THE NATURE OF IDEAS
TO WHOM DO THEY BELONG?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 16, 2019
A friend sent me
the piece that follows, which is wrapped around the ideas I created in THE
TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996). My friend's piece has a religious flavor that my
writing attempts to avoid, but the integrity of the piece otherwise is quite
consistent with my views.
“Honey,” I
said to my wife, BB, in frustration, “he is a world famous author in which his books or those
he has ghost written have sold in the millions. Why couldn’t he give the source
of his piece and me a little plug who is relatively unknown by mentioning my name?”
BB came
around the computer and placed her arm around my shoulder, “Jim, don’t you realize you set
yourself up for being taken for granted?”
“But I
copyright all my material as I publish,” I responded weakly and apologetically.
“Yes, you
do," she admitted, "but how much do you think that changes the course of the wind?”
“Little.”
“No, the answer is zero,
nada, not a mite.”
“When I’m
gone, you’ll not allow that to happen, am I right?”
“You better
believe it, buster!” She said as she left me with
a smile on her face.
MY FRIEND WROTE:
Fair-Weather
Friends
Who really cares about you and me?
As delightful, mostly fair fall
weather continues today, I am reminded of the interview in Utah Valley Magazine with popular singer-songwriter David Archuleta. Here I quote parts of
it:
In the
industry you are told to get a good body and then to go shirtless. The darker
and edgier you are, the more you appeal to both guys and girls. People who are
part of your tribe like to test you. They say, “Are you still part of us? Do
you really belong? Because you are also in this other tribe now.” When you are
in the limelight, people feel that they have a right to judge you. They expect you
to be perfect. But I have struggles, and if I have a dip or make a mistake it’s
like I let people down. But are those people holding themselves to those same
standards?
Before I went to LA, a couple of
brothers and their dad invited me to go back packing in the Unitas. There I
talked to God, and He basically said, “Stay close to me. Be honest. Be good. Be
kind.” He didn’t say, “Sing this song. Win people over.” It was simply, “Pray
and read scripture every morning. Do the things that will help you have the Spirit.”
So I read scripture every morning
for 15 minutes. I need something to keep me steady. God is consistent when
everybody and everything else isn’t.”
People are always judging you, telling
you what kind of person to be. You’re introduced to a cut-throat industry where
you think people are your friends. Suddenly
they aren’t. This includes people in the industry but also your friends and
family. They think they need to humble you, so they start saying you aren’t
that great. And I’m thinking, “I don’t need that from you right now. I need comfort
and support.” It’s an amazing experience, but it’s also very isolating and
lonely.
My dad was the one who stood up for
me when I was tempted to be a ‘yes’ man. He didn’t care what the Idol people
thought of him, so he would tell them I wasn’t going to sing certain songs.
When you have convictions you annoy people, but you also get respect. My dad
would say, “David, have you listened to those lyrics?” And I would say, “Dad, it’s
fine. I don’t want to get on their bad side once again. They already hate you,
Dad. Don’t mess things up.” And he would say, “David, those lyrics aren’t who
you are.” At times I was annoyed with my dad, and he can be intense. But he saved
me. My dad cared what I stood for. Now I want to make more room in this
industry for people who want to stay true to who they are.”
In this interview, David reveals
that he had many false friends, fair-weather friends, but only a few true
friends—a couple of brothers and their dad, his dad, ultimately God, and eventually
himself, as he learned to be his own best friend.
Be
your Own Best Friend
One of my best friends wrote and
sent me this today about being our own best friends:
We are all authors of our own life story, heroes of our own novels. Our life is sacred, unique, scripted high drama, played out before an audience of one, with but one actor on stage.
Since American society cannot accept deviation from its arbitrary norm, it must be the individual who is wrong. The individual is meant to feel self-contempt for being out of step with the expected. The only safe haven is to be your own best friend by asking: How do I feel about myself, not as I am supposed to be, but as I am? How comfortable am I in my own skin? Am I in control of my own Life? Is my day from sun up to sundown an attempt to please others because that is what is expected of me? Or do I go against the grain and assert myself as I am? Do I take the risks that ensure my integrity, my authenticity? Or do I play it safe and accept self-hating as my inevitable baggage? My challenge is not to keep my freedom but to win it by realizing the human person within myself, by being my own best friend.
Often, we do to our children what has been done to us. We put a monkey on their backs that was put on ours. We create the same self-doubt in them that was created in us. We blame ourselves while growing up by second-guessing what we should and should not do, spending little time to understand why we desired what we actually did. It is a monkey circus we play on ourselves. Like a spinning top, our life can spin out of control and come to rest exactly where it started without interruption or insight, denying us the freedom to experience life to the fullest. Or we can become obsessively concerned with always looking over our shoulders to see if someone is watching or chasing us—more interested in success than in living, more interested in what other people consider important than what we enjoy. People can take the clothes off your back, the roof over your head, the food off your table, the money in your pocket, but they can’t take away what you put between your ears. All any man needs to live is a place to throw his hat, a roof over his head, three meals a day, and the rest is gravy. If you’re into gravy, and measure who you are by how much gravy you have, you’ll never stop running because you’ll never have enough.
The hardest thing is to like ourselves. We hear a lot about self-love and how damaging it can be, but we never hear much about liking ourselves as we are (self-acceptance). This is not accepting ourselves as we should be, but as we are, not as others choose to see us, but as we see ourselves, not in arbitrary standards such as success and failure, but as our own best friend. To have a friend you must be a friend, starting with yourself. As we come to our journey’s end we must realize we come in alone and leave alone, and that the portrait we paint can be either like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray or it can be an honest reflection of a life well lived.
Summer Soldier and Sunshine Patriot?
In thinking about fair-weather friends, I’m reminded of what Thomas Paine said regarding the American Revolution: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange if so celestial an article as Freedom (and true friends) should not be highly rated.”
Since American society cannot accept deviation from its arbitrary norm, it must be the individual who is wrong. The individual is meant to feel self-contempt for being out of step with the expected. The only safe haven is to be your own best friend by asking: How do I feel about myself, not as I am supposed to be, but as I am? How comfortable am I in my own skin? Am I in control of my own Life? Is my day from sun up to sundown an attempt to please others because that is what is expected of me? Or do I go against the grain and assert myself as I am? Do I take the risks that ensure my integrity, my authenticity? Or do I play it safe and accept self-hating as my inevitable baggage? My challenge is not to keep my freedom but to win it by realizing the human person within myself, by being my own best friend.
Often, we do to our children what has been done to us. We put a monkey on their backs that was put on ours. We create the same self-doubt in them that was created in us. We blame ourselves while growing up by second-guessing what we should and should not do, spending little time to understand why we desired what we actually did. It is a monkey circus we play on ourselves. Like a spinning top, our life can spin out of control and come to rest exactly where it started without interruption or insight, denying us the freedom to experience life to the fullest. Or we can become obsessively concerned with always looking over our shoulders to see if someone is watching or chasing us—more interested in success than in living, more interested in what other people consider important than what we enjoy. People can take the clothes off your back, the roof over your head, the food off your table, the money in your pocket, but they can’t take away what you put between your ears. All any man needs to live is a place to throw his hat, a roof over his head, three meals a day, and the rest is gravy. If you’re into gravy, and measure who you are by how much gravy you have, you’ll never stop running because you’ll never have enough.
The hardest thing is to like ourselves. We hear a lot about self-love and how damaging it can be, but we never hear much about liking ourselves as we are (self-acceptance). This is not accepting ourselves as we should be, but as we are, not as others choose to see us, but as we see ourselves, not in arbitrary standards such as success and failure, but as our own best friend. To have a friend you must be a friend, starting with yourself. As we come to our journey’s end we must realize we come in alone and leave alone, and that the portrait we paint can be either like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray or it can be an honest reflection of a life well lived.
Summer Soldier and Sunshine Patriot?
In thinking about fair-weather friends, I’m reminded of what Thomas Paine said regarding the American Revolution: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange if so celestial an article as Freedom (and true friends) should not be highly rated.”
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