The greatest problem in the world is not nuclear war or poverty or
  famine but the loss of pride in being human beings. The ultimate human
  value is self-esteem--and the absence of it is the cause of almost all the
  problems in an individual's personal life and in the world at large.
        --Rene Dubos (1901-1982), Micro-Biologist and Writer

        Rene Dubos is right. At the root of most if not all human misery and
  unfulfillment is an inner sense of self-distrust. Outwardly, this is often
  masked by bold or brassy behavior--for fear of it being revealed. This dis-
  respect-within stems from a crippling unableness to accept, forgive, and, at
  last, love the deeper self in all its forms, noble and base. Without this
  underpinning acceptance of Self, there can never be a flowering into a state
  of grace, neither internally nor with others, be they family, friends, spo-
  uses, or lovers. The wise Carl Jung, phsychologist and humanitarian, saw this
  lucidly. For him, acceptance and then forgiveness of oneself was everything.
  It was, as he put it, the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a
  whole outlook upon Life. Writer H. Alberrt Hochbaum agreed succintly--"If
  we always regret what we have done, we must regret that we are human. It is
  only by accepting ourselves for what we are, the best of us and the worst
  of us, that we can hold any hope for the future."
        The way we privately see ourselves, for better or worse, is often fo-
  rmed early in life--and a loveless childhood, one that has known rejection,
  abuse, or even lack of fond encouragement and support, will sadly set the
  scene for an unformed, emotionally childish and loveless adulthood. This
  cycle of sadness, if not somehow broken, can keep on bedeviling each gener-
  ation, often tragically.
        It is not that the self-critical adult is necessarily kindless or un-
  lovable (quite the contrary, often), but their essential joylessness lies
  in being incapable, at bottom, of "receiving unto themselves" the loving-
  kindness offered them by those near and dear. Deep within, that scarred and
  secret self is convinced of its love-unworthiness and so, cold and hard as
  ice, shuns any love of substance and lastingness. Unhappily, all efforts
  and assurances by all those who care enough to show "the unworthy one" his
  or her intrinsic and true worth are forever a waste of time, however heart-
  fully given. They might as well go and praise a brick wall. And besides, the
  givers can be hurt by their own tenderness--since men and women with armored
  hearts and ailing selves have an inner-protection iron need for power over
  hearts that unwisely (but often unwittingly) seek out theirs. Sheilded hea-
  ts must always have the last word, romantically. It is they who must do the
  rejecting; they cannot, will not allow any rejection that evokes their own
  desertion long before.
        Only these unloving ones--and they alone--can make that plucky jump
  from their steelclad tower into the profound and liberating realization of
  who they really are--and what they really are--and why they really are. Once
  having leapt the broad leap of faith, they will surely see the curing power
  of that fresh unearthing of the good within them. "I am large," Walt Whitm-
  an wrote, "better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness."
        For those brave beings who choose to do the hard work that will lead
  them to a life free and fulfilled, it is a battle royal to break down those
  forbidding castle walls of stunted, self-denying and fearful thinking. Cou-
  rage! "Once more unto the breach, once more!" (Henry V, Wm. Shakespeare)
  Where there's a will, there's a way, aye. Most flee the battle, for the
  price of victory seems to high for them--so bit by bit, year by year, they
  wither within like a blossom's bud that never opens. How dearly I wish for
  people, all people, what Writer D. H. Lawrence wished for them: "All I want
  of you, men and women, all I want of you is that you shall achieve your own
  beauty--as the flowers do." Nature achieves it daily. Why not men and women?
  Why not indeed?
        In any writings, I try to avoid the hackneyed phrase self-esteem. Es-
  teem on its own is a stilted word from an age gone by. It is rarely used in
  speech. Do people speak of esteeming each other these days? And high or low
  self-esteem make little sense because a person either has self-esteem or
  they do no. It cannot be qualified. Furthermore, a second definition of
  self-esteem (Random House) is not at all desirable: "An inordinately or ex-
  aggeratedly favorable impression of oneself;" that is, as I understand it,
  a superiority complex. For me, the terms slef-pride, self-respect, self-
  honor, and self-worth are truer alternatives to self-esteem for summoning
  up this vital component of a rewarding life for the happy man or woman. The
  Scottish poet Robert Burns called it perfectly: "pride o'worth." And you
  have pride o'worth, quite simply, "when you know the world is a better place
  for you being in it."
        In spite of a measure of wordly experience, I can no longer claim any
  understanding of affairs of the heart--or of how to make them work. But one
  thing that I am now clear on is this--if the two people launching a romance
  or a marriage think poorly on themselves, each in his or her own way, when
  the happiness they aspire to is doomed for the outset. It will, before long,
  unravel in some form of mutual maltreatment, either mental, emotional, spi-
  ritual, or physical. At best, it will be a relationship that is frozen, wh-
  ich, in and of itself, is an affront to the life and love force.
        Let us suppose that one of the partners enjoys self-pride and, for
  whatever reason, the other doesn't. It it quite possible that this imbalance
  within the relationship could be offset for a long while by the patience,
  resolve and goodwill of the first. But sooner or later, inexorably, the
  second person's sense of unworthiness, hidden or manifest, will in one of a
  myriad ways seek to determine the right spirit and loving intentions of the
  first. At this point, the false "imp-self" (which is no kin of their true
  self) will probably set about shifting the blame and shame of it's own ima-
  gined failure onto their partner. We are all vulnerable--but even though the
  one under assult knows their own worth, this is still trying and hard upon
  them. They are undeserving of this irrational ire. This putdown by the imp
  of anger should not be put up with for so long. The more the putting down,
  the less the intimacy and benevolence between the two. Fairness and give-
  and-take become quick victims. Contentious couples can keep                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  both in each other's and in their own selves. This Salutation to
  Selfness, seperately and together, is everything--and without it there can
  be no transcendental matching. Idealistic? Positively! But without an ideal
  to reach for, don't our hearts and spirits stay ever stuck in the mud?  "We
  are all in the gutter," said Oscar Wilde,"but some of us are looking at the
  stars."
        But how on Earth can one hope to pierce the fake front of the common-
  place, the seeming light and bright facade that society itself even encour-
  ages? And how to get the insight to be able to percieve another's posssible
  self-dislike and inner disregard (time bombs both)? Alas, we're so oftern
  charmed by a wife-to-be or a husband-to-be that the last thing we're wanting
  is a revealing of their darknesses. Yet, if we ignore that telling task of
  interior discovery, it will not be long before that black cloud sails once
  again, onto our blithe horizon of blue and new. So watch and listen we must.
  A self-naughting soul, unless overly timid, cannot be pinpointed that easily;
  some have been cleverly concealed for years for fear of being seen through.
        One of the best and simplist books on this complex topic is 'Why Am I
  Afraid To Tell You Who I Am?', by John Powell.*
        He describes the various quises that people assume to hide from public
  view their "unlovable" selves within. The three I would try to define myself
  are common, the most obvious one doing little to affect disguise. That of an
  air of diffadence, nervousness, indecision, and low confidence. The second
  (often male) is the morose, cold-natured, over-critical, and uncommunicative
  one, while the third one shows cockiness or argumentative arrogance, the
  know-it-all who never asks even a friend's council. That last one's the tri-
  ckiest because of the overall veneer of brazen confidence and breezy know-how.
  But of course the know-it-alls never really did know how, did they? Powell
  comments,

  This always right person rarely, if ever, loses an argument. Even when the
  evidence begins to stack up against him, he can salvage respect for his po-
  sition. He does not listen well and gives the appearence of expecting to
  learn little from others. Basically, his self-esteem is threatened. He acts
  doubly certain in order to gard against demoralizing doubts which stir in
  his subconscious and tend to undermine his certainty. His behavior indicates
  the opposite of what seems to be true. He has deep, is subconcious, doubts
  about himself and his opinions.

        There are a handful of the incorrigibly self-embittered (thank God it
  isn't more) who are quick to learn that the acquiring of power-to-dominate--
  political, phsycological, financial, etc.--can often gain them vengeful
  consolation for their perceived (or actual) deprivations of childhood--and
  dark mastery where before they only felt impotence. Rueful it is for society
  and all who have dealings with them that their deep-rooted lack of self-pride
  allows them to be amoral and unscrupulous in the pursuit of power. And if
  and when they attain it, there can be grave repercussions, of which history
  is full of lamentable examples. The worst become malefic despots, ravagers
  of Man and Nature alike.
        Happily, in our daily lives, we rarely meet up with such extremes. But
  we do meet up endlessly with that dissonant trait which unites all who inly
  think ill of themselves (alcoholics being a prime example)--self-absorption.
  This is the private purgatory of those who are trapped inside themselves and
  and cannot get out in order to be able to show honest and ongoing interest
  in the lives, aspirations, and feelings of others. That is its own kind of
  hell since want of genuine care for one's own fellow-beings is at the core
  of all personal loneliness and lovelessness. The self-absorbed tend to share
  one unmistakable trait--They ask no interested questions of others beyond
  social requirements. However, to other's questions of them and their own
  lives, they volubly answer. This conversational cul-de-sac is impoverishing
  to them--and exhausting to others. English politician Aneurin Bevan in 1954
  said of Winston Churchill, "He never spares himself in cenversation. He 
  gives himself so generously that hardly anybody else is permitted to give
  anything in his presence." We all know that Churchill was a grand public
  figure and a stout-hearted leader, yet Bevan's words shine an inner light
  on his parliamentary colleague's private unsureness. So there's the key:
  no solid questions beyond their own interest and curiosity--and shallow, 
  and often interuptive, listening. And little ability to show thankful app-
  reciation, verbal or written, for another's merits or deeds. In a relation-
  ship of any kind, be it friend, family, or romance, this is indeed a dead-
  end street. A one-way exchange does indeed dreaden in the end.
        Having said all that, I know a number of selfward folk who are decent,
  upstanding, and honorable, and, even though I doubt they've asked me a dozen
  real questions in twice as many years, their loyalty and constancy to me are
  true-blue. Unhesitantingly, they would help me in any way they could, were I
  in need. That is their way of expressing love, I'm sure. I'm touched by the-
  ir fidelity of friendship--and never fail to greet them in person or letter
  with greatfulness. Yet what disheartens me is that their stubborn self-abso-
  rbtion will never let us go beyond where we've been bogged down "comfortabl-
  y" for years. I used to yearn to "go beyond" with them, but have come to ac-
  cept that nothing short of and act of God will make this happen. So, nowada-
  ys, I am thankful for what we have at the level we have it--but I seek else-
  where for deeper-reaching exchanges.
        The more one probes into this subject of inner discontent, the more
  one grasps its near-universal scope. It's pandemic, the "walking wounded"
  seem legion, the self-interestedness is rife. The state of the nation at
  large is no better, and it's evident that society as a whole has lost its
  self-respect. Not hard for a philisophical eye to see why--The government
  and the people have been in the metal-clawed clutches of the tin gods of
  crass materialism since the end of World War II. What sort of solice is that
  to the soul, collective or individual? What sort of hope for the Spirit of
  the Land when, for example, its religious leaders and their followers do not
  battle against the social scourge of gambling? Worshipping Mammon and the
  Golden Calf did nothing but harm to the Israelites. Ditto for the American
  soul. Walt Whitman would bear me out of this, I know.
        With the country-at-large, confused amid all its global power, wracked
  with the collective doubt, choking on a surfeit of things and ecologically
  imperiled because of it, it is no wonder that people themselves cannot rise
  above their own angst. After World War II, full of belief in the call to
  consume, they followed the band unthinkingly. Fifty years later the big drum
  split wide open--and the parade was over. Anomie, breakdown--sociologically,
  environmentally, and spiritually.
        What the poet Tennyson urges in the last century stands as good for
  the end of this century, for nations and individuals alike: "Come my friends,
  'tis not to late to seek a newer world!"*
        I have no panacea for sunken spirits or for restoring self-honor where
  it is not. Ultimately, we are all our own healers "with a little help from
  our friends" (if we will let them). My life's learnings about the nature of
  love and unlove, such as they are, are the only qualifications I have to be
  able to write about the vitalness and self-pride and the unending misery
  that springs from the lack of it. And, furthermore, I can write only in br-
  oad generalizations, given the unfathomable complexity of each human being
  and the bewildering and diverse circumstances that make up the human condi-
  tion, as a whole.
        All I can do, then, is to humbly offer these suggestions based on the
  crests and troughs of my own chequered life; and so, Gentle Reader, take what
  may be of use and toss out all the rest. Winnow them well. And if just one
  word of this essay brings a bit of peace and insight to any stray soul as
  lost as I have sometimes been in my own life, then it wont have been written
  in vain.
        -First and foremost, dream your o                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                live
  vividly, then be one!
        -Get out of debt right away. And stay out. Debt and self-pride never
  go together.
        -Lose no time in cultivating the companionship of Lady Nature. She
  makes no judgements or comparisons and will be your steadfast friend for
  life. Constancy is her crowning virtue. She will never withhold her gifts of
  peace, healing, generosity, and benevolent affection from you. Anne Frank,
  in her diary entry for Feb. 23, 1944, wrote: "The best remedy for those who
  are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be
  quite and alone with the heavens, Nature, and God. Then does one feel that
  all is as it should be--and that God wishes to see people happy amidst the
  simple beauty of Nature. I firmly believe that Nature brings solace in all
  in all the troubles."
        -Read (and reread) Walt Whitman's "Songs of the Open Road" if you want
  to know what a man exuberantly in love with life, his country, and all its
  people sounds like. And just as importantly, if you want to know what heights
  you yourself are capable of rising to. Then start to sing your own song and
  walk your own road.
        -Read (and reread again) Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' for the best
  councel on independent thinking and self-reliant living you could ever hope
  to find. With Henry David in one hand and Uncle Walt in the other, and a few
  quiet days to reflect profoundly on them both, you'll have luminous advice
  on life and the lusty, loveful living of it at your fingertips. Adelante y
  Arriba! Onwards and upwards!
        So go on down to the library. While you're there, also pick up a copy
  of Rudyard Kipling's deathless poem, "If." It begins this way:
        "If you can keep your head when all about you
        Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
        If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
        But make allowance for their doubting too..."
        Take a day off to wallow, for one last time, in your own guarded sense
  of awfulness. Go at it mercilessly till your sick to death of it, fed up of
  hearing how badly you see yourself on the inside. Purge yourself of the inner
  anger and then, who knows, you may arrive at that potent point of seeing for
  the first time how silly it all is--and how unfounded in the natural order of
  things--and how tremendously sapping to you and to others. And, finally forg-
  iving yourself, you'll let go of it once and for all, and let good in. And,
  glory be, you'll be out of yourself--at long last! Strive to stay out and 
  soon you'll begin to know that calm and balm that a realizing of self-forget-
  fulness brings. And then you'll begin to undestand the quiet pleasure that
  comes from reaching out helpfully to others--and even to Nature herself, why
  not? Tolstoy the Russian novelist and seeker of truths summed it all up--
        "Joy can be real only if people look upon their lives as a service and
  have a definite object outside themselves and their personal happiness." Yes,
  you'll reach beyond yourself, which is exactly what you've needed to do for
  do long. And this heartfelt considerateness for others, familiar and not so,
  will be the hallmark of the regenerated being you were meant to be.
        So off with the old--fling away that dusty, drab baggage!--and on with
  the new. Push aside those Grey years of dwelling on the inadequate, sweep
  away the dreariness of spirit that has weighed you down for years--and then
  watch the new gleam as it becomes full light. Bravo!

  Word to the Reader:
  Comments pro and con invited. Feel free to copy and pass along this essay if
  and as you see fit.

  March 1998
  Geoffrey Platts
  Box 2568
  Carefree, Arrizona 85377 USA

  =============================================================================
  You are your own Devil, You are your own God;
  You fashion the paths that your footsteps have trod;
  And no one can save you from error or sin
  Until you shall hark to the spirit within.

  Once list to that voice and all timult is done,
  Your life is the life of the Infinite One;
  In the hurrying race you are conscious of pause
  With Love for the purpose and Love for the cause.
        --Ella Wheeler Wilconx (1855-1919), US poet
  =============================================================================
  We are all children of a brilliant, colored flower, a flaming flower.
  And there is no one, there is no one, who regrets what we are.
        --Rumi (AD 1207-1273), Persian Poet & Mystic
  =============================================================================
  Each Man is in his Spectre's power
  Until the arrival of that hour
  When his Humanity will awake,
  And cast his Spectre into the Lake.
        --William Blake, from Jerusalem
  =============================================================================