Outside Messages
We all began in our mother’s arms — cared for, loved, tended to, and made to feel as if we were the center of the universe. As children, we experienced what it feels to be wanted, needed, and cherished; we were loved, cared for, admired, and appreciated. This builds the youngster’s self-esteem and self-confidence.
As one enters the outside world, attending elementary school and high school, the outside competition of life begins. You receive messages of what “excellence” and “achievement” look like. Messages of who’s cool and what’s in. You register “new” messages of who’s wanted, needed, cherished, loved, admired, and appreciated.
This new outside world is your environment and its social arena. These fields are infiltrated with their outside value systems of who and what is worthy of honor and prestige, and messages of who’s really “made it” in life.
These messages leave a person doubting himself, as he seeks to align himself with the new outside standard of success. Slowly, the push toward outside success develops within him.
Pressure to get there builds, looming over him as he’s left asking himself: “Will I ever get there?” This moves him away from his innate gifts of shleimus that he was born with , and he’s caught outside of himself, experiencing lacking…
He begins to wonder: “Am I a piece of good news?”
Each individual is made up differently, with unique talents and strengths. It is quite difficult to shine them forth to the world as a teenager, before one gains the awareness needed to actually discover and develop them as a young adult.
This can cause a person to move outside of himself and his innate gifts, exerting himself above and beyond his nature, pushing himself to press forcefully on the accelerator, pedaling harder to work faster — all in pursuit of his POGN (Piece of Good News).
The bombardment of today’s post-technology world of social media has everyone constantly updating their posts, likes, and profile pictures, generating a fabricated self-image along with the applause it receives. The constant flow of compliments only serves to accentuate one’s own personal lacking, breeding further discomfort.
Those words begin to ring even louder: “AM I A PIECE OF GOOD NEWS?”
It’s more than a question or quandary. It’s a quest that continues on throughout a person’s lifetime, consciously or — most often — subconsciously; one asks himself that question time and time again. This quest subtly amps up one’s speed to a state of urgency, racing toward some outside destination of: “Then and When,” bypassing the “Here and Now,” neglecting his wellbeing and the areas of life that are truly most important to the real him.
