I’ve ranted about this so many times, but nobody finds happiness by adding something new to their life recipe. Better vacations, bigger houses, et-al. have never worked.

It’s more effective, and much easier, to take things out of the way, like if your pancakes taste bad because you put too much pepper in the batter. The recipe doesn’t need more sugar or eggs or maple syrup or some cutesy obscure mysterious ingredient that nobody’s thought of before.

You simply need to get rid of the pepper.

With regards to life, the same goes for anxiety. It doesn’t matter what you add, nothing will get you further down the road than getting rid of it, or at least turning down the dial a bit.

If you’ve ever tried that, you know that your deepest fears dance on the strings of mighty powers. You could spend the rest of your life trying to get them out of the mix, but you never will, fully.

You can however head in that direction. It’s not entirely impossible to reduce the amount of anxiety in your recipe. Even if you only manage to get rid of a little, that’s a win.

The best place to start is with the anxiety that’s easiest to get rid of.

You’ll be encouraged to know that the most easy-to-eradicate anxiety is also a great source of it. Big victories can be made here.

For those of us who have enough money to make ends meet, reliable transportation, safety, functional health, and a roof over our heads, one of the greatest sources of anxitey is the prevalent fear about our standing in the pecking order, what amounts to a never-ending search for acceptance, belonging, respect, and influence.

Also known as status.

What follows is heavily borrowed from a sermon by Jonathan Merritt. While I’d love for you to first consider my thoughts on this, his are better. I sadly recommend that you take a listen, then, if you have time, read my stuff.

Everyone’s Game

British author and Journalist Will Storr, in his recent book Status Games, writes,

Life is a [status] game. There’s no way to understand the human world without first understanding this. Everyone alive is playing a game whose hidden rules are built into us and that silently directs our thoughts, beliefs and actions.

This game is inside us. It is us.

We can’t help but play.

We need people, plain and simple. We also need to belong to a tightly knit group where we feel a sense of place and belonging. But when these groups form, unintended heirarchies, games, and a complicated, stressful set of rules seem to form out of nowhere.

It just happens.

“… because the heirarchies themselves are invisible, we don’t know precisely where other players sit in relation to us. But we can sense it. We can observe the symbols that we’ve attached to particular values: a word affixed on a watch face, a logo sewn on a handbag, a school’s name printed on a diploma, a zip code on a mailing address, a job title on a LinkedIn profile, a blue checkmark on a social media account. From a very early age we learn to discern where we sit in these various pecking orders…” ~ Jonathan Merritt

You can understand why people choose instead to be “loners,” accepting the anxiety that comes from social isolation instead of the anxiety that comes from being part of a community.

It’s interesting to not that, regardless of how we might try to deal with our craving for status, it began at a very early age. Author Loretta Breuning claims that most people see the world through a lense they built in high school, developing neural pathways hard-wired for status.

I am not saying we should go through life fretting over who sits at which table. I am saying that your brain is constantly deciding whether to submit or seek dominance in relation to those around you. You can say you don’t care what others think, but your serotonin soars when you get respect. The good feeling motivates you to seek more. Each choice has its risks and rewards. Over time, you wire yourself to repeat behaviors that trigger serotonin and avoid behaviors that trigger cortisol. Most of that wiring is built in adolescence because the brain is more plastic then. Your teen self learned ways of navigating the social world that are still with you.

I agree, and have been status-seeking most of my adult life. As a kid, I knew subconsciously that there were games to be played, but they didn’t make much sense. In high school I learned that status meant girls, so I tried my best to catch up on whatever rules/skills were required, but I was behind, and somewhat ill equipped.

Much later, once I began attending church on a regular basis, I dove into these games like never before. This time, I wasn’t as interested in girls as I was in gaining respect and recognition. I worked tirelessly to do whatever things my community required to advance to the next square on the CandyLand® board.

I can attest to how much anxiety – and little corresponding payoff – comes from playing these games..

Worse, I’m not done yet. I can’t walk into a church building without thinking about how to climb the first few rungs of the system, hoping it will lead to more.

Be Like This

There’s an episode in the book of Matthew where Jesus’ disciples asked him, “who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

In response, Jesus grabbed a human, sat it on his lap and said, “this guy.”

It wasn’t a Roman Centurion, or a Pharisee, or anyone with power, influence, looks, or any of the other symbols our status games crave.

It was a person who had nothing, constantly marginalized in ancient Judea, a third class citizen at best. This particular human was apparently roaming the streets with nothing to do, no parents nearby to stop some homeless rando from seating their child on his lap. He was most likely a street urchin, the lowest of the low.

“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.'” ~ Matthew 18:2-5

To paraphrase, “Your idea of greateness is the exact opposite of what greatness truly is. You want to be at the top? Walk away from this regime. Stop playing its games.”

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is so close you can touch it. ~ Matthew 3:2

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus spoke about “the Kingdom of Heaven” more than anything else, claiming that it is here, “at hand,” but that it is also within us, while at the same time something we can enter into, now, not just in eternity. Currently, it looks like a tiny, worthless mustard seed, but will one day blossom into something truly wonderful.

And beggars, children, prostitutes, and traitors own it.

Because of the Old Testament’s emphasis on the Kingdom of Heaven, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day expected a “Messiah” to show up, defeat the Romans, and establish this Kingdom in real time.

It would be the most amazing thing the world had ever seen.

That’s one of the reasons Jesus was rejected. It never happened, at least not the way his detractors expected it to happen.

Whatever this Kingdom is – a location, a regime, an eternal locale, a mindset, or some combination of all of the above – it wasn’t just central to Jewish thought, it was central to Jesus’ teaching. “Before you pursue anything else,” he said, “pursue this, then everything else that you’re looking for will fall into line.”

In other words, we can’t have what we’re looking for unless we somehow manage to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But we can’t do that unless we seek the kind of status that a homeless street urchin has. And we can’t do that unless we’re willing to lay down our status games, the ones that have done little more than garnish the life that our souls are craving.

A Different Game

Jesus’ version of status, the kind that makes us “the greatest” doesn’t require skill, looks, material possessions, and all of the other things our status game requires. Our game says there can be no “winners” without “losers.” You can’t be at the top unless there are people at the bottom.

In our game, only a select few can have status.

Not so in Jesus’ game; everyone has a shot at his version of status, and “greatness” doesn’t depend on someone else’s non-greatness.

Ultimately, anyone can become “like a child,” so long as they have the courage and faith to do it.

I’ve tried, but it’s difficult. Being part of a community is much more interesting when you occupy the upper spaces.

But I’m old, and the life that I’ve chosen is taxing. I can’t spend my energy on kids, marriage, friends, AND worrying about where I sit in the pecking order. And whatever benefits that have come from climbing haven’t been worth the anxiety that comes with it.

And so, once a month, I wash coffee mugs at our church on Sunday morning and try to make friends. Sure, I dream about comandeering the pulpit now and again, or being called into an elder’s meeting for my expert advice on some difficult issue. But I’ve been in those spaces before. It’s no picnic to preach, or lead, and the attending status never left me with the feeling that I had “arrived,” or finally found Nirvana.

For the first time in my adult life, now in my 57th year, I’m ready to pursue a different kind of status, to learn the rules of Jesus’ difficult, alien game. If I can resurrect a thimbleful of the joy I knew when I was an actual child – a human who cared little about ladders – it’ll be a win.

There is currently no bigger win within my grasp.