“I am nobody; who are you? Are you a nobody too?” (Emily Dickenson)
Years ago when I had ended a taping for a television program, I was standing outside the elevator bank with the show’s producer, waiting to descend to the floor exit. I was approached by a waiter from the nearby restaurant. “Pardon me, sir, but there are several women who asked to speak with you.” Curious, yet a bit annoyed, I bid farewell to the producer and followed the waiter. I was young and prone to obedience then. Three middle-aged women stared at me. One smiled and asked my name. I told her, and she added, “Are you somebody?” “Pardon me?” I said politely. “Well, are you somebody famous?”
Such a question. “No, I’m nobody famous,” I said, rather than stare at her or just walk away. After sappy silly smiles all around, I returned to the elevator, descended and walked to my auto. As the queen would say, I was not amused. Groupies come in all ages and sizes.
When I had thought more about it, some of my favorite people make a career of losing themselves. Even if they had been some bodies in secular society, they enter monasteries and become male or female monastics. They spend the remaining years of their lives challenging the urge to be someone in the so-called “real world.” They suppress the need to be important in the world’s way because they are working on their salvation. Their chief obstacle is self. It’s never easy to do that. In childhood we are searching for role models. Humans have a herd instinct. We want to be liked and accepted by our peers. It’s important to make the team, find favor with teachers, coaches and schoolmates. We want to be picked in sports, choir, orchestra, squad or group…finally to realize that all our yearning for acceptance in the long run were not really all that important. What did it achieve? Whatever did it accomplish?
Jesus Christ tells us through the Holy Scriptures: If you want to find yourself, you must lose it; and if you lose yourself for My sake and the gospel’s, you will save it. It sounds in a way more Buddhist than Christian, a thought message difficult to understand meant to be pondered—but He meant it not as an enigma. He stated a spiritual fact. The need to “be somebody” afflicts all persons and at all ages—even monastics. For most of us the prayer of St. Ephraim is needed: “Give me not a spirit of lust for power….” The lust for power is in conflict with true humility. Especially in the modern society. St. Ephraim assumes that long ago we had conquered lust for sexual gratification, but the lust to be somebody is difficult to expel. For the monk it appears with the desire to be abbot, even bishop. When such germs of aspiration worm their way into one’s conscience, they nest there and motivate the sad soul. He becomes a victim of Satan, who was the initial paradigm of all who lust for supremacy over others. In Satan’s case, to become God.
Emily Dickenson was blest with the joy of satisfaction with her humble status in life, a Protestant version of a nun outside of a monastery, and without the benefit of having an abbess or spiritual guide. How blessed are all they like her who are liberated from the agony of wanting to be somebody important, but rather remain content to be “a nobody,” yet actually become the highest of all human beings, the friend of Jesus and child of the heavenly Father by the grace of the Holy Spirit.