We live at a time where everyone and his mother is a narcissist. Like depression, the word is bandied about mercilessly. The label is used by people with no idea of the profound meaning of the word, clueless to its mythical Greek origin where Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in the waters of a spring, pining away in self-absorption until he dies. A Narcissus flower (narċisa) sprouts in the place of his demise.

Through the study of the human psyche, we have much more knowledge of our own internal processes. The underside to this in the case of narcissism, is that the use and abuse of the term in popular jargon has trivialised the term by labelling people indiscriminately. Suddenly our parents were all narcissistic, then we married one, and our children too carry the traits! At times it feels we are encircled by self-centredness and greed.

We all carry some narcissism. As adult children dealing with the narcissistic injuries of life, we feel the world owes us more by way of recognition and appreciation. However, inasmuch as we continue to blame our parents, children, communities and significant others for letting us down and not giving us what we think we need, we remain in denial of our own self-centredness and narcissism.

What can we offer as Christians as we deal with our own narcissistic tendencies? Christianity, unlike the plethora of self-fulfilment and self-development strategies so stridently marketed in our days, posits itself as a calling to go beyond our self. It is an invitation to stop gazing at our reflection and lift our gaze up. Up to the heavens “from whence our help comes” (Psalm 121), and up from to the ground to see where our fellow brothers and sisters trudge in suffering.

The oncoming season of Lent gives us two paths as antidotes to narcissism.

First, Lent will invite us to put down our carnival and daily masks and face our own truths; to go into the inner room, inside ourselves, where we meet our needs, our aloneness, and our hunger for love. Lent’s first invitation is to go inside, to be brutally honest with ourselves. Whether through prayer, meditation, therapy or the rare gift of a forthright friend, the inner room is a place of truth. This is a different inwardness than the navel gazing of Narcissus. That is why the oncoming season starts with the humility of ashes and the desert.

The second invitation is to move towards compassion. All the self-awareness in the world is futile if it does not lead to solidarity, to kindness, and to generosity. I have often met people who share stories of how they managed to overcome their self-centredness by reaching out to others: the poor, the sick, the lonely. Always they felt they received much more than they ever gave. Essentially this is Jesus’s repeated message: lose your life, so you can find it. Lose the self-absorption, and open your eyes to the pain of the world.

Lose the self-absorption, and open your eyes to the pain of the world

This coming Lent, as an antidote to narcissism, go out of yourself, and reach out to someone in compassion. Therein lies your healing, as prophesised by Isaiah: “share your food with the hungry, provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, clothe them. Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear (Isaiah 58)

 

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