You Mean it’s Not All About Me?

The catch­phrase “It’s not about me” has become quite pop­u­lar in our cur­rent world today. What does that phrase mean to you in your per­sonal life? Explain.

But it is all about me!

That’s what I jok­ingly tell my boss, any­way. She is extremely busy and pulled in many dif­fer­ent direc­tions, so it is not unusual for a few days to pass dur­ing which we don’t inter­act except, per­haps, via email. We some­times pass each other in the hall­way and I’ll remind her that I am wait­ing for an answer or direc­tion about a par­tic­u­lar issue. She promises to meet with or email me and, even­tu­ally, we sit down and talk about all pend­ing issues. We have a run­ning joke about her avail­abil­ity, though. When we finally meet, I always remind her that she is for­get­ting the most impor­tant rule in our work­place: “It is all about me, you know. You keep for­get­ting that! Me, me, me, me, me! You are sup­posed to pay atten­tion to me! All of that other stuff is unim­por­tant in rela­tion­ship to me!” She laughs, gives me a faux apol­ogy, and then we move on to business.

It is human nature to give pri­or­ity to our own needs, wants, desires, prob­lems, goals, and, most impor­tantly, feel­ings. In fact, it is what Amer­i­can pop cul­ture urges us to do.

I will never for­get the day that I heard Whit­ney Houston’s hit record­ing, “The Great­est Love of All,” for the first time. In the realm of for­eign rela­tions, it would be called an iso­la­tion­ist pol­icy. I call it “The Atheist’s Anthem.” Con­sider the lyrics:

Everybody’s search­ing for a hero
Peo­ple need some­one to look up to
I never found any­one who ful­filled my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I learned to depend on me

I found the great­est love of all
Inside of me
The great­est love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learn­ing to love your­self
It is the great­est love of all

Jesus’ instruc­tions on deal­ing with our fel­low human beings was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally direct and unequiv­o­cal. We’ve all heard the verse count­less times: “Love your neigh­bor as your­self.” The Mes­sage, my favorite Bib­li­cal trans­la­tion, relates his teach­ing this way:

“You’re famil­iar with the old writ­ten law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwrit­ten com­pan­ion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m chal­leng­ing that. I’m telling you to love your ene­mies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When some­one gives you a hard time, respond with the ener­gies of prayer, for then you are work­ing out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to every­one, regard­less: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lov­able, do you expect a bonus? Any­body can do that. If you sim­ply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sin­ner does that.

“In a word, what I’m say­ing is, Grow up. You’re king­dom sub­jects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created iden­tity. Live gen­er­ously and gra­ciously toward oth­ers, the way God lives toward you.”

Matthew 5:43–48

“The Great­est Love of All” is described elo­quently, but con­cisely, right there in the book of Matthew: We are to love our ene­mies by giv­ing them the best we have to offer. We are not com­manded to live lives of iso­la­tion, focused upon our­selves. Rather, we are to reach out to our com­mu­ni­ties with “ener­gies of prayer” — isn’t that a great phrase? — liv­ing “gen­er­ously and gra­ciously toward oth­ers.” We are to put our energy not into achiev­ing what we want, acquir­ing what we need, bring­ing glory and recog­ni­tion to our achieve­ments. Rather, we are to focus the spot­light upon others.

That we are to reach out to and inter­act with oth­ers in a tan­gi­ble way, rather than just pas­sively prayer for them from a dis­tance, is con­firmed by his expla­na­tion. It is not enough to sim­ply love the unlov­able from afar, as it made clear by his chal­lenge. I believe that to fully under­stand the pas­sage cited, the last two sen­tences must be read within the over­ar­ch­ing con­text of Christianity.

How does the Divine Cre­ator “live[] toward you?” By reach­ing out and extend­ing the gift of grace — uncon­di­tional, unde­served, unyield­ing, unwa­ver­ing love exem­pli­fied by for­give­ness and eter­nal life. Our “God-created iden­tity” is the fact that we were not only formed in the image of the Divine Cre­ator, but has been res­cued from death not through our own action or inher­ent wor­thi­ness, but through love.

So we can only live out our lives as “king­dom sub­jects” by mir­ror­ing that behav­ior in our own daily lives through our inter­ac­tions with oth­ers. That means that “The Great­est Love of All” is not achieved by “learn­ing to love your­self.” On the con­trary, it is achieved by learn­ing to love our neigh­bors — just as Jesus instructed — and exhibit­ing the same kind of uncon­di­tional, unde­served, unyield­ing, unwa­ver­ing love to them that the Divine Cre­ator has gra­ciously bestowed upon us. It means that when there is a choice to be made because not everyone’s needs can be met, we put the needs of oth­ers ahead of our own. We make sure that those around us are taken care of before we turn our atten­tion to our­selves. It means that, like Jesus, we sac­ri­fice and sub­or­di­nate our own ego to assure that oth­ers achieve their goals and receive recog­ni­tion for their accomplishments.

Did some­one tell you that it would be easy? If so, they lied. The song­writer is wrong. It’s not hard to learn to love your­self. That’s human nature. That’s the temp­ta­tion to which we suc­cumb reg­u­larly with­out even real­iz­ing we are doing it.

So, as it turns out, “it’s not about me” at all.

Back to my rela­tion­ship with my boss. “It’s all about me” is a run­ning joke between us because I try very hard not to demand her time and atten­tion. I pre­fer to just work qui­etly and unob­tru­sively, off the radar of those whose names appear above mine on the orga­ni­za­tional chart. I strive to resolve all issues at the low­est pos­si­ble level — mine — and not ele­vate them to her unless it becomes absolutely nec­es­sary. Even when forced to do so, I gen­er­ally apol­o­gize pro­fusely for doing so because I appre­ci­ate that, like me, she will never check off that last item on her “to do” list. So I am loathe to be respon­si­ble for one more item being appended to that list that will require her time and energy. Hav­ing been a super­vi­sor in sev­eral dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions and job clas­si­fi­ca­tions, I under­stand the chal­lenges she faces. For that rea­son, I have cho­sen to reduce the stress in my life by not pur­su­ing a place on the man­age­ment team and am happy with that decision.

That’s one exam­ple of what the phrase “it’s all about me” means in my per­sonal life. What does it mean in yours?

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