Telling others how to escape is easier than setting myself free

By David McElroy · December 6, 2020

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.

I grew up with an inflated view of myself. I’ve told you before that I genuinely believed I was going to save the world. I say that with shame and humility today, because I now know how badly broken I was. I suspect there was a part of myself — even then — that knew I was broken and was afraid to face it.

I suspect that focusing on how to fix everything else was a great distraction from fixing all the things that had gone wrong in my mental programming as I grew up in a dysfunctional family. It certainly wasn’t conscious, but I do know that the more I see what’s wrong with me, the more I want to find outer success — because outward success somehow justifies me when I feel my most broken.

Even today — when I’ve spent so many years learning about my broken places and seeing the ways in which I need to change myself — it’s easy to slip into focusing on what’s wrong with everybody else. Like a scared child, I feel less shame when something inside me can point an accusing finger at others and I can triumphantly whisper to myself, “See? They’re worse than I am.”

It’s not that I’m wrong when I see things in others. It’s not that I’m lying to myself when I see what’s broken in the world. The real issue is that I’m focusing on those issue — at least a lot of the time — to avoid dealing with my own brokenness.

I really do see what’s wrong with you. Some of you, anyway. The closer I am to you — and the more dearly I love you, paradoxically — the more painfully obvious it is to me how you’re hurting yourself and how you need to change.

I can see what’s wrong with the communities that I’m a part of. I can see clearly the communities that I’d like to create in order to be a part of.

I can see what’s wrong with this dying culture and this broken world.

And I see what’s wrong with me, too. I’m painfully aware. I want to fix myself. I want to get past my limiting beliefs and my fears and my misguided narcissistic programming. I see all that, now more than ever.

But I struggle with fixing myself, so I tell you how to change yourself instead. I’m afraid about my painfully slow efforts to change myself. I fear I’ll fail in my efforts to become who I’m supposed to be. So I hide behind trying to change the world instead.

The truth is that it’s harder to rule myself than it would be to rule the world.

I’d like to help you change yourself, especially those who I love. I’d like to build more loving and vibrant communities. I’d love to change my part of the world. But I know I can’t do any of that as long as I’m in denial about myself.

Somehow, you and I have to work together for change — but I can’t be an effective part of that unless I’m focusing first and foremost on fixing all that’s still wrong with me. Then maybe we can all learn how to set ourselves free.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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