What Other People Think of Me Is None of My Business

Hi everybody! Welcome to The Woodlands Podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. Everyone can read this post. Paid subscribers can listen to the audio.

Each Wednesday during the Season of Lent, we’ll be listening together to the Psalms as Wisdom Literature. To put it simply, Wisdom Literature offers us guidance about how to live a meaningful life. Today’s text is Psalm 31:9–16. First, I’ll read the Psalm, then I’ll turn to a brief reflection on a portion of the passage.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Psalm 31:9–16

9 Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; *
my eye is consumed with sorrow,
and also my throat and my belly.

10 For my life is wasted with grief,
and my years with sighing; *
my strength fails me because of affliction,
and my bones are consumed.

11 I have become a reproach to all my enemies and even to my neighbors,
a dismay to those of my acquaintance; *
when they see me in the street they avoid me.

12 I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; *
I am as useless as a broken pot.

13 For I have heard the whispering of the crowd;
fear is all around; *
they put their heads together against me;
they plot to take my life.

14 But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. *
I have said, "You are my God.

15 My times are in your hand; *
rescue me from the hand of my enemies,
and from those who persecute me.

16 Make your face to shine upon your servant, *
and in your loving-kindness save me."

We’ll be reflecting on this passage: “Make your face to shine upon your servant, and in your loving-kindness save me." (Psalm 31:16)

If you dedicate your life to pursuing happiness, you’ll never be happy. This may seem like a contradiction to you. But prophets and theologians, philosophers and priests have been saying it for ages. Recently I heard a story that reminded me just how true their words have been.

Flying home from a business trip, a friend of mine overheard a conversation from the seats directly behind him. A man said something like, “My life is over. I’m nobody. I’m completely irrelevant.” The theme continued for much of the flight, despite a woman’s voice repeatedly offering reassurance that this simply wasn’t so.

As the plane emptied out, my friend got a glimpse of his fellow passenger. It was a seasoned, widely respected, high-level political appointee. As a result of a recent election, his current position would be coming to an end.

My friend was stunned by the man’s reaction. He hadn’t merely lost a job. The kind of job that a person with his credentials and connections could quickly get again. His sense of self-worth seemed to have been utterly shattered.

As I listened to my friend tell this story, my heart went out to this unnamed guy. You see, I think I may understand where he was coming from.

Like many people, I had once interpreted the pursuit of happiness as a challenge to transform myself into somebody worthy of other people’s respect and affection. If I failed, I wasn’t just a loser. I was a contemptible nobody.

To make matters worse, I was starting from what I perceived to be a significant deficit. We were working class. My divorced single mother was a grocery cashier who lived with her parents. She and my grandparents were immigrants with sketchy English skills. What I would learn years later is that no level of achievement would free me from the shame that repeatedly threatened to overtake me.

Some people dream of becoming billionaires or presidents, rock stars, big-time athletes, or media celebrities. They strive to accumulate the wealth, wield the power, or win the admiration that will finally bring their soul to rest. Until then, life is a ceaseless striving to be something we aren’t yet. To arrive. The problem is that you never really arrive so long as you believe that being lovable is something to strive for and achieve:

• Even when you’re a billionaire, there’s somebody with a few billion more.

• You can’t be everybody’s favorite president or always draw the big- gest crowds, and eventually you’ll be out of office anyway.

• All sports records get surpassed.

• Even the most popular television shows are at the mercy of the current season’s ratings.

If you spend your life trying to ensure your significance and assure yourself of your own worth through your accomplishments, the feeling of self-worth will always elude you. You will become addicted to striving, fear being found out as a fraud, resent being unappreciated, and continue to strike out at others to soothe your own misery. I think Jesus was getting at something like this when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). I take “poor in spirit” to mean that we are able to see an achievement-based sense of self-worth for the illusion that is.

Somebody poor in spirit can write because writing is what you seem made to do. Publishing, getting good reviews, making the best-seller lists is beside the point. People poor in spirit don’t write, construct buildings, assume public office, or throw a ball to make themselves somebody. They lose themselves in something they seem to have been made to do. They don’t need to compete or compare themselves to others. They don’t spend enough time in front of the mirror to indulge in self-loathing. They shed a false and probably toxic image of themselves in order to become their true selves. They change their mind about themselves. And some of them do so by changing their mind about who God is. God is the one who loves because that’s who God is. They are God’s beloved—God’s blessed—no matter what.