Meaning | Mental Health
An Ode to Anonymity
We are addicted to recognition. Here’s an ode to anonymity—service and success without recognition or praise. We need it now more than ever.
Anonymity Is Holy
Maimonides described eight levels of charity, each holier than the one below:
- The lowest level is to give begrudgingly.
- The next, to give “less than one should but with kindness”.
- The third level is to give to someone who has already asked for charity.
- The fourth, to give “with one’s own hand before [another] can ask”.
- The fifth level is when the recipient “knows from whom he takes but the giver does not know to whom he gives”.
- The sixth level is the reverse of the fifth: “the giver knows to whom he gives but the [recipient] does not know from whom he takes”.
- The second highest form of charity is reserved for cases where both the giver and receiver remain anonymous to one another.
- And finally, the holiest form of charity is to fortify another in need “until he is strong enough so that he does not need to ask others [for sustenance]”.
There is certainly something holy about anonymity. Most of the holiest forms of charity are founded on some element of anonymity.
Anonymity is Not About You
But if anonymity is so worthwhile, why then are we so addicted to the alternatives: applause, acclaim, appreciation, & acknowledgement?Nearly a decade ago, David Brooks may have captured why in an Op-Ed he wrote to graduates entering a different economic recession, caused by a different epochal crisis:
College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.
He also suggested an antidote: The loss of self in service of others.
Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. […] Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.
The title of Brooks’ Op-Ed was “It’s Not About You”. And it isn’t. It never was.
But, Anonymity Is About Worth
It’s only by loosening our manic grip on recognition that we can find any sense of real reward. In his book, How Will You Measure Your Life, the late Clayton Christensen wrote:
I came to understand that while many of us might default to measuring our lives by summary statistics, such as number of people presided over, number of awards, or dollars accumulated in a bank, and so on, the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people. […] My happiness and my sense of worth has been immeasurably improved as a result.
Anonymity is Our Salvation Song
The last few days, I’ve been soaking in The Third Gleam. Leave it to the Avett Brothers to say exactly what we need to hear:
I don’t need to join in their games
I don’t need to fight to stake my claim
I don’t need the world to know my name
It never mattered if they did
Anonymity is our salvation song.
Anonymous Even to Ourselves
Not only that, anonymity may be the only thing keeping us afloat—most of all, that special type of anonymity that is anonymous even to itself. Dr. Rachel Remen, in her spiritual memoir, My Grandfather’s Blessings, recounts the story of the Lamed Vovniks. According to this legend, God will allow the world to continue only so long as there are 36 good people on the earth. These Lamed Vovniks are also referred to as the Nistarim — “concealed ones”. Dr. Remen’s grandfather explains,
Only God knows who the Lamed-Vovniks are. Even the Lamed Vovniks themselves do not know for sure the role they have in the continuation of the world, and no one else knows it either. They respond to suffering, not in order to save the world but simply because the suffering of others touches them and matters to them.
Rabbi Raymond Zwerin added:
The lamed-vavniks do not themselves know that they are one of the 36. In fact, tradition has it that should a person claim to be one of the 36, that is proof positive that he is certainly not one. Since the 36 are each exemplars of anavah, humility, having such a virtue would preclude against one’s self-proclamation of being among the special righteous. The 36 are simply too humble to believe that they are one of the 36.
Meekness: The Doorway to Anonymity
More than anything else, the doorway to accepting anonymity may be meekness. Neal Maxwell wrote:
Furthermore, the metabolism of meekness requires very little praise or commendation, of which there is usually such a shortage anyway. Otherwise, the sponge of selfishness quickly soaks up everything in sight, including praise intended for others.
Both anonymity and meekness are about more than the self-restraint that may keep you from clamoring from praise or gloating over a colleague or a spouse or a competitor. And the type of anonymity I mean here is not at all approving of hiding behind a pseudonym to get away with indecency. Anonymity is about making room for others to take center stage, and doing good and being good with no thought of reward. It’s about decoupling our motivation structure from the mortal addiction to praise. In fact, it is almost a universal rule that the more we succeed and serve, the more that fickle fuel of praise dries up, until it ultimately disappears entirely, or implodes like a black hole, leaving only criticism and, at best a frightening mix of unfaithful friends and genuine enemies, at worst a crowd intent on accusing you of selfish, ulterior motives. Why would we anchor our sense of worth and accomplishment to such a flawed fortune-teller?
It really never was between you and them anyway. Truly believing this reflects “certitude, strength, serenity, and a healthy self-esteem and self-control”. Rabbi Zwerin saw this in the Lamed-Vov as well:
[The Lamed-Vov] are not saints; they are not holy people, they are not recognized or known even to themselves. They simply are what they are and in their very being, they somehow sustain the world!
Anonymity, in contrast to acknowledgement addiction, rests upon a sacred sort of resilience. It’s a resilience that can only come from the conviction that when we do a good work, give of ourselves, and lift and heal the world around us, we are already victorious, regardless of who recognizes it. Ironically, it’s only when we retreat from our egoic quest for visible victory and accept defeat that we find ourselves dissolving into victory.
