Madonna and Self-Worth
by Russ Masterson
“I have an iron will. And all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I’m always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and I think I’m mediocre and uninteresting and I find a way to get myself out of that again and again. My drive in life in life is the horrible fear of being mediocre. That’s always been pushing me, pushing me. Even though I’ve become somebody I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.” (Madonna, Vogue, 1990′s)
Being Somebody when you are somebody is easy.
But it’s also unstable because you have to maintain your somebody-ness.
What if you could be Somebody when you are a nobody. That’s freedom.We love recognition. We bask in the glory. Some recognition is nice, floods of it warps us, and we shouldn’t gleam our self-worth from it. The justification for our existence shouldn’t lie in achievement or recognition, because one day we will fail, then our self-worth will plummet. Depression will arrive. The fight to never fail is impossible, only exhaustion awaits that pursuit. We are left only to find our worth outside of ourselves.
This is the gospel: though I’m broken, though I’m small and love recognition too much, God still loves me through Christ!
Our validity is given, not earned. The love is given.
If you don’t know your important before you achieve you will become a slave to your achievement or the pursuit of it.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 . No CommentsShare on Facebook
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This is something I've been trying to really come to know over the last year and a half or so. My favorite part of Russ' post is this line:
"Our validity is given, not earned. The love is given."
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