Keep Going, Kid

What fictional characters and stage musicians can teach us about real life

Arthur Miller’s famous play, Death of a Salesman, features a pitiful character named Willy Loman. Willy’s life is hollow and sad because the most important thing for him is being well liked by other people.

Appearing successful matters more to Willy than being successful; appearing kind, generous, and virtuous matters more than being kind, generous, and virtuous; and appearing to have his act together matters more than having his act together (as if life was meant to be an act).

Willy does not live authentically. Instead, he hides his true self behind a performative mask. He is a career salesman selling a product—but the product isn’t a vacation or house or set of knives. Instead, it’s a fake image of himself. Willy goes through each day as a poser, a shell of a man with no real friends, no real intimacy, no real joy, and no real purpose.

Willy is a tragic prototype of what Thoreau alluded to when he said:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Tragically, Willy’s hollow, performative, image-laden way of life is the only legacy he knows of to pass down to his two sons.

The Burden of Keeping Up Appearances

In the Bible, the scribes and Pharisees are a tragic parallel. Like Willy, these religious professionals are obsessed with appearing holy, righteous, and pure while being none of these things internally. They “say prayers” without really praying. Their aim isn’t to connect with God but to receive praise from people. They fast religiously not to sharpen their focus on God, but to be noticed and esteemed by men. They order their lives around the letter of the law not as a way to love God, but to gain leverage over God and moral superiority over others.

In such a world, even “ministry” is more performative than real.

For the scribes and Pharisees, the most important thing was being liked. Theirs is a tragic counterfeit of the good life, a form of stage acting through boisterous and public displays of piety. Their displays are undergirded not by the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Instead, they're demeanor is dominated by a grouchy, judgmental, relationally bereft, radically insecure, spiritually juvenile, emotionally stunted personal reality.

While projecting an appearance of virtue, the religious poser is empty, bereft, and damaged on the inside.

Sometimes, honestly, so are we.

This desire we all have for affirmation is tricky because it originates from a good place: we are made in the image of a God whose very existence calls forth praise.

The image of God in us is the reason why we desire healthy forms of affirmation and praise: a pat on the back for a job well done, an affectionate “I love you” from a spouse or loved one, or hearing the words, “I’m proud of you!” from a parent, mentor, supervisor, or peer group.

When our youngest daughter was six, she asked me to watch her read a book silently. There I sat as her quiet audience of one, watching as she thumbed through the pages without making a sound. When she closed the book, I exclaimed how proud I was of her for being such an outstanding reader of books.

Our daughter’s longing for a blessing—for a “Well done, good and faithful child!” from her earthly father—was merely an echo of her deeper longing for the same from her Heavenly Father.

This desire in a child is right, good, lovely, and not to be denied.

It’s true of us all. We carry a deep craving for positive, life-giving verdicts to overrule the negative verdicts pronounced over us from outside and within. When parents shame us, peers exclude or tease us, colleagues and bosses and spouses register disappointment in us, our social media posts don’t receive the “likes” we had hoped for, and even we are confronted with our real failures—our impulse is to run for cover, shield ourselves from condemnation and shame, put up a defense, and re-establish ourselves as worthy.

This can be tiring.

We want to matter, to be significant, to be thought well of. And so, we thirst for benediction—a good word spoken over us by a voice that counts.

As Tolkien said:

“The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

Learning from “Tortured Artists”

These negative verdicts within are hard to overcome, and not just for us average folks.

I once heard an interview with Mariah Carey in which she was asked why she, a remarkably successful and celebrated musician, still struggled with feelings of emptiness and insecurity. Her answer was that she could hear a thousand praises and one criticism, and the criticism would overrule all the praises.

In her honest answer, Mariah said out loud what many of us feel inside. When a text or email comes in that reads, “We need to talk,” our hearts sink because we assume criticism or rejection is on the way. We naturally fear being found out, and that the sender of the text—based on whatever true or false thing they are about to confront us with—might on that basis leave and forsake us. This can be true of bosses, colleagues, neighbors, friends, or even family members. We think to ourselves:

“If people actually knew everything about me, or even if they knew just a little bit more about how I really am, surely they would lose respect for and reject me.”

Perhaps this is why Psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, said that if he could convince his patients that their sins were forgiven, seventy-five percent of them would no longer require psychiatric care.

Similarly, the famous folk artist, James Taylor, once said in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine that criticism of his music brings out a deep insecurity in him. He then proceeded to say:

“I’ll be fine as long as every once in a while someone like Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney says to me, ‘Keep going, kid.’”

But when we lean on the praise of other, finite creatures for infinite hope, when we feel we need applause from others to prevent an emotional slide or crisis of identity, we may be trying to fill an infinite space with finite goods.

The truth that famous musicians like Mariah Carey and James Taylor must face—and that we all must face—is that all human applause has a limited shelf life. Eventually, all memory of us and of any praiseworthy things we offered to the world will be completely forgotten.

As Anne Lamott is quoted as saying:

A hundred years from now? All new people.

True greatness does not come from being eternally well liked and respected by others. The ultimate answer is not striving to reverse the negative verdicts or making a name for ourselves.

Instead, the answer lies in becoming more boastful about Jesus and more shy about ourselves. This leads to a “freedom of self-forgetfulness” that allows us to pour ourselves into loving God and others.

The summary word for this is “humility.”

How do we become free? How do we gain strength to renounce emotional neediness and the craving to be liked and honored by others, and instead pour our lives out in love for others…even those who can give nothing in return?

This ability to become self-forgetful, to divert our eyes toward God and neighbor, is fueled and sustained by the daily voice of our Heavenly Father. His love through Jesus is always unfailing, always secure, and always triumphant over negative verdicts.

In a way, this is God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth saying to us:

“Keep going, kid.”