HOW DO YOU DEFINE YOURSELF? HOWEVER YOU DO IT IS THE CAGE IN WHICH YOU LIVE!

HOW DO YOU DEFINE YOURSELF? HOWEVER YOU DO IT IS THE CAGE IN WHICH YOU LIVE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 8, 2009

“The features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they might leave on it durable impressions.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), Swiss philosopher

There was a commercial on the television program I was watching, and so I did what I always do, one of two things, hit the pause button or surf the channels. On this occasion, I surfed the channels and landed on a program about celebrity facial and body reconstruction, something I addressed in THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996).

What a decade and a half ago was a small cottage industry has gained mass-market appeal, often ending in botched jobs or even death. The celebrities profiled often looked far better before the modifications than after, Kenny Rogers for one. He had the works – facial reconstruction and tummy tuck and lipo suction – only to look like another person, perhaps of oriental descent. Then there was a woman, not a celebrity but apparently terribly rich, who had spent some $4 million on plastic surgery only to look like a reincarnation of Frankenstein as “cat woman.”

It was sad to see, but indicated in this skin-deep superficial superfluous society in which we all live, we find it incredibly difficult to define ourselves.

Early on, growing up in primarily a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) community, my mother made me aware that I was an Irish Roman Catholic exaggerating the accomplishments of my lineage while outlining what she expected of me.

We were working class poor, but I had an uncle who escaped both being poor and being poorly educated earning double Ph.D.’s in economics and psychology, while my da only went through the seventh grade, and suffered mightily economically and socially for it as he never had a regular job, although he worked for many years on the railroad.

My mother used my uncle to define a working model and mentor for me and then systematically encouraged me, should I falter to stand fast in this pursuit. I was a good student of her direction.

When I was not yet nine, going to the movies with friends from my neighborhood, there were movie theatres next door to each other, one was showing an Abbot & Costello comedy, the other a historical drama. My friends wanted to see the comedy. I wanted to see the historical drama. They went to it and I went, alone, to the movie I preferred. They saw me as a spoilsport, but I was unknowingly defining myself.

Later that same fall, my da took me to a popular clothing and sports store, and attempted to buy me school clothes for the school year. The clerk was a boyhood acquaintance and they jibber jabbered for several minutes, then my da picked out a large assortment of clothing, put it on the counter, and said, “charge this.”

The acquaintance looked at my da askant, and said he’d have to check our credit. He returned and said he could only accept cash. Crestfallen, my da lost his composure as if stabbed by a knife and grabbed the counter for support. It was apparently too much going from camaraderie to embarrassment. From somewhere within, I found myself saying, “Thank you, sir, but I didn’t want these things anyway.” I took my da’s hand and walked him out of the store.

A boy nine-yet-nine didn’t know he was defining himself, but he was. I had help. Four Christmases before, that same father of mine had had the courage to sit me down, a little boy, and say, “Times are a little tough, Jimmy. We couldn’t afford any Christmas presents for you, but we got your little sister a doll. We want you to know we love you and we would have gotten you many things but we just couldn’t afford it.”

Having been a father, and now a grandfather, I have never come close to equaling that brave and wise act so many years ago. With all my education, I’ve never equaled his candor or humanity.

My da allowed society to define him, but in the sacred confines of his home and family, he defined his with love. The result has been that I’ve never cared too much for material possessions other than books, and that is a legacy of my mother, who was a reader herself, made me a reader, another aspect of help with self-definition.

That boy not yet nine, however, went to school and lied about what he received for Christmas as everyone else was bragging about what they had received. I mention this because there were still holes in his self-definition.

After I retired the first time in my thirties, and was at the hospital to pick up my wife who worked in the emergency room, a young good looking flamboyant doctor, who thought he owned the world, saw me, and said, “Hey you, here’s twenty bucks, get us some burgers, fries and cokes!” The shift was being extended and he assumed I had nothing better to do so he made the demand.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah So what?”

“Well, I’m not your servant. Get your own goddamn burgers!”

He looked at me, and walked away. It wasn’t the most diplomatic way of handling it, but it was defining myself. If he had asked in another way, chances are I still wouldn’t have done his bidding. I have never had trouble saying “no.” Ask my children.

In defining yourself, you have to ask the question: who is it more important to be content with: others or yourself?

Now, if it is others, well, you’ll want to be seen as this nice guy, but nice guy to whom or for whom? It has never been important for me to be liked, but it has been important for me to be respected. Without being respected, how can we have self-respect, and self-respect is nothing short of self-acceptance, which is another way of saying, “I like myself.” I would venture not one of these celebrities doing all this plastic surgery likes or accept themselves as they are. The mirror is more real to them than they are to the mirror.

For the past nearly twenty years, I have been almost exclusively a writer. I have never made much money as a writer whereas I made a good living as a consultant and corporate executive.

Since I have no boss, or a definitive schedule with due dates to send panic through my bones, people think I am available at any time to do anything.

Well, I should say that was once the case. No longer. I’ve made it clear that I am even less available and accessible as a writer. Writing is far more demanding, far more arduous and far more exhausting than anything else I have ever done before.

So, why do you do it? Because I have defined myself as a writer since a young person, and have worked to this stage when I finally am able to be one. It is also the most rewarding experience I have ever enjoyed.

I could bore you with scores of instances in my life in which I have been challenged to define myself, and I must say, happily so, I’ve not let myself down. I will die having lived the life I defined for myself to live, and thank God and country, and my gene pool for allowing that to be so.

In my book THE TABOO, I said all this and more as the book deals with the adverse affects of our social, cultural and psychological conditioning, which makes us self-estranged. It is one of the ironies of our times that we are obsessed with celebrities while celebrities are obsessed with pleasing us at the expense of being disingenuous to their own needs.

The unhappiest people I’ve known could be called “beautiful people.” I am speaking of men as well as women. They are afraid of not looking as good as we expect them to look, not as good as they would expect to look for themselves.

You see, this is the key to defining ourselves. We all live in cages. We are all captives of our own minds. Nearly all of us, and that may seem an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is, are captives to someone else’s agenda with a card carrying victim mentality. Now, we rationalize why we are in this particular cage, as if we have or have had no other options, but it makes no difference. It is we, not someone else who placed limits on ourselves. These limits become the authority by which we live.

Ask and answer the question:

Who put you in the cage you are now in? You did. We all do. We all live in the cages we self-construct around how we define ourselves as being.

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