Approval.

I wrote this on my birthday, reconsidered, and held it back, in concern that it might be read as an ungrateful and ungracious swipe at birthday greetings and other kindness.

Enough days have passed, so here goes…

A brief exchange with a colleague, about how one deals with inchoate and uninformed hostility disguised as literary criticism, followed by reading a quote that I’ve read every October 7th for twenty eight years, brought the following to mind.

I started my day that morning as I have every day since exactly eight days after January 25th 1992, by reading today’s meditation from a book entitled TOUCHSTONES—DAILY MEDITATIONS FOR MEN.

It’s the same copy, now so well worn that the cover, title and illustration are reduced to unreadable and unidentifiable blurs, as eroded and desiccated by the years as I am.

It’s worth noting that everything went swimmingly through those months of that first year, until I got to my forty second birthday, and read that day’s meditation, to whit…

“If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn’t like me, I’ve got to get out.”

Marlon Brando.

On that day, I freaked out at the prescience in this quotation and its line of thought, as if I’d had my deepest self bared for the world to see.  In that moment, I couldn’t agree more with this statement, and the fact that this was shared with Marlon Brando didn’t remove the sting, the near shameful discomfort, of this recognition.

I had lived my entire life up to that time by the code expressed so perfectly in Brando’s quote, and at that point, this sensibility still informed my every thought, if not my every action.

In regard to those actions, it’s worth noting that I never actually did anything to encourage anyone to like me, let alone love me.  I was disloyal, unfaithful, insulting and often boorishly, unapologetically snide.

The unstated but implicit self-loathing in Brando’s quote, as it acted itself out in my life and behavior, made me diffidently hostile, casually cruel and often insufferable—with a healthy dose of narcissistic self pity to make a perfect souffle of unworthiness.

It was a year or two later, in the course of a heated discussion in the context of this spiritual fellowship, a conversation wherein I was a listener, not a participant, that the concept of self esteem was laid on the table for consideration.

To reiterate, I didn’t contribute to this spirited exchange of views. I was new enough in this spiritual fellowship to have my opinions regarded with jaundiced disdain, and smart enough to know and accept that full well, and thus shut the fuck up.

The Alpha in the conversation was a guy I didn’t know well, and whose name I have long forgotten.  What I do recall is he seemed to have a contrarian nature, which, to be sure, was counter to many if not most of the tenets of that fellowship. 

For me, contrarianism was and remains a plus, whether or not that contrariness confirms my own bias or contradicts it.  I admire critical thinking and value it over critical theory in every way, shape and form.

In this particular case, I had no particular thoughts in regard to self esteem, so I was open to the consideration of an opinion I might not share.  He said, and this is pretty close to a quote, “Self esteem isn’t a feeling separate in itself. It is the appropriate reaction to estimable acts.”

This all might sound obvious to you, but for me this opened a line of thought that had an impact on the way I lived, both personally and professionally, and on much of the work I did on myself, as cliché as that might sound, for nearly a decade.

It took what felt at the time like forever, but after that first decade, over the ensuing years as I read that meditation on my birthday, I began to feel an emotional adjustment in my reaction to my annual rediscovery of that quotation.  That adjustment wasn’t simply the result of the tincture of time, but derived from a slow and patient, and to be honest, occasionally painful, adjustment of attitude.

To put it simply, in order to cease to regard myself as a piece of shit the world revolved around, I took active measures and pains to become a better person.

I can’t say when the paradigm shift took place, but it did, long years ago to be sure.  That said, when I read that quotation this morning, I felt what has become a now familiar whiff of once a year nostalgia, and an equally familiar pang, not so much of regret, but of an annual reminder of who I once was and am no longer.

Whereas I once, like Marlon Brando, might have very well been disturbed by the disapproval of one in two hundred, I have now come to see the irrelevance of both that disapproval and the approval, too. 

Of course, it’s lovely to be liked, but to be honest, both responses, approval and disapproval, are equally freighted with and complicated by so much baggage, so many issues, so many preconceptions borne by the responder, and frequently nothing to do with me in the first place.

It’s one thing to find myself comfortable enough in my own skin to handle the dislike, the disdain, the distaste of others.  It’s an entirely other matter, and a profoundly liberating mindset to be sure, to recognize the gradual shift into a position of neutrality in regard to the approval, and yes, the acceptance of me, as a person, as a man, as a creative worker.

I’ve often said, and please, believe me, always facetiously, that I’m willing to mistake attention for affection.

It's humbling, without a whiff of humiliation, to state unequivocally that, outside of family, and a small circle of friends—and you know who you are—I am securely unmoved by both.  

I live a life of accountability to that family and those friends, and working to satisfy my own standards, even at seventy, is a far more satisfying experience than I ever could have imagined was available to me, or even, to be sure, that I would ever deserve.

And finally, there’s another quote, this from an ordinary day in January, that has served as a prime directive for much of my last nearly three decades, and as a bookend to that Brando quote.

“I should be content to look at a mountain for what it is and not as a comment on my life.”

David Ignatow.

Trust me on this.

As ever, I remain,

Howard Victor Chaykin-a Prince—but hardly by birth.