"All the world's a stage" and Agency... a Paradox?

Seeking the approval of the other is not to be confused with love of the other or the selflessness of satisfying the other. To love another you simply just have to love the other. It shouldn’t matter whether this person reciprocates the love. To seek the approval of this person is therefore the effort to satisfy one’s own ego.

When we appropriate the interests, the values, and the actions of the other, we divest ourselves of our own unique selfhood. In doing this we surrender our own agency as a uniquely thinking, feeling, and doing individual and assume those of someone else. We do this with the expectation of earning the approval of the person(s) from whom we’ve derived our sense of self: the other’s identity becomes our identity. In our sloth, our intellectual laziness, we see this as a sure and easy way to be accepted, acknowledged, liked, loved, etc. It is most definitely an easier way than loving, which is an investment that entails risk, effort, sacrifice, generosity, and possibly pain.

Therefore, seeking the approval of this other is not an act of love or even admiration. It is an act of aggression. It is aggressive because a) as explained above, there is no love involved in this modus operandi, b) you are presenting and inauthentic self to this other person, and c) when this mode fails to bring you ultimate satisfaction, you will have someone to blame for it. By surrendering your agency, you surrender responsibility for yourself and the other person.

The irony is that if this mode successfully yields satisfaction for you, you will not responsible for it. It will be a success in spite of you. However, if this mode fails to yield satisfaction to all parties involved, it will be because of you. You will be responsible for the failure. This is because each of us has our own particular role to play in this life. This is what Shakespeare has meant by his “all the world’s a stage” aphorism. We each have a part to play in humanity shared endeavour to make this world a better place, to make paradise possible for us all.

Upon thinking of my friends

When our dreams our deferred, we become disappointed, withdrawn, and despondent. When our dreams are deferred by those whom we love most, those with whom we share our lives, our despondence turns to resentment and anger. Anger, like love, can never be idle, isolated, unshared. And anger, like a hunter, ravenously preys on others to feed itself.

It hurts me to observe unexpressed anger between a husband and wife, especially when the husband and wife happen to be friends of mine. This is what inspires this post today.

If there’s anyone in the world – a single person – who we expect to help us in pursuing our dreams, it is our life partner. When we depend on this person’s love, we expect love for one’s self and everything that comes from one’s self. Our dreams are Us. They are what inform our truest selves. Our best selves. The selves we are meant to be.

We tend take for granted the person we know, the person we think we know. But this other person is an organic being, who not only grows and transforms physically, but also intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. We don’t meet our partners when they have achieved their best selves, when they are fully realized because, for one thing, finally meeting and falling in love with you is part of their process of self-actualization. Popular psychotherapy might suggest you do find this fully idealized self. Popular psychotherapy, whether in the form of a Cosmo article or the trained professional in front of you, reminds you to seek out those who present the symbols of full self-actualization – or symbols of what has been summarily dubbed ‘success’ – like the car, the job, the mortgage. But when we reduce a potential mate to these symbols we also undermine humanity and human potential, the potential for greatness.

Therefore, if this person to whom you’re married is ever transformative, you are too. We are by nature ever growing, ever evolving toward our best selves. Nothing in Nature is without purpose. How can a sunflower seed have any more destiny for beauty, i.e. greatness, than humans have? How can a tomato plant have a more determined purpose than we do? I’m reminded of that moment in Fellini’s La Strada, when she looks at the little pebble and acknowledges that it has a purpose on this Earth. She doesn’t know if the pebble has already or is yet to serve its purpose on the planet it shares with her, but she revels in the notion that it does have one. How can it have any more purpose than you, or I, or that jerk who failed to hold the elevator for us?

Why “destiny”? What does it matter? Who needs it? This is perhaps why: we don’t need to wait for The Afterlife to live in Paradise. Eternity is now. This is it. We can realize Heaven here. It is a Heaven where we live in harmony within ourselves and with out ourselves among others.

It’s in taking our husband or wife for granted and taking for granted our ‘knowledge’ of him or her that we stunt them. Our purpose as husband and as wife is to foster our partner’s growth, not to mention the growth of any offspring. This is our purpose within the context of this world we’ve created with our partners.

Now that you’ve acknowledged your partner’s dream, do yourself the same favour.