assessments and vica versa.

So we accept feedback from experts and friends and we don’t presume that we can figure things out by ourselves.

However – as we know – there are ways in which our reliance upon others for feedback can become excessive and actually damaging.

If we allow the feedback of others to impact us too deeply and broadly, beyond the comments that are made, that can be damaging.  For example – if I had said, since my professor didn’t like my paper I don’t deserve to be here.  I’m an imposter.  And we can probably each come up with examples of when we have taken the constructive criticism of others and applied it too broadly in ways that end up self-deflating and self-defeating.

Moreover there are ways that we can become overly dependant upon the validation of others. 

How much do we worry about how we appear to others?  To take just one small realm – to what extent, when we get dressed in the morning, are we guided by our own taste, our own sense of what looks and feels right, and to what extent are we motivated by current fashion and what others think?  And then we can apply that question to the way we put ourselves “out there” in the world intellectually, politically, spiritually.

I’m sure you’ve read the same analyses of the psychological impact of social media that I have.

It’s been demonstrated that we have a dependency, in part chemical, on the validation that we get online.  How many followers we have, how many likes and loves we get, how many shares – all these things affect our dopamine levels and that’s not always so healthy.

Notwithstanding the very real benefits of social media communication, we are learning to acknowledge the drawbacks, and one drawback is that it potentially throws off, it distorts, the way we give and receive validation.

This is the Shabbat of Creation – human beings were, in the first account of creation, the last creatures that God formed.

The Torah tells us that God looked at various items that God created and they were good – Again and again, the phrase וירא אלהים כי טוב vayar elolhim ki tov appears.  God saw that it was good. 

God recognizes the goodness of creation.  There isn’t an external evaluation process.  God doesn’t wait for reviews.

And of course one can say – God is God.  God doesn’t need validation for creation from any other source.

But the foundational moments when God sees the goodness potentially provides a well-needed corrective for us.

We’re not God.  We do need others to say “nice job.”  “Your outfit matches.”  “You’ve figured out how to write a college paper.”

But how nice would it be if we could be in a place where we’re not desperate for the external comment, in person or online, where we have internalized enough of a sense of what’s right and what’s good that we can look at something we’ve done and see כי טוב ki tov – that it’s good.

How nice to be in a place where we don’t need to clear our comments, our outfits or our efforts with others either explicitly or implicitly.

How nice it would be if we could balance appropriate, healthy regard for the opinions of others with an innate sense that who we are, what we’re doing – is tov – is good.

Then, if we get a call from the Nobel Committee, we can say “gee thanks” or “my answer is blowing in the wind” or whatever, though my vote would be for answering the call.

How nice for us to be in a place ונמצא חן וסכל טוב בעיני אלוהים ואדם v’nimtza hen v’seikhel tov be’einei elohim v’adam – where we are well-regarded in the eyes of God and in the eyes of humanity.

And, as well, to believe that each of us is and does טוב tov – good.  Or even – as the chapter on creation concludes – טוב מאד tov me’od.  Very good.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on October 19, 2016, Shabbat Bereishit