The behavior of men like Anthony Weiner and Steven A. Cohen suggests they were desperately seeking validation, the author writes. But there are better ways to fill that inner emptiness.
The Antidote to Emptiness - NYTimes.com: " . . . We worship at the altar of “winners,” without recognizing that it sets up a zero-sum game in which the consequence must necessarily be a lot of “losers.” We undervalue qualities like humility, vulnerability, personal responsibility and compassion.
There are antidotes. The first is self-awareness, or the willingness to honestly face our deepest insecurities and fears, to keep pushing through our infinite capacity for self-deception.
The second is the capacity to accept our own deepest opposites – our best nature and our worst, rather than inflating the former and denying the latter. None of us will ever be completely free of our shortcomings and our compulsions, but by recognizing and accepting them, we can exercise more choice about whether to act them out.
Finally, there is no more powerful antidote to the havoc we can wreak out of the desperate hunger to prove we matter than to truly
serve others without expectation of reward. Paradoxically, nothing makes us feel better about ourselves."
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