What Happens When You Stop Treating Yourself Like An Object?

Teleology: (noun) the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.

A Handy Old Greek Term

Until May, I taught English at a mid-sized university in the Southwest. Every semester when midterm exams rolled around, I used to explain to my students what teleology means. Because I just felt like throwing a challenging Greek-sounding term at them right when their brains were already stuffed too full with a mountain of equally arcane knowledge.

But really, I think the term is super important.

Lazily translated, it means something like “becoming.” The suffix “-ology” means “the study of,” so teleology means “the study of becoming” or “the study of the process of becoming.” Or exercising purpose. Or transforming. Or getting there. The hard-to-translate part of the word is its additional connotation of inevitability.

The word telos refers to that which the thing in question is supposed to become, or the purpose it is meant to serve. So the telos of an acorn would be an oak tree. The telos of a raw New York Strip in the grocery store would be, let’s say, if your Donald Trump, a well-done steak with a ketchup garnish. The telos of a chuck of coal would be, to a jeweler, a diamond. To Exxon, a drop of oil. To Oliver Twist, a bit of warmth on a chilly night. To an artist, lines on a paper.

Teleology means the application of this way of thinking. It’s not all as cut and dry as diamonds and steaks, though. For example, does society and culture follow a teleological path? Was it the telos of the old broadsheets of the 18th century to become the 24 hour news cycle? Was it the economy’s telos to progress from barter, to feudalism, to mercantilism, to industrialism, and so on? Someone approaching these phenomena with a teleological framework would assume that this progression was inevitable, and seek to understand the nature of that progression.

What is the origin of this way of thinking?

When early humans were roaming around the savannas, we were hardwired to view things as tools and then assess their usefulness and functionality. We evolved this way because it helped us to survive. Could this branch be useful as a spear? How about this chunk of stone: can I make it into a hand-axe? Yes? No? And this person: are they a good genetic match for me? Can I produce happy and healthy little Cro-Magnon babies with them?

We’ve been thinking teleologically for a long, long time. Because we are tool makers. Tool makers have to be able to assess potentiality, progress, and purpose.

But what happens when this natural, useful tendency is misapplied? What happens when you treat yourself like a tool?

The Advice

All tools are objects.

Humans are not objects.

Therefore humans are not tools.

-

When you were a kid, did anyone ever ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Whenever someone asked you this, the implicit suggestion was that whatever you were now was insufficient. Because the proper and normal thing is for you to change into something more useful. Like a chunk of flint with a hand-axe somewhere inside it.

When you had to sit through a commencement speech at the end of high school or college, you were being spoken to as someone whose worth has yet to be tested by the world in which you have yet to live. Again, you were being treated like a thing.

This is why objectification can be so tricky to spot. It can look really beautiful. Its rhetoric can be stirring. It can give you a momentary high. I’m a good object! I’m a successful object! As long as I follow the advice in this commencement speech, I’ll be okay!

Here’s a secret I used to tell to my students. I’m going to tell it to you. You aren’t a tool. You are an end in yourself. Meeting your personal goal, whatever that might be, won’t give you one iota more worth than you already have. The purpose you hope to serve will hopefully fulfill you, but has no effect on your worth.

Human worth is contingent upon nothing, and you are not your dreams.

Human worth is contingent upon nothing, and you are not your dreams.

When we stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up and start asking them what is important to them now, we’ll be going a long way toward ending the cycle of self-objectification.

Although I believe that this is terribly important advice, I understand why it can ring hollow. It sometimes feels like there’s little room in our daily lives for the reminder that our output and our selves are two different things. Because we are constantly judged by the quality and quantity of our output. It’s only natural to confuse the two. How is remembering that you are an end-in-yourself going to help you keep a good grade point average? Or remain in good standing with your boss? Or get in good enough shape to complete the marathon you’ve always wanted to run?

Come to think of it, what do you get out of no longer treating yourself like an object?

Being a typical teacher, I tend not to take my own advice. I decided, during the summer of 2020, the summer from hell, that this was going to change.

So Here’s What I Tried Out

How do you feel when you fail at a task? Take a moment to think about it. If you were my student, I’d force you to do a 5 minute free write.

Here’s what I wrote during my own free-write just now:

I am probably the worst perpetrator of self-objectification you could possibly find. An obsessive perfectionist and hard worker, I am basically a perfect storm for measuring my self-worth by my accomplishments. When I fail at something — communicate unsuccessfully with a loved one, make an ugly painting, produce a piece of music that isn’t very good, or even miss a few basketball shots in a row — I can experience feelings of worthlessness that sometimes get pretty intense. I sink all of myself into the endeavor, and when the endeavor falls off the cliff, so do I.

So, what can we do? How do we actually implement the advice to avoid treating ourselves like objects?

Well, I’ve historically left this out of my talk to my students. Because I didn’t really know.

But now I think I’ve come up with a few pragmatic steps.

Step One: the mantra.

“I automatically have value, always.”

In May, I was laid off from the university at which I was a composition instructor. More precisely, I was “not rehired.” (Don’t get me started on the contract system.) I managed to get on my state’s unemployment dole. I suddenly faced what I was calling “an extended summer break,” which I soon renamed “mini early-retirement” and which finally I have dubbed, simply, “Limbo.” Though without a traditional job, I have probably been busier than I ever have been, filling up my days with a whole bunch of personal creative projects and, in one case, unpaid work for my father’s toothpaste business.

In early summer, headway was slow. Positive feedback was negligible. I would have though that being able to devote all my time to my own projects would be paradise; boy was I wrong. By the very fact that these projects were close to my heart, and also because I no longer had a workaday job with which to compare and contextualize them, I had invested all of myself and my self-worth. So, as you can imagine, I was blowing a huge bubble of self-worth that was going to burst spectacularly. No one watching my YouTube channel? It’s my fault. I suck. I’m boring. The song I recorded sounds weird? I sound weird. I sound bad. I can’t get anyone to buy this stupid toothpaste? … and so on and so forth. My days were filled with constant dissatisfaction and disappointment. I was frustrated at a very core level with my lack of becoming and my failure to be used for a purpose. Trained all my life to view myself as a tool, my current life felt essentially unsatisfactory.

However, I never forgot the advice I used to give to my freshmen. I knew what I was doing wrong. But although I had the terminology to understand what was happening, I had no actual tools to fight it. And this is what tools are, after all. Things devised to help humans. My first tool came almost unconsciously. It was a mantra.

“I automatically have value, always.” At first I used to say it in the second person. You automatically have value, always. But then I realized that by talking to myself, I was exercising a subtle form of objectification. (We have many selves, certainly; you could argue that this was my healthy self trying to talk sense into my sick self. But the purpose of the mantra is to reinforce the notion that your worth is not contingent on anything, so it seems important to me to emphasize the I in your relationship with your self. To re-envision a healthy ego. Plus, using the personal pronoun makes it feel like a declaration to the outside world, which is sort of empowering. I declare it to the outside world to give myself an opportunity to prove that I’ll be okay if the outside world doesn’t say anything in particular back at me.)

I wanted to do a bit more research about mantras, though. According to a an article published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapy, “the term mantra comes from Sanskrit and means instrument of thought, and sacred text.” A mantra can be as short as a single syllable (the famous “Om” for example) or an entire sentence, and they have spiritual relevance and power for Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. I am by no means an expert in these faiths and I believe that sometimes the Western pop versions of some of the concepts in these faiths can be a little shallow. A medium article titled “Do Mantras Work?” expresses my initial skepticism about mantras perfectly: “…the mantra hashtag has become a recycling bin for utterly non-threatening pop psychology trivia co-opted by corporate brand managers and aspiring social media influencers” (Neff, 2019). One of the author’s arguments is that mantras are most effective when they are only one in a repertoire of other meditative and spiritual practices. The truth of this seems self-evident to me. This mantra I’m offering to you isn’t going to be a total fix by itself. It’s going to have to be paired with other strategies too, which I will outline next. There is no doubt, however, that mantras have a great deal of potential power.

Start by saying the mantra at least once a day, out loud. Not just in your head. Out loud. It makes it more real, at least for me, to hear the words. And feel free to tweak the wording, so long as you convey 1) that your value is innate, and 2) unchanging. After a week (and try your best not to miss opportunities to say the mantra!), ask yourself: is this having any effect? If so, what kind of effect?

You may not believe it at first. But if you say it regularly, almost like a prayer or an invocation, before working on any given project — if you really do get in the habit, and don’t break it — you’re going to start noticing that the lows of endeavor are a little less low. If something you’ve worked on doesn’t pan out — an idea at work isn’t taken up, you fail to explain yourself properly to a friend, a poem you wrote doesn’t feel like it’s that great — you might not feel quite as down about it. Or rather, your disappointment will be in the context of the goal you were trying to achieve, and not in your own value.

This is because you’re working on distancing the part of yourself that really shouldn’t be involved with your endeavors: your value as a human being. You’ll be left only with the parts that should be associated with endeavor: enthusiasm, hope, hard work, etc.

The mantra is a way of reminding yourself what’s at stake and what’s not at stake. But as I wrote above, it can’t do all the work single-handedly.

Step two: make a “reverse vision board.”

Have you ever made a vision board? If you’re like me, a friend of yours coerced you into doing it, and you tutted and scoffed your way through the first ten or so minutes before becoming engrossed in the project.

I want you to make a reverse vision board. Create a collage depicting some important events that have already happened to you in the course of your life. A collage depicting your past.

Print out a picture of yourself that you like, and put it at the center. Or if you feel like that would make you a little self-conscious, doodle a self-portrait. Underneath the image you’re going to write, you guessed it, “I automatically have value, always.” Next, choose no more than six events from your past that had a significant impact on the shaping of your life. Brainstorm on a separate sheet of paper if that would help. They can be accomplishments, failures, relocations, traumas (if you feel up to exploring them in a collage; don’t force this or hurt yourself though) — anything. Gather all the magazines you can get your hands on; used bookstores can be cheap places to pick some up. Your task will be to create a mini collage for each of the events you’ve chosen, using cutouts from the magazines. Here’s the thing: try to avoid depicting the events chronologically. Don’t go clockwise or counter clockwise or left to right, but arrange them randomly around the center. Don’t draw a line from them to you or anything like that; instead, draw a box around your self-portrait.

Now let me be clear: I believe the sequence of events that occurs in our pasts absolutely plays a role in forming our identities. The order of things matters. The point of the reverse vision board is not to argue against this. The point, rather, is to create an image that emphasizes the person at the center of all of these experiences. An image that claims that you are greater than the sum of the events in your life.

It’s important to talk about and analyze how the successes and failures in our past transform us and create us. How we get over them, how we struggle with them, how we integrate them into our identities, how we love them or learn to love them. In addition to this, I would argue, there must be some essential part of you that transcends the experiences you’ve had, however transformative they were. Experiences impart any number of qualities and lessons. You value them. They do not impart value upon you.

There’s a bit of a tug of war at play here between a teleological understanding of the events in your life and the non-teleological approach that I’m touting in this article. Seeing some of the important events of your life spread across a piece of cardboard, you’re bound to want to assess them teleologically, which is to say, see them as part of a process of becoming the person you are today. All the vision board is, is you taking a break from that kind of assessment.

Here's the beginning of mine:

It’s a work in progress. Don’t judge! I’m slow at this. I’ve not only not done a vision board in years but I haven’t done much in the way of paper craft since basically high school. No shame. A lot of you are probably just like me. To be honest I got a little frustrated and had to stop for a bit. I have a pile of NatGeos and Arizona Highways, and there were only so many uses I had for long stretches of scenic road and exotic wildlife. My slow progress was, ironically, making me feel like I was a failure. Did I utter my mantra and magically feel better? Nah. I just went into the other room and poured myself a glass of sherry. Cause sometimes that works for too.

When you create your own vision board, I hope you feel like there is power in choosing the particular events that you put on there. Because you chose to include them on this reverse-vision board. You could cut them out if you want to. And hey, if you do want do: do it! Whatever you do, I hope you see these events as externals happenings for you to make sense of how you choose. It’ll feel empowering. You’re bolstering your sense of self by letting yourself both encompass and transcend your life experience.

Step Three: the Thought Experiment

Once, a few years ago, with my head firmly in the clouds, I walked into traffic.

I don’t know if I had caught sight of something green in my peripheral vision, or if some momentary lull the traffic tricked me, or what, but without looking I strode confidently into a crosswalk in one of the busiest intersections in town. Cars speeding along at 40 or 50 mph would have had no chance to stop or swerve. I should have been toast. Except I felt a pair of hands suddenly grab me and pull me back onto the sidewalk. Only after I felt this jerking motion did I realize what had happened. I spun around to see who my savior was. For some reason I fully expected it to be someone I knew: a friend or loved one. Someone who would have seen me in danger and recognized me as someone they liked. I had this idea that what they were saving was not me, but all of my accomplishments, works-in-progress, personality traits, successes, failures — in short, all that I stood to lose.

But my savior was not a friend: he was some random guy I’d never laid eyes on before. Out of danger, we laughed with relief, exchanged a few words, and went our separate ways, both cognizant of the magnitude of the near-disaster but unwilling to look it right in the face just now.

For the rest of the day and some time afterward, I couldn’t shake off a weird feeling. Why had I been so confident that what was being saved was not a life, but a set of goals? That’s weird when you think about it. Why had I believed that only someone who knew me would recognize me as worth saving? This person, who had no idea who I was and didn’t even stop to wonder, pulled me out of traffic. In that moment, in a way that never quite hit me before, I knew I had intrinsic, categorical worth as a human being that was independent of my life purpose.

When I am at the complete nadir of a failure, at the low point of self-objectification, I remember this person. I tell myself that this current failure, had it happened just before I’d absent-mindedly walked into traffic that time, would have had no bearing on the man’s decision to save me.

This may seem like a rather blunt thought experiment. But I want you to ask yourself, next time you experience a failure that takes a toll on your sense of worth, ask yourself: would someone save my life right now if I were in danger?

I can cheat by telling you the answer: YES.

You Get Yourself

Let’s say you aren’t reading this Vocal article. I put it up, and maybe three of my friends read the first quarter of it. I know full well that this would bum me out big time. Having poured so much of my conviction into the piece (after all, it is my pure thought content, and what could be more of a representation of myself than that?), its rejection would certainly hurt. I can’t see any way around that, and I don’t think I’d be fully human if I didn’t experience some kind of dip in my self-regard. But if right before I click “submit,” I utter my mantra “I automatically have worth, always”…if right afterward I paste a few more cutouts onto my reverse vision board and notice how the Eric at the center is unaffected… if I ask myself what would have happened if, while the guy was pulling me out of traffic, I had yelled “Wait! Don’t you realize that no one read my Vocal article?!” … I am reassured. Even if it doesn’t make the feelings vanish, I am reminded that there is something unassailable about me.

Hey, it won’t always work. Sometimes your mantra will feel hollow. Sometimes it’ll even make you laugh cynically. Sometimes you’ll want to throw your reverse vision board in the trash. Sometimes you’ll have a hard time believing that your traffic hero would save you if he knew the million little ways you fall short. But sometimes these tricks will work. And you’ll come away from a failure feeling, if not unscathed, at least ready to take on something new.

The point of this article is not to train you to never feel bad about failure, or to be suddenly perfect at avoiding self-objectification. It’s merely to give you a few tools with which to remind yourself that there is something unassailable about you.

Teleology means looking at the purpose of something. Everyone wants to have a purpose. But I will end with this bold claim: if you aren’t sure what that purpose is, or if you fail to achieve it, it’s okay. You matter no less.

So, what do you get out of no longer treating yourself like an object? You get yourself.

You automatically have worth, always.

Citations

1. Jo Wilkinson Lyday. Sehnsucht in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lamar State College of Technology. 1967.

2. https://www.britannica.com/topic/teleology

3.https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/mantras-101-the-science-behind-finding-your-mantra-and-how-to-practice-it

4. Burke, Adam et al. “Prevalence and patterns of use of mantra, mindfulness and spiritual meditation among adults in the United States.” BMC complementary and alternative medicine vol. 17,1 316. 15 Jun. 2017, doi:10.1186/s12906–017–1827–8

5. Neff, Andrew. “Do Mantras Work?” Medium. 2019

6. Immanuel Kant. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. 1797.

7. https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a29959841/how-to-make-a-vision-board/ (Oprah tells you how to make a vision board… and she should know).