David McElroy

I can tell you how to fix yourself. I can even tell you what’s wrong with the world around us. But please don’t ask me to fix myself.

We’re all held prisoner by something. I didn’t understand this for most of my life. I was blind to the chains that have held me — and most people are blind to whatever is holding them prisoner, too.

Most of us aren’t held behind bars. It’s not iron locks or chains that hold us. We’re held captive by invisible things in our minds and hearts. False beliefs. Self-limitations. Fears. Confusion about what we really need in life. And we’re mostly blind to those limitations. We see how other people are held back. We notice how our friends self-destruct. We even think we understand how the world needs to change.

But most of us are blind to all the ways in which we’re locked up tight in chains of our own. And even though some of us finally see our chains — and know we need to change — it’s easier to try to fix others. Or change the world.

So we hide our problems as well as we can — even from ourselves — and we lecture others about how they ought to fix themselves. I‘m really good at that.

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I wonder whether I disappoint other people as much as they disappoint me.

I really don’t know. Maybe I would be unhappy if I knew the truth about that. Maybe I wouldn’t want to know. All I know is that I keep being disappointed in people I’d like to trust. And I don’t know whether that’s their fault or my own.

I grew up feeling disappointed in most people. It wasn’t their intelligence or their abilities that disappointed me. I could deal with those sorts of things. I was disappointed — and hurt — by people’s values. And especially when they didn’t live up to their values.

When I was about 11 or 12, the pastor at our church was having an affair with my next door neighbor’s wife. My sisters and I played with that couple’s daughter and we spent a lot of time in their house. The mom sometimes drove us to school. I figured out — long before it was public — what was really going on. And even though I was young, I felt disappointed in both the pastor and my neighbor.

Tonight, a woman disappointed me for another reason. Part of me is hurt, but another part is numb. Maybe I have no one to blame, though. Maybe I should know by now not to trust people.

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The dreams of my youth are all dead. One by one, they slipped away until I’d lost everything I once thought was important.

I wanted power and glory. I was completely certain that I would become president of the United States. There was surely some ego involved. And a desire to prove my self-worth. But I wanted to do great things. I really wanted to lead the people. I wanted to show the way to our Promised Land.

I wanted success and wealth. I had a passionate desire to build a newspaper empire. In the days of my youth, newspapers were still the most serious of the news media. The most respected. They were also wildly profitable. I wanted to build the biggest newspaper company in the country.

There were others, but those were my two dominating dreams. They meant everything to me. And yet they slowly died. I’ve talked with you before about some of the reasons why. I held onto them for as long as I could. Longer than I should have, really.

But I understand now. No matter how much we want something — or even someone — the time comes when holding on to a dead dream stops us from accepting something better.

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