Since I’ve lost status I once had, it’s a shock to see I want it back

By David McElroy · October 14, 2020

I’ve never worried about my status in the world. I was always so confident about myself that I never tried to make people like me and I never worried about where I fit in a hierarchy.

Some people liked me. Some people didn’t like me. I had friends. Some hated me. But everybody knew where I fit wherever I was.

As a child, I was the leader of the groups I ran with, but I never really thought about it. In school, I had high status in classrooms because I was typically the new “smartest kid in class” when I moved to a new town. I was acknowledged as a leader.

In high school, I won top leadership positions in the things I cared about, at school and church. I wasn’t the most popular kid, but I was the one you wanted in charge to get things done. On my early jobs, I had quick status. I was the youngest managing editor of a daily newspaper in the country at 21. I was younger than all the people I managed.

When I owned small companies in my 20s, that gave me a certain status. I was seen as someone who was going somewhere. I was starting companies that I didn’t realize I was too young to start. I could tell that some people were really impressed. (And I did like that.)

When I went back to work for another newspaper company, I had status when the company sent me to one city as a general manager and then to the next as publisher. Inside the company, I was the one who people whispered about after I completed the three-year publisher training program in about nine months.

Even in politics, I had a certain status. Among Republicans in Alabama — back when I still moved in mainstream political circles — I was one of only a couple o people who successfully did what I did. If you wanted to run for the Legislature in the state — and if you could afford the best — you had to talk with me. I made sure my prices were the highest. If people complained about the prices, I let them know I didn’t mind if I didn’t get the work.

This might sound crazy, but I never realized for all those years that I had privileged status in all of those positions. I simply found it natural to be in charge. I found it natural to give orders. I found it natural for people to need me more than I needed them.

I never realized that I was giving that up when I left politics. I thought I would slide right into something else and go back to being successful, but the last eight or nine years have been a nightmare instead. And I’m honestly not sure why.

Now that I’ve given up all that long legacy of holding high status in whatever hierarchy I joined, I’ve finally realized that I’m miserable without it. I’m lost without it.

I’ve realized for a long time that there was something wrong which I couldn’t put my finger on. But it was hard for me to figure it out since I’d never been conscious of wanting or needing status before. As soon as I put the two together, it became painfully clear what’s going on — and why I feel so out of place.

I don’t fit where I am right now. I don’t fit what I’m doing. Nothing about my current life is right. I miss the feeling that I’m in control. And I miss the feeling of having a privileged position of status and respect. The more I think about that, the more it awakens old desires to fight and to win, in ways I don’t quite understand.

Have you ever felt as though you were born in the wrong era?

I was born in a civilized era — and deep down, I don’t feel like a civilized man. I feel like a barbarian instead. There’s a part of me that wishes he had been born when men still killed and plotted and found glory by being heroes and protectors. When men could still take over territories and become a king.

I’ve learned to smile and be nice, but inside, I’m not a very agreeable person. I don’t like most people. I don’t think much of them. And the truth is that I wish I had a way to openly compete with them — and dominate them and gain control.

All of that is out of place in the 21st century.

It’s the age of cooperating and getting along. In my heart, I don’t want to get along. I want to win and dominate. Even if there’s no power or money or fame involved, I love the raw exhilaration of winning — of knowing I’ve defeated someone.

That’s what I found most exciting about politics. Yes, I have philosophical objections to the system now and I rarely respected anybody around me even then, but when I won an election for a client, I felt like a warrior who had just defeated another king and cut his head off.

It wasn’t just the money for me. I wanted blood.

I feel off course today because I don’t know how to channel this anger and aggression. I don’t know the rational path back to something that makes sense for me — something that would allow me to do the things I need to do, but regain the feelings of high status and respect that I once had. I want to feel like a winner again.

This has all been percolating in me for the last couple of months. I’ve been slowly putting together the pieces of it. That’s why this probably sounds more like a stream-of-consciousness collection of thoughts than what I might normally write.

I don’t know what I need to do about this.

I’ve known for a long time that something needed to change, but I thought it mostly had to do with finding a way back to making more income and doing work I cared about. I see now that those things do matter, but the key is regaining self-respect — and regaining the feeling that I’m at the top of whatever hierarchy I choose to be a part of.

If you had asked me in the past, I would have said that I didn’t care about status. I would have said I was above such concerns. I see now that the only reason I was above such concerns is that I already had enough status to feel great about myself.

Of course I didn’t care what other people thought of me. Of course I didn’t care about jockeying for status in their social circles. I already had the status that my ego and my heart needed. I had status. I had self-respect. As a result, I had the confidence to ignore other people’s petty desire for status.

I don’t want to play those stupid status games. I don’t want to be like those people who tried hard to climb the hierarchy. Those games are for losers.

I need to once again find the right place, the place where I can be so competent and so respected that everybody will look up to me — and I can once again have the status and respect that I didn’t even realize I’d lost.

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Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

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