The Sting of Rejection in a World That Demands Success

When judgment feels personal and worth gets measured in wins

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“No” hurts the human heart.

With dogs, Henry says, it’s different. No is a disappointment, but nothing personal, comes with the territory, take it in stride. He’d make a great salesman, for he never stops begging with his big brown eyes and nurses no grudge when refused.

I spent most of my adult life selling – advertising, investments, concepts. I writhed at the pain of failure. No was something personal, as much a rejection of the messenger as of his message. I’d persuaded myself of the truth of what I was claiming, that my exaggerations were not exaggerations, my promises not misleading. While I eschewed deliberate deception, which corrodes trust, I bent the facts in the direction of my conclusions. Failure infuriated, souring me on my rejector. (Insecurity is quick to curse.) Retirement largely frees me of the need to flirt: the relief giddies.

Rejection is the lot of today’s young Americans, as David Brooks points out in an edifying essay. From pre-K to retirement, the ambitious are engaged in a vast, fierce game of musical chairs, with a mob of contestants and a few choice seats. Let one data point stand for many: “Roughly 54,000 students applied to be part of the Harvard class of 2028, and roughly 1,950 were accepted. That means that about 52,050 were rejected.”

Ouch.

Computers, globalization, and the Internet have altered the competitive landscape for any up-and-comer. For many jobs, an American is no longer vying with 340 million Americans but with 8.2 billion humans around the globe. For sure, some ambitious Vietnamese kid has more “fire in the belly,” more desperate determination to seize the prize than a comparatively coddled American. Wellness gurus urge a balanced life: good luck with that if you want to get ahead.

The more you’re rejected, the lower your self-esteem, the grimmer your take on your condition. No one likes feeling like a loser. Insensibly, inexorably, consciousness reinterprets our frustrating facts in our favor, so we’re not at fault, the system is rigged, we’ve been screwed. To assuage our pride, we slide into the cesspool of grievance. When I was a boy, we were taught to rejoice in our luck; now, young people are as likely to rue all they lack.

Some, in response to rejection, grow a thick skin; others a hard heart. (The haunting mini-series Adolescence shows the horrifying effects of rejection on a pubescent male.)

The most plaguing paradox of modernity is the crankiness of developed nations. Our comparative prosperity has landed us in a stubborn funk. While statistics indicated America was succeeding, vote tallies said the opposite. Sleazy misleaders redirected our rage onto improbable scapegoats: transgender kids, immigrants, university professors, etc.

How do we cheer ourselves, turn those frowns upside down?

I’m not sure we can. Computerization, globalization, the Internet, while they can be ignored, cannot be stopped. There is no returning to the confident, comforting communities of yore, where everyone counted and none felt of no account. Technological genius and material prosperity have beaten our egos black and blue.

We can, however, still love. We can convene to converse, console, and confide. Family, faith groups, interest groups, book clubs, such voluntary congregations focus energies and buttress pride. Your presence here in our cozy sodality helps me imagine I matter. Together is the anodyne for despair.

Humility, too, is curative. If nobody matters in the end, we’re equals, none a victor. Dust doesn’t vaunt: in the graveyard, all are losers. So let us celebrate the abundance we possess, not pine for the infinitude we don’t. Thus speaks dog-pal Henry, who is always happy.