If it ever happens that you turn outward to want to please another, certainly you have lost your plan of life—Epictetus (c 50 CE-130 CE)
There is something quite right in what Epictetus claims. When you
become too much of a people pleaser and too much of what you do aims at
currying the favor of others, you lose your direction in life. When
turning “outward to want to please another” becomes habitual, the
opinions of others matter more than your own opinion of yourself. More
to the point, you may not really have an opinion of yourself; you hold
others’ opinions as your own. You become a reflection of their views.
The problem with reflections is that they are always inaccurate; they
are distortions. Mirrors provide good examples and funhouse mirrors
the
most obvious because they have the greatest curves. A concave mirror
curves inward, making a reflection appear short and wide. A convex
mirror curves outward, stretching the image tall and thin. The greater
the curve, the greater the distortion. Convex mirrors are more likely to
be hung in fitting rooms at clothing stores, which explains why pieces
of clothing look so different once you get home where you most likely
have a plane or flat mirror. A plane mirror provides a more accurately
sized and proportioned image but it is backwards.
The persistent people pleaser internalizes these reflections and
takes them as accurate. It is hard to have a plan of life based on
funhouse mirrors. When you give others the power to chart your course by
influencing your opinion of yourself, you cede over a crucial dimension
of your autonomy. The danger is that most people do not realize they
are losing their autonomy; its loss can happen slowly over time choice
by choice. As the philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-1855) notes, “the
greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the
world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly;
any loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc—is sure to be
noticed.”
The challenge is noticing the loss when everyone—including you
yourself—is aiding and abetting that loss. You may catch glimpses that
are sporadic and fleeting but enable you to see the distortions as
distortions. Even for a brief moment, you may see both the possibility
and reality of being different from how other people view you. You
interrupt that quiet loss.
We do need to put some limits on Epictetus’s claim, however. As
social creatures who are both dependent on and interdependent with
others, pleasing others must play some role in our lives. The
difficulties are identifying the right sort of others whom we want or
ought to please and striking the balance between pleasing those others
but not ceding over too much authority over us.
We often make mistakes about the people whom we want to please; we
need to learn from them. Part of maturing is coming to recognize the moral
traits and values we want to embody. What we value at the age of 20
will be very different from what we value at 50, 75, and 95. The types
of people and relationships we have in our lives will change as well as
the Harvard Study of Adult Development (link is external) has been tracking for more than 75 years in a group of men and their families.
Striking the balance between wanting to please others and maintaining
our autonomy is difficult but unavoidable. As Montaigne (1533-1592)
astutely notes.......
Pleasing others and maintaining autonomy are natural and social
necessities; they enable us to navigate the world and relationships with
some success. To reject habitually one in favor of the other is to
undertake the kicking contest with the mule. In this contest, the object
being kicked is you. While you are busy kicking yourself, the mule is
kicking you too.
Afterword:
There are undeniable gender
dimensions to the balance of pleasing others and maintaining autonomy.
In a culture that expects women who are wives and mothers to always be
caring to the point of self-sacrificing, for example, there will be
consequences for those who chafe against these expectations. That many
women internalize them provides even more torment; they will be their
own judge and jury. This may only further the distortions and accelerate
the loss of self. The greater the imbalance, the harder it is to
recognize, never mind reset.
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