Friday, April 27, 2007

Security, Identity, & Worth

Recently I had a public speaking engagement with a group of around 150+ people. As an application point, I shared some personal information which is rather important to me, and will have a long-term impact on those in the audience. As I shared the information, I was not necessarily expecting applause, nor was I expecting a flood of tears -- and that is fine because I got neither...

...but neither was I expecting what I did get:
an awkward pause and the sound of crickets.
At the moment, I chose not to let it distract me from my speaking engagement; chose to just let it go. Later that morning, after talking it through with a few key people in my life, I came to the conclusion there was a very good reason for the non-reaction. The audience was roughly divided into 4 groups of people:
  1. people who I told beforehand -- so they were not surprised.
  2. people who sort of expected it before I said it -- so they were not surprised either.
  3. people who need some time to respond -- so even if they were surprised, they did not react immediately.
  4. and
  5. people who don't really know me -- so they had no vested interest in the information.
This neatly explains the sound-of-crickets moment, but does not deal with my insecurity.

In the past, I might have used this (albeit well-rationalized) non-response as an excuse for having a pity-party and get all bummed out and self-focused thinking people don't care for me. In this case that didn't happen. I guess that means God has been answering my prayer that I would find my identity and security only in what He thinks of me.

So...yea!

And...why am I sharing this? Because it is cool, but also because it led me to some belly-deep laughter this afternoon as I reflected on it. And that is my main reason for this post! A friend & coach gave me this quote which started my laughter:
"We're always wondering
what people are thinking of us.

The truth is
they aren't."
Then I got to thinking how that quote would make a great poster for Despair.com, under the heading: INSECURITY. If you are not familiar with their products, &/or just need a good laugh, I suggest you follow the link in the image below and take a few minutes to look through their posters.Despair.com posters -- very very funny~ Keith

4 comments:

Emancipation of the Freed said...

I loved Dave Jacob’s quote and despair.com is a hoot, thanks for a good laugh.

Z

Unknown said...

love you man. If we were there, we'd have applauded...

even if it was awkward.

even if it meant we were the only ones.

Nadine said...

Despair.com is really funny - I had a good laugh reading through some of those.

Shadraq said...

Well said. I don't know your age, but I have been there myself. One day you'll awake and realize that you don't care what anyone thinks. I believe Solomon said, "I'm not after self-Esteem. I'm after God-Esteem"