"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.

"Ego-love" (not to be confused with love-of-self)

When someone loves their ego, they are unable to truly love anyone else. For this person self-interest will always trump the best interests of others. This is a learned tendency. The ego has learned to feed itself in times of starvation. In other words, when this person was unable to feel the love of others – particularly very significant people in her younger years – she has learned to compensate for this lack by loving herself above others. All the energy of her love had become self-directed, and she continues to move through life in this mode.

The one’s who have gone through life loving their ego most become the most difficult for others to love. The love of ego is a very durable condition. But there is a cure, an antidote to the durable ego, and it’s to shower this person with a love like they’ve never known before, one that is endless and without conditions. To love the ego-lover in this way can be an exercise in frustration, pain, and discouragement. Therefore it requires the loving one to be as ego-free as he can possibly muster. The ego-lover is the last person we should give up on – they are the reason why love and lovers exist. It is not love if we’re doing it for what we get out of it. It is meant to be given. Also, the condition of ego-love is highly contagious and must be extinguished wherever we find it.

Restore to them their naturally divine ability to love by being an example of it. Restore their faith in love and humanity.

More on 'sloth'

In an earlier post I dubbed mental laziness 'sloth'. Here are more thoughts on sloth.

Some of this mental laziness comes from the refusal to grow up. The refusal to grow up entails the resistance to learning new things, things about life, about how the world works. It comes from hubris and the feeling that one knows all that’s worthwhile knowing.

Sometimes this refusal to change, to grow up, to evolve, is borne out of the feeling that one’s identity was rejected or deemed ‘not good enough’ by someone else. In her defiance to these feelings of rejection, she becomes determined to be her self unwaveringly. She assumes the credo, “I gotta be me. Come what may, I gotta be me.” But this sense of her self is limited to how she sees herself in that moment when she has decided to stay firm in her selfhood. Therefore, she effectively ‘freezes’ herself in time. The totality of the self that she had come to know at, say, the age of 21, remains the same self she insists on knowing into her chronological 30s, 40s, and beyond.

It is fear therefore that has made her lazy. It’s paradoxical: on one hand she is firm – exerts force – in holding onto this identity; on the other hand, she has been weakened by the fear of being rejected or disappointed again. As a result she has limited herself to the point of self-debilitation for to learn is to feed oneself.

To “be me”, to be one’s authentic self, is also to be mutable. To relish the wonder of Life as a young person would is to be open, hopeful, curious. Contrary to what this person believes, to define herself according to a finite array of tastes, interests, and notions is a disservice to her self. It is the failure to honour her organic nature. And this failure to honour her natural, evolving self, is grounded in the ego, which, by the way, is not endemic to humanity; it is earthly.

Ultimately, this frozen identity eventually becomes angry, frustrated that her limited point-of-view and, therefore, limited understanding, has fallen short of leading her to a place of self-satisfaction. To add insult to injury: she’s angry and dissatisfied and she can’t understand why. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.