Rejection is a very memorable experience that infiltrates the soul with corrosive impact. When I was quite young, I got a baseball glove for Christmas. When springtime rolled around, I went to the ballfield for Little League tryouts. I guess I thought Little League would be a place where I could learn to play baseball.
I was rejected. I was not good enough. This rejection was not like forming teams on the playground and being the last person chosen. This rejection was by adults who did not want me, for whom I was not good enough.
Rejections like this do not scar us for life though they still reside clearly in our memories. Some rejections, however, are far more pernicious. In the animal kingdom, a mother giraffe may reject her newborn if she senses that there is something wrong, some abnormality. If the newborn giraffe happens to be in a zoo, it will survive; not so much in the wild.
Sometimes the same dynamic is found in the human kingdom. Newborns can and are rejected by mothers and fathers for a host of reasons in a myriad of circumstances. In an earlier day, the alarmingly high numbers of deaths in orphanages may, in part, be due to the destructive impact of rejection, real or imagined, on the fragile psyches of infants and children.
Everybody cannot win a gold medal at the Olympics. Everyone is not a superstar, a “brainiac” or a prodigy. Everyone, however, can and should be comfortable in their own skin. It is well known that growing into healthy adulthood requires an awareness that we are good enough, just the way we are.
Our intrinsic goodness does not depend on what we are able to do but on who we are. Self-acceptance and true self-respect are not automatic gifts or accomplishments. They are often the result of hard work, growing self-knowledge and many failures. Failures, in fact, probably contribute more to healthy growth than successes do.
At the heart and core of self-acceptance is self-love. Unlike the narcissism that we see around us today, self-love is knowing we are lovable, that we are good enough without any need to prove our worthiness to be a human being.
Beyond anything else, this is a spiritual realization. Healthy Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists come to this revelation by different roads but all share its fruits in unconditional self-acceptance.
Major rejections, however, both real and imagined, are painful things. Their wounds are deep and profound. They breed anger and resentment. These, in turn, breed more rejection and feed a vicious cycle. Like a subterranean fire, they lay hidden but continue to burn and seem to never go out.
When some people were described as “deplorables” in the 2016 presidential campaign, more than a few people took this as a direct insult to them. Deplored by whom? Deplored by the wealthy, the privileged, the educated? Deplored by the very people who are perceived to be responsible for their rejection. Being deplored is being rejected — being told that you are not good enough. Whether real or imagined, this fuels some of the anger that is so much a part of our 21st-century political landscape.
The political divides that infect our nation today may have many and varied causes. How did we get this way? The common thread seems to be anger. Adversaries have become enemies. Political opponents have become fair game with racist and incendiary language.
Negative campaigning has become an exercise in demonizing one’s opponent and civility has gone out the window. For the benefit of our collective future and the future of our democracy, it is beyond time to figure out what has gone wrong and how we fix it. Diagnosing some of the origins of the anger that surrounds us is a good place to begin.
Besides recognizing the roots of our discontents, it is vitally important to acknowledge we all have a role to play. The old adage that one is either part of the solution or part of the problem is very true. Because we are what we eat, a steady diet of a single food is not healthy.
Similarly, because we make judgments based on what we read and hear, an inquisitive palate is worth cultivating. If all we listen to and watch confirms our opinions and prejudices, we are doomed to be part of the problem.
Sound bites are OK if all that is needed is a weather report. For everything else, there is no substitute for thoughtful, non-ideological expositions of complex issues.
The world we live in is not black and white. It is gray. Living in an “either or world” only breeds more rejection and discontent. The “both and world” is a far more comfortable place because it is inclusive, non-judgmental and real.
Msgr. Paul Garrity is a recently retired pastor of the Archdiocese of Boston. He can be reached at [email protected]
