David McElroy

I’ve never wanted to be popular. In fact, I’ve always been pretty prideful about going my own way and not trying to get people to like me. I saw it as some perverse badge of honor.

But I recently had a disturbing thought. What if I believed I never cared about popularity simply because I was afraid I couldn’t be what other people wanted? What if I told myself I didn’t care about being popular because I didn’t think I could do it?

I’m asking myself some difficult questions lately, not because I’m smart or wise, but because I’m desperate. I’m not happy with the results I’ve been getting in my life. After an early life that seemed to promise an easy ride to incredible success, I somehow got off track. I stumbled and humiliated myself.

I’m sick of not becoming the success everyone thought I would be. I’m sick of trying to force myself to accept lowered expectations. And I’m finally sick enough to ask myself what I’m doing wrong — and what it’s going to take to become the success I wanted to be.

I fear that might require me to care — for the first time in my life — about making myself popular. And that terrifies me more than I can explain.

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I never cared much for the late Rush Limbaugh. I didn’t know him in person, of course, so when I say that, I’m really saying that I didn’t like his performance persona.

I thought he was pompous and arrogant. He was overconfident and seemed to think he knew everything.

But I heard an interview Sunday with producer James Gordon — known on Limbaugh’s show as “Bo Snerdley” — that made me realize I hadn’t been evaluating a real person. Gordon worked with Limbaugh for three decades as a producer and call-screener — and he saw the man as something very different than the one on the radio.

Gordon described Limbaugh as humble and eager to help others. He told a story about Limbaugh giving him $5,000 early in their association, when Gordon was deeply in debt. The man he described sounded nothing like the bombastic personality that Limbaugh presented on the air.

And something clicked with me, maybe because it addressed something I’ve been wrestling with for myself. Limbaugh was playing a role for his audience. He was successful because of the public persona. He entertained his audience. In fact, I realized that he couldn’t have been the ultra-successful performer he was if he had shown his true self to the audience.

And that made me wonder — probably for the first time — whether someone performing for the public must play a role for the audience. Maybe he can’t be his real self.

Does this suggest that I need to play a role if I’m to be successful in the ways I’d like? Does it mean I need to invent a persona for myself — and save the “real” side of me for my family and friends?

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Most of us are better at talking about love than we are at actually loving. In this respect, I am chief among sinners.

Loving other people is a struggle. If it were easy, the world would be a very different place. But it’s not easy. And it’s even more difficult because our culture seems so eager to narrow the meaning of the word. A lot of people want it to apply to nothing more substantive than the shallow Hollywood version of love, which is little more than lust with some shiny new clothes.

Real love is much deeper than that, but I struggle to find words for it. I saw glimpses of the idea in many of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, but I didn’t take them seriously when I was young — because I didn’t see the Christians around me living out what the words meant.

For years, I unconsciously internalized the notion that God’s love — and especially this notion of us loving our enemies — was hokum that we talked about in Sunday school, but ignored for the rest of the week. Talking about love seemed like an empty ritual for “good people” — but it meant nothing to me in “real life.”

But something eventually changed me. You can call it love. You can call it God. Or Spirit. Or even “the Universe,” if you prefer. You can use whatever word you’re comfortable with. But this powerful spiritual love changed me.

And that change left me a stranger in this world. It left me with one foot in the earthly world of hatred and misery and one foot in a spiritual world where we were all united in profound and genuine love.

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