I Was Just Thinking RECYCLING GARBAGE
	OCTOBER 2005

by Don Huntington, Editor In Chief

A totally secure man ... knows how to take the garbage he was dealt in life and recycle it into energy. (Larry Titus)

When I first read today’s quote I was struck with a truth that I had never recognized before. I realized that the reason the “garbage” I was “dealt in life” formerly had power to harm me was precisely because I was insecure in my own feelings about myself. I’m finally growing up and becoming one of the mature human beings — with both feet planted firmly on the earth — who does not have to live according to the bad “scripts” and lousy messages that we all receive throughout our lives.

Children are taught to feed off other’s estimations as a way of finding and maintaining their status in life. No lesson is ever taught in public schools, I think, more thoroughly than the idea that it is important what other people think about you. Are you a nerd, jock, big man on campus, wimp, cool dude, cheerleader, brain, slut, zero...?

The reputation that a teenager develops in school will often determine the amount of anguish that will be experienced or the amount of vanity that must one day be dealt with. Dr. Eileen Norton, an East County Psychologist, says that some of us, in effect, carry our fellow students around with us for decades as we continually replay their ill-spoken energy-sapping opinions.

But why should the evaluations of other students concerning our personal worth matter one way or another? I was in a high school student graduating class of over 300 people. Their opinions of me have made no outward difference in my life whatsoever. I can’t imagine why their attitudes toward me ever made a difference. What they thought about me never helped me with my GPA. Their opinions never made me any money nor lost me any. Nor did my reputation at school make the slightest bit of difference to my family or to my friends.

Before our thinking processes are fully developed (no matter our physical age), both negative and positive opinions can drag us down. The messages all of us have heard since we were young, whether we are popular or unpopular, can enter our souls and keep us from developing as fully functional human beings. The power of such messages derives from our delusion that the content is real and that others’ opinions are important.

Some people think I’m a stupid person. But what should that mean to me? Does that mean that, therefore, I’m a bad human being? Others think I’m brilliant (or at least they say they do). What does that mean? Does my supposed brilliance mean I’m a good person?

I might buy into the message, for example, that I am mentally slow and, therefore, my lack of intelligence makes me a person who should not be valued, which can make me weak and joyless. Equally damaging is the message that if I am smart then having intelligence makes me, somehow, a valuable person. Accepting such a message can create an arrogant haughty spirit that will have the effect of actually turning me towards actually becoming a worthless human being.

The great burden of reacting to other people’s opinions robs us of our freedom and diminishes us as human beings every time we accept them. The people in the world who are most free are those lucky individuals who don’t care a bit about their reputation in other people’s eyes. Most people — young and old alike — are ill equipped to experience that freedom.

Dr. Norton insists that we can take control of these inner voices. We can train ourselves to ignore internal communications that drag us down. We can create within ourselves a chorus of voices supplying positive messages that actually build up our spirits and encourage us to engage in those pursuits that positively impact our own lives and the lives of those around us.

Dr. Seuss hit the nail right on the head when he wrote, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” How wonderful it is to actually live like that! I’m certainly willing to consider other people’s opinions of me, but I’m absolutely unwilling to be defined by them.

And there’s another inescapable reality about this matter: not until I can perform a deed of service with absolutely no regard for what recipients will think of me as the giver, am I really free to do good to them as an act of genuine love.

That’s the most important thing of all!