"A friend wants you to like his page," Facebook writes to me several times a week. Aha, I think, someone has created a new Facebook page and then pressed the button that sends a message to all their contacts: Please like my page!
Everyone should know by now that the value of "likes" is dwindling towards zero - these days you can get a pack of thousands for just a few dollars. Nevertheless, many people are still on the hunt for "likes" or "friends". And don't realize that they are actually just on an ego trip, trying to make others - and often themselves - believe that they can deliver more value than is actually there.
Anselm Grün wrote in his book Don't Miss Your Life! 'There are so many people who spin themselves in circles, who are caught up in their own grandiosity or narcissism. They come to him and say that they absolutely have to talk to him because they already have so much experience and are so enlightened and so on, and therefore of course they can only work with the great masters. These people, he says, haven't understood anything. Those who are really great no longer care about their own greatness. Then other things are important, and not the ego.
One is the façade, the ego - the other is what's behind it, the real me. And even something as simple as the hunt for likes shows what makes a person tick: Whether he lives his true self and trusts that the right people will find him, or whether he shouts around and forces others to press a button in order to support his ego with a façade.
Many people complain about being disillusioned with politics or about being cheated - not just at used car dealerships, but on every corner. But they should take a good look at themselves and ask themselves: Am I living my own truth? Am I living myself, or am I tinkering with my façade day in, day out so that I appear great to the outside world?
Yogananda and Thích Nhất Hạnh put it very kindly: It's not about going to church once on Sundays and then not giving a damn the rest of the week. And so we all want love and respect, but if we don't give ourselves love and respect and are not ourselves, it becomes a big problem.
If you live your true self, you don't care how many likes you get on Facebook. And if the substance is there, then the likes come as they should, namely from people who really like the page - and the product and the people behind it.
Success is one of the consequences of living your true self, regardless of how many other people click on any thumb icons. You can always see that people who live their truth get an above-average number of likes compared to those who are just marketing fakes. And fakes like these ultimately lead to rotten meat and similar dramas that cause a stir, then fizzle out just as quickly as they came and don't really change society.
Now you could say, as Gandhi says: "Be the change you want to see in the world," live the change you want to bring about in the world yourself. No one has ever claimed that this is easy. The first step could be to click your own Like button and drop the facade.
