Real Self-esteem and Where it Comes From/The Best Thing You Can Do in High School.

Well, it’s not Sunday, but I feel a homily coming on and that’s okay – I have long suspected that ministers often write their sermons on Saturday afternoons anyway.  And as long as I've opened with a religious reference, I’ll mention the Episcopal School of Dallas’s victory in the boys varsity quad at the Texas State Championships – a barnburner of a championship win over crosstown rival St. Mark’s, along with the rest of the field – four-tenths of a second, give or take – and well-done, gentlemen and Coach Naifeh.    Not that the sectarian affiliation makes the achievement even an iota more virtuous.  But that’s not the topic, the news was just the catalyst for the post, because it got me thinking about why high school is valuable, and which of the many experiences we have during that period of our lives are of great and lasting importance.  Too many high school upperclassmen are in far too big a hurry to get on with it and be done with high school because everyone knows that real life for the comfortably well-off among us starts during the September of our eighteenth year , when we go off to college and our parents aren’t nosing around any more, trying to keep us from staying up late, drinking too much and too often, and all the other stuff that’s ten times harder to plan while we’re in high school.  Umm – okay, so that’s not real life except to the mind of someone who has never had to pay all of his own bills, but it’s the growth of the adolescent mind into an adult mind that this post is eventually going to be about anyway.

So let’s stay on the task of exploring ill-formed attitudes and their pitfalls, and of moving in the direction of better mindsets and their desirability.  And since I’m not going to shy away from a homily today, let’s start with Christianity and its most common misuse.  The idea of forgiveness by a loving god seems to be what brings most people to Christianity.  We hear that we are promised forgiveness, and forgiveness, apparently, is easy: all you have to do is repent.  For the spiritually lazy person, the doctrine of Christianity becomes “I can do anything I want because I'm already forgiven.”  Try telling someone who’s attached to that idea that real Christianity is harder than that and you’ll most likely get a blank look and maybe the conversational equivalent of a chorus of "Jesus Loves Me."  Believing you're forgiven is easy;  actually loving god and neighbor is frustratingly hard.  And as a result, many if not most of us conveniently ignore the part that requires work and just choose to reside in a seductive but false notion of grace instead.  I promise that I’ll get back to high school in a minute – stay with me. 

Over the past thirty years or so, the self-esteem movement has become a quasi-religion unto itself.   A couple of generations of parents now have been suckered into a wrong-headed perversion of what is basically a good idea in much the same way that for a couple of millennia many if not most Christians have missed the real essence of Christianity because it’s just bloody hard to put into practice.   Those who can do it are rare and precious.  In the same way that “you are forgiven” becomes the mantra of the lazy Christian, “you are special” assumes that role for the lazy parent, teacher, and child, but here’s the catch: nobody but the most delusional Pollyanna really believes it, least of all the kid, and so we send too many people off to college ill-prepared to do much beyond taking a four-year desultory fling with their parents’ money, and they emerge four or more years later not all that much better educated than they'd have been in high school if they hadn't been slathered with empty "you are special" plaudits right up until graduation.  

 The truth is that real self-esteeem comes from learning to do a difficult thing well and then having tangible proof that you’ve done so.  And getting to that point in one or more pursuits is the most valuable thing that a young man or young woman can accomplish in high school.   And that’s what is so valuable about scholastic crew.  And the ESD varsity boys quad got a taste of that earlier today.  Again – well-done, fellas.  Take it with you and accomplish even bigger things down the road.