The Fear of Rejection (Scaling Mt. Acceptance)

            Rejection is a hard pill to swallow.  And to the soul of a human being that craves attention and approval nearly as much as food, it's a hard lesson in life that everyone is set to experience at some point or another.

            There are different kinds of rejections.  I’m sure everybody wanted to be part of the cool crowd at some point.  If you didn’t, then you were probably already there.  The rest of us, though, had to put up with the constant feeling of inadequacy that comes with being tragically un-hip.  Sometimes if we’re lucky the cool crowd ends up liking something that is universally frowned upon two decades later.  So when I’m old, maybe I’ll have the pleasure of looking at pictures of you from back in the yesteryears when you dressed like a fool following silly cultural trends.  Maybe I’ll get lucky that way; maybe I won’t.

            But then there’s the personal rejection, when it’s not a crowd of people that collectively heap their dismissal on us, but just the one.  For some reason I haven’t yet figured out, that one person’s rebuff can be more painful than all the cool crowds in the world.  I think maybe it’s the more intimate nature of the situation.  It’s not a hive mind of people who adhere to a shrine of social and commercial trendiness that rejects you – it’s just that one person.  One person that rejects you and everything you are.  It sends us a message that we aren’t good enough.  That something’s wrong.  But many times, I don’t think that’s the reason at all.

When we feel ourselves coming under even the hint of attack or rejection, there are two common reactions, and they typically follow in this order: the knee-jerk defensive, which is to immediately throw up our guards at whatever slanderous attacks we observe (or make up) approaching our way.  We aren’t the problem; they are. And then there’s the pity-stop, which occurs when we halt our universe at the stroke of a negative word to sufficiently weep for our perceived inadequacies.  Oh, Woe is me!

            Defending is, among the two responses to criticism, often the first to appear.  Nobody likes to feel attacked, and so we curl up into a little ball to shut out the world.  Or worse: we go on the offensive and attempt to paint a target on our so-called assailants.  Rejection breeds contempt.  Contempt breeds anger.  Anger breeds revenge.  And in the end, everyone turns out miserable.  Sound like fun?  It’s not, but we still participate anyway.

            The pity-stop is probably the most common temperament in people.  It’s also the quietest.  So quiet, in fact, that we may not even know it’s there.  It sits deep inside a hollow part of our soul and ferments.  Everything we do, and everything we don’t do, becomes judged against this invisible standard that has been set beyond what we can obtain by an ever-growing pile of rejections.  What we wear, what we do, and what we are becomes a mold we change in order to fit an ever-changing caricature.  We all try to climb Mt. Acceptance.  The select few that do are champions, it seems.  Standing so close to the sun causes rays of celestial light to shine down and envelop the champions in luminescent, attractive beams.  The rest of us are stuck chilling at the bottom, cold, rather lonely, and dejected at our failure to reach the golden zenith, as well as at our new found inferiority to those at the peak.  We’d give anything to be the champions.  If just for one moment.  We’d like to experience that popularity, but when we don’t reach the top, we lapse into depression and dejection over the mental roadblock that we just aren’t good enough to be there.

            But you are good enough.  At least, to the eyes of those who matter.  It took me years to realize this, but there’s not much point in conforming to the cool crowd.  In certain extremes, yes, you do need to conform.  Walking without clothes on will provide you with little to no influence on society (and at most, scant news coverage).  But the years we spend trying to be cool are wasted.  The social status we work so hard to achieve is based on an image that dissipates the second someone finds a crack in it.  Why have we, as a people, turned each other into a society of smoke and mirrors?

            It is not only rejection, but the fear of rejection that holds us back in immeasurable ways.  Sometimes it’s the fear of being embarrassed.  The queasy thought that we’ll do something and be degraded for our stupidity.  Sometimes it’s an obsessive want for social acceptance.  Attention is everything.  Other times it’s conflicting emotions with the opposite gender.  Whatever the reason, when I’m in public, I always feel like I’m partially enclosed in a fence.  Certain areas of me want to step outside my invisible boundaries, but ta-ta, that could encompass the risk of committing one of the aforementioned activates (embarrassment, stupidity, nonconformity) which would make me *gasp* a social dissenter!

            Note that by the term “social dissenter” I am not referring to robbing a bank, committing murder, or a host of other things that our legal system frowns upon (as should you).  I’m talking about the pressure to conform to a certain set of values, activities, or false pretenses in an effort to achieve likability.  Those who are social dissenters do not fall for this pressure.  But unfortunately, most of us do.  It’s not that we don’t try. A lot of times we want to be “ourself”, but quickly decide that “ourself” isn’t quite earning us appropriate popularity or acceptance.  So we change ourself to meet the wants of others. 

            Yet I don’t want to live for the wants of others.  I want to live as who I am.  I want to be my own identity, not a caricature.  I don’t want to be cool.  I don’t want to be in the cool crowd.  I just want to be myself.       

            But sometimes people don’t want myself.  And in that case, when the sting of rejection comes to remind me of my failings, how do I handle it?

            Shrug it off.  Insofar that I can tell, that’s the only way to sufficiently cope.  It’s necessary to come to terms with the fact that, hey, we’re going to acquire some hate over our lifetime.  People will come and go, and several will find flaws and weaknesses in you and pick them out, many times out of the selfish need for an ego-boost.  But ignore the slings and arrows.  You are who you are.  There’s always room for improvement, but the measure for it should be weighed against your own standards, not someone else’s.

As far as changing who I am to fit the cool crowd, I don’t much care to live as a fake.  Nor do I have much patience for those that do.  I’m tired of climbing Mount Acceptance when all there is at the top is a congratulatory message saying:

“Congratulations!  Everyone now likes you for who you’re not."

            We’ll all experience the fear of rejection throughout our lives.  Fittingly enough, we’ll also experience rejection.  But in the end, I think it’s a good thing.  Surely there’s an importance for being liked for who you are.  But I find the issue of handling yourself with those who don’t all the more significant for personal growth.

        “To be, or not to be: that is the question:

        Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

        The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

        Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

        And by opposing end them?”

        --William Shakespeare, in Hamlet (Act III, Scene I)