Spend a few minutes soaking up the sun beside a pool of children and I guarantee you will hear frequently the phrase Watch Me! I’m sure there is an existing study that can precisely predict how many times it will be said during a swimming adventure; but my guesstimate is that it is a fairly high number. If I had the ability to invent a device that would deposit money into my bank account every time it heard the phrase Watch Me! from poolside, it could pay off my mortgage and travel some too! And I’m only an innocent bystander, I’m not the relative of the child who is begging for attention, so I know it must get old quickly. I did hear the frustration in one parent’s voice when she stated, “If you say Watch Me! one more time, we aren’t coming out here tomorrow!”

Now, as an adult we’d like to think that our maturity level is significantly higher and that we are above needing the attention of others, but how often are we crying Watch Me! just using slightly different wording? Is there any hope of overcoming this need to be recognized when current culture tells us that we need to post a sign in our yard or spread it all over social media when our child announces their college choice? How did we exist before the pressure to Watch Me!, the pressure to share publicly all the events of our life, became so prevalent?

In her book entitled Vainglory, Rebecca DeYoung addresses this issue of needing others to Watch Me! as vainglory. “Vainglory bears all the hallmarks of a capital vice. It’s a disposition—a pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—that results from putting a happiness-like good at the center of our lives and seeking it without attention to the ways in which that goodness could bring us into closer relationship with God.” Rather than focusing on the glory that brings attention to the gifts God gives us, we start desiring glory for the wrong things and wrong ends—our achievements, our photoshopped photos, and our possessions. DeYoung continues to share that in the Christian tradition, there is a link between what we call pride and what she defines as vainglory. “Thus, as we saw in the movie Se7en, contemporary lists of the seven deadly sins include pride, but hardly anyone knows what vainglory is anymore…The difference, roughly, is that pride is about position and power, and vainglory is about attention and acknowledgment.”

So, like the children observed at the swimming pool, when do we attempt to grasp for attention and acknowledgment of what we can do. We might not be performing the perfect cannon ball for a big splash or executing a perfectly balanced hand-stand underwater, but in our own ways, we are asking for others to give us their attention, perhaps through plastic surgery, a new car, or a bigger home. We are requesting that the success we’ve experienced in our vocation be acknowledged by what we are able to purchase, or sometimes by sharing in conversation a list of all the important people we know.

All of us, every single one of us, desires to be Fully Known and Loved, but at times, as DeYoung shares, “Excessive desire for the attention and approval of others tempts us to put on whatever face will please and to discard truthfulness when it does not serve the overriding end.” What I hope for all of us is that we can avoid the Watch Me! attitude by investing in Relational Equity, in the kind of friendships that support the Deep Dive and allow us as humans to flourish. “We flourish in loving friendships. This sort of love requires that we be acknowledged and accepted for who we truly are, not for who we pretend to be or for the appearances we so carefully maintain as masks of acceptability. Real love cannot be blind. To be loved, we must be known.”

Although it is unlikely that we will ever move into a completely “pure motive stage” to our moral or spiritual formation, I do pray that we at least attempt to avoid the Watch Me! moments and “seek to progress continually past our mixed motives and make more and more headway toward the goal of purely virtuous action.” Personally, I will ask the Lord to open my eyes to see the instances when I tend to lean more towards Watch Me! and away from the virtuous circle of goodness, affirmation and praise. “Our glorying, when done well, displays our understanding of ourselves as creatures of God, always and in everything reliant on God for his gifts.”

Reference:

DeYoung, R.K. (2014). Vainglory: The forgotten vice. William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company.