If you used these steps consciously, you’d make friends with everyone you meet.
It would have been nice to have been given those steps when I was young. I was so socially
inept then. My brother always made friends easily, and I never did. So I tried to make his
friends my friends. It was tough on him, because I always wanted to go where he wanted to
go, do what he wanted to do.
By the time I got to high school, I’d developed my own interests. I still loved music, so I joined
the marching band, the choir, and the orchestra. I was also in the photography club, on the
yearbook staff, and a reporter for our school newspaper. I was in the drama club, the chess
club, and, perhaps most notably, on the debating team—the championship debating team, I
might add.
And high school was when I got my start in broadcasting. One of the local radio stations got
the idea to do a high school sports report every night, using student announcers. I was
already the student public-address announcer at all of our football and basketball games, so I
was a natural to be selected as the representative from our school. It was my first exposure
to radio, and it launched a thirty-five-year career.
Still, with all that I was doing (or perhaps because of it), I wasn’t making many friends. I’m
sure that most of this had to do with the fact that I had developed an enormous ego. Partly as
a compensation for my younger years when I was constantly being told by my father that I
was to be “seen and not heard,” and partly because I’d always been a bit of a show-off. I’m
afraid that I became unbearable; not many kids in high school could stand me.
I know what that was about now. It was about seeking the approval from others that I did not
feel I was getting from my father. My dad was very stingy with praise. I remember the time I
won a debating tournament and came home with the trophy. My father’s only comment: “I
didn’t expect anything less.”
It’s tough to feel good about yourself when a championship isn’t enough to get even a little
praise from your father. (The saddest part about his comment was that I know he thought it
was praise.)
So I developed the habit of telling my father everything that I was doing, and about all of my
accomplishments, hoping to one day hear him say, “That’s incredible, son. Congratulations.
I’m proud of you.” I never heard it—so I began looking for it from others.
I haven’t shaken the habit to this very day. I’ve tried to mute it, but I haven’t shaken it. What’s
worse, my own children would probably tell you that I’ve been equally blasé about their
achievements. And the sins of the father are visited upon the son.
You really do have a “father issue,” don’t you?
Do I? I hadn’t thought about it in those terms.
No wonder you’ve had a difficult time thinking of Me as somebody who knows everything
about you. No wonder you’ve had a problem with the concept of God at all.
Who said I’ve had a problem with the concept of God?