Global Ratings of Self

  When we rate ourselves in terms of our achievements, we are identifying something that is solid, without realizing that each moment is changing. Such an idea is so pervasive that it tends to tire us out! Deep down, we are comparing who we feel we are in this moment to a kind of false social ideal that is static and forever unchanging. I believe this kind of self-rating happens not only in the world of career but also in social situations, where we try to live up to our very own personal expectations of what a "worthy" person is supposed to be and be like. Life becomes a kind of strenuous tension between what we feel in the moment and the moral code of the ideal person we strive to be. I believe that the book Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse dramatizes this interesting tension.

    What if, instead of viewing these as opposites, we could see that both the immediate feeling and the social ideal are one of many possibilities that simply do not remain from moment to moment. By relaxing the requirements that one possibility prevail over the others, we allow the wolf and the human to co-exist--to both have an equal claim and legitimacy in the ecosystem of the psyche. This requires that we give up this desire to globally rate ourselves in terms of being "all good" or "all bad", when in fact all these possibilities are only seeds.  This radical honesty forces us to accept that we are not all "one person" and can be a mixture of many different tendencies, even unwholesome ones. But true "wholesomeness" is simply to know that they are all empty of a self-existence that endures over time. 

   I neither indulge the wolf nor indulge the angelic, but I see they are both equally valid potentials that can co-exist within if we allow them to do so and give them all the necessary room and space to flourish in "rooms of their own". This avoids all the binary confrontations that we needlessly impose or construct for ourselves.