A cure for Status Anxiety?
Maybe it begins with the desire to please proud parents with success at school. The badges of merit – academic, sporting or artistic – become essential goals. Failure, even with the most supportive parents, becomes unthinkable, unbearable.
By adulthood Status Anxiety can become so ingrained that the pursuit of happiness is entirely lost to the pursuit of achievement. Some are urged on by parents driving their children to achieve what they could not. Some of us are just wired that way – to continually compare ourselves unfavourably with our peers. And so we chase the symbols that tell ourselves, yes, I am as good as you.
All that angst, and the irony is that nobody really cares. Consider the picture below.
Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun. How insignificant Bruegel makes his fall. The soaring Icarus, suddenly fallen, makes barely a splash. The ship sails serenely on. The ploughman, head down, continues with his task. The shepherd tends his flock with his back to the sea. Icarus and his disaster pass unnoticed.
There’s a lesson there – but it took a couple of disasters of my own to learn it!
Read about it HERE