Overcoming Insecurity
by Dr. Ron McDonald
Speech given to Christ UMC, July 2006, and Civitan Club, Oct. 2006
Why are we insecure? As a pastoral counselor I have learned from my counselees that insecurity is the result of a poor emotional foundation. Insecure people have often been robbed of part of their childhood by abuse, poverty, insensitivity, unrealistic expectations, and confusing punishment. Much of my life’s work has been helping people overcome insecurity and replace it with confidence and happiness.
Insecurity has become more than an individual’s problem during my career. Now it is also a social problem. Curiously, despite our escalating standard of living, our emergence as the world’s great superpower, our stable and vibrant democratic government, our incredible wealth producing market economy, we show signs of mass insecurity. It appears that the bigger we become and the more competitive we behave, the more insecure we are.
To combat this we focus on growth, military might, and winning. Big, powerful winners offer the antidote to insecurity, we think.
In my experience, though, they don’t. The devotion to growth conveys a basic dissatisfaction with what we have. Our military might and fanaticism’s hatred of it actually have made us more defensive than ever. And those who do everything they can to win find themselves isolated and lonely. These are not solutions to the problem of insecurity.
Insecurity is overcome through people connecting in genuine and loving ways, and the key to this healing is found in community life.
My concerns with our culture of insecurity led me to write the The Spirituality of Community Life: When We Come ‘Round Right (Haworth Press, 2006), in which I lift up many experiences with communities that transform lives. These are not groups or institutions, though. They are small gatherings of people who share a common creative activity and become true friends. They become a community. They cross the bridge from a group that fights together, tries to be bigger or better than others, or strives for wealth or power to a community that holds one another up to higher standards, offers genuine support and encouragement, and develops friends who will last a lifetime.
Communities make us better people. They make us happy. They make our lives simpler and inwardly richer. In communities we lose our fear, we become more interested in sacrifice than protection, we find security.
Where are these communities? Some are sports teams, some academic classes, small churches or religious classes, recreational groups, professional guilds. They are everywhere, and they have three common unique characteristics: (1) they are small, (2) they aren’t fighting enemies, and (3) participants are open and accepting of one another.
In the South we see people flocking to large organizations that have found enemies, political or social, to attack, as if that will make people feel better. We see people bending rules to win, seeking golden opportunities for themselves or their children to become rich. We see people living large, as if bigger is better. But these are, I assert, pseudo-solutions to our unhappiness and insecurity.
The true solution is found in the simplicity of smallness, in competing with friends, not against foes, and a willingness to listen to differing views, accept diversity, and the willingness to be sacrificial, not protective of self, lifestyle, and defensive about one’s beliefs. These are the characteristics of community life.
We call our cities and towns and large corporations or worship centers communities, but they are not. They are cultural gatherings where commerce, art, and recreation meet. The cultural richness of Memphis as a musical, sport, recreational, and market center is vital to our happiness, but the real strength of any cultural center is its community life. It is the small, mission-oriented groups of friends who find happiness with one another and lift one another up to greatness. It is not a group, though, that fights enemies or is against someone or something, but one that appreciates dialog and differences. A true community is a peacemaking body. They are the root of any city’s security.
Oftentimes we fail to recognize the communities we are part of. We think of them as “just friends,” and because we don’t realize how life-giving they are, we don’t hold onto them enough. No matter how young or old you are, though, if you are part of a true community, recognize it, claim it, name it, celebrate it, for it will continue to give you life as long as it survives.
The essence of how to find happiness and security is not through largeness or opulence, but in the simple, small life of community.
There is an old story of a king who had an unhappy son “that he thought the world of. But this prince was always unhappy. He would spend days on end at his window staring into space.
“What on earth do you lack?” asked the king. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I, myself, don’t even know, Father.”
The king tried in every way imaginable to cheer him up, but theaters, balls, concerts, and singing were all useless, as well as the many gifts he showered him with.
Day by day the rosy hue drained from the prince’s face, until, as often happens with those who are unhappy, the prince became ill. The sicker he grew, the unhappier he became, which made him sicker and unhappier. It became clear to the king that his son would die of unhappiness.
The king issued a decree, and from every corner of the earth came the most learned philosophers, doctors, and professors. The king showed them the prince and asked for their advice. The wise men withdrew to think, then returned to the king. “Majesty, we have given the matter close thought. Here’s what you must do. Find a truly happy person, a person who is happy through and through, and exchange your son’s shirt for his. This will make your son happy and he will live.”
That same day the king sent ambassadors to all parts of the world in search of a happy person.
A priest was taken to the king. “Are you happy?” asked the king.
“Yes, indeed, Majesty.”
“Fine. How would you like to be my bishop?”
“Oh, Majesty, if only it were so!”
“Away with you! Get out of my sight! I’m seeking a person who is happy just as he is, not one who is trying to better his lot.”
Thus the search resumed, and before long a banker was brought before the king who claimed that he was truly happy.
“Good,” said the king, “Then how would you like to be Treasurer of my kingdom and live in the splendor of my palace.?”
The man’s eyes bugged out and he nodded, “I would, indeed!”
“Away with you! You, too, are not truly happy, for you are not happy with what you have.”
Many others were brought before the king, but upon being offered wealth or power, one of which each person desired, the king would send them away.
Meanwhile, the prince grew sicker and sicker.
Exasperated, the king himself went searching for a truly happy person. Alas, he was no more successful than his ambassadors.
Late one day as the king was sadly walking back to the palace after another unsuccessful day of searching for a truly happy person, he heard someone whistling in the woods beside the road. Saying to himself, “Let me try one more person today,” he left the road for the woods and soon found a young man dressed in a jacket and pants tending his garden beside a simple shack.
“Good afternoon, Majesty,” said the youth with a smile.
“Bless you!” replied the king. Then he asked, “Young man, are you happy?”
“Certainly.”
“Are you truly happy?”
“I suppose I am.”
“Then would you like to tend the palace garden and live in the palace with me?”
“Thank you, Majesty, I will do so if you ask, but I prefer to stay here and tend this garden. I greatly enjoy watching it get better each year.”
“Well, I appreciate that, but would you like to oversee all the lands of my kingdom?”
“I will at your bidding, Majesty, but I much prefer my simple life. I think perhaps someone else would serve you better than I.”
“Then you are a truly happy person, for you are content with what you have!
“Listen, young man. Will you do me a favor?”
“With all my heart, Majesty, if I can?”
The king, unable to contain his joy any longer, ran to the young man and began unbuttoning his jacket. All of a sudden the king’s arms fell to his side, and he slumped to the ground, for the young man had no shirt on.
“Where is your shirt?” asked the king, in shock.
“I gave it away. I met a man who had no shirt, and since I have this jacket, I gave him my shirt.”
“But I needed that shirt,” replied the king in despair. “My son needed that shirt.”
The king sat upon the ground in silence for a few moments, then he looked up at the youth with a look of revelation. He stood up, took the youth’s hand and said, “Thank you, young man. I know what to do now.”
With a spring in his step and a smile on his face, the king walked back to the palace, into his son’s room, and said, “Son, I have something for you.”
His son rolled weakly over to face his father, who was unbuttoning his own shirt. The king took the shirt off his son’s back, replaced it with his own, which made his son smile for the first time in years.
From that point on his son was happy, got well, and lived a long, happy life” (from my book on community life).
Though a story as profound as this one speaks for itself, I need to tell you the story behind the story. I first read this story in a book of Italian folktales, but the story ended with the king discovering the young man had no shirt on. Having read it just before bedtime, I went to sleep disappointed in the despairing ending. I awoke the next morning with the story still on my mind, but in my dreams I had rewritten the ending, for I had seen in my unconscious eye the king’s resolution to give of his own self, to take the shirt off his own back just as the young man had done. He had realized—I had realized in my sleep—that true happiness comes from connecting vulnerably—a kind of sincere nakedness, not saving others with power, size, or wealth. He found the answer in connection with others, within the quest for and embrace of community. This is what community teaches us. This is why communities offer the right way to overcome our insecurities.