I’ve had a re-occurring daydream about being on MTV’s “Cribs”. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it invites viewers to virtually tour the lavish and outrageous homes of the rich and famous. Cars, high dollar toys and trophies are brought out into the spotlight, displayed proudly by their owners and instilling jealousy in those of us destined to appreciate such toys always and only from the other side of the TV screen.
In my episode of “Cribs”, very little time would be spent on the house, the backyard, or the car (singular). No pool, no waterfall, no ridiculously expensive grill or outdoor pizza oven made of authentic Tuscan firebricks would find their way to your side of the plasma. Instead, I would very proudly lead you upstairs and down the hall, past the single sink bathroom and a linen closet to a very ordinary door. An ordinary door, however, to an extraordinary room. My treasure room. Facing the cameraman squarely, I would then explain that the valuables inside are priceless and without equal. They represent the total accumulation of wealth throughout my lifetime.
With sufficient build up (and, perhaps, a drumroll), the door would slowly swing open and the camera would zoom in. If you looked for great glass cases softly spilling light on gold or gems, you wouldn’t find them. The walls are hung with heavy frames, but no canvases lain thick with ancient pigments fill them. No marble statues grace the wooden floor. Instead, it is a room of photos - a room of faces. My treasure room.
Each face represents someone priceless and without equal in my life. No flashy car or gold plated sink handles could compare. There are memories attached to every one, some good, some hilarious, some heart-breaking. If the show could last a thousand years or more, I would stand before each photo and explain to you why that particular treasured face has made me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. I would tell you stories and we would laugh, the cameraman’s shaking shoulders making your side of the TV a dizzying place to be. You would think of your own treasured faces and wish you could show them off on “Cribs”, too. With a room like that, what more could any of us possibly want?
Relationships are important to us. Something deep inside of every one of us longs to be known - truly known - and valued for nothing more than the existence of our utter selves. We want to know that we’re more than just useful. More than just convenient. We spend much of our thoughts and our energies in attempts to build, strengthen, and repair the relationships in which we are entangled, because relationships, more than anything else, make us feel human. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we succeed. Either way, most of us keep trying because people matter to us. And we want to matter to them. We want to be the face on the wall in someone’s treasure room.
It’s taken a lifetime for me to fill that room and though the process has sometimes come at great expense, the moments of sweetness shared have been worth the pennies of pain they cost. It’s taken years and miles and the ache of both stretching wide between my treasures and me to learn the value of that sweetness and the privilege of paying the cost. Through it, I have learned that a quiet, unspoken secret lies deep and hidden within every human heart. We hide from its acknowledgement because it seems we want too much; the tender skin with which we cover it quivers both in fear and desperate hope of discovery. The truth, the deep and hidden truth, is that we want to be “worth the effort”.
We want to be worth the effort of being listened to, even if the listener is tired. We want to be worth the effort of a home cooked meal, a well-wrapped gift, an “atta-boy” when everyone is busy. We want to be worth the effort of patience in the midst of our temper tantrums and fits of anger, our depression, our moments of uncontrollable tears and irrational behavior. We want to be worth the effort of loving when we’re tired, cranky, ugly, and helpless. We foster the scandalous hope that we could somehow be worth the effort of acceptance in our least acceptable moments. That no matter what we do, no matter how difficult we become, our pictures will never come down from the wall.
This would be a very curious phenomenon in a universe with no meaning. If we came from nothing and are headed for nothing, why are we so ravenous for purpose in the middle? Why do people matter to me, and why does my heart dare to hope that someone, somewhere, would find me “worth the effort”? If we all want to be treasured, not for our usefulness but for our selves, does it mean there’s an independent system of value lurking somewhere just outside our conscious grasp? Is there a price upon my life that isn’t determined by my ability to perform, behave, contribute, or succeed?
I believe there is. If I didn’t, the years stretching out behind me wouldn’t be filled with the sweet and tender faces I love. Their failure to be perfect would have grated as sharply as my tendency to disappoint; I would have lost patience and let them go, as they would have with me. We would be brief explosions in each other’s histories rather than weathered links in a chain. The years stretching out before me would look bleak and lonely rather than bursting with the potential of new faces to frame and place on the wall (I’ve learned that just when you think your heart is so full of those you love that there’s no room left, someone else comes along and you see that the walls stretch after all. There’s always room in a willing heart for one more).
We want to matter. We want to be loved. We want to be valued, even when we feel worthless; loved when we feel our most unlovely. We want people to be “home” when they’re in our presence, feeling safe, and known and important, as we want to find the same “home” with them. We want to be worth the effort. And I, at least, want to know why.
“Cribs” may not come looking for me, but my treasure room exists - if not right past the linen closet, then in my heart. If you need a place to call home, I’m not perfect and I’ll disappoint, but my walls are willing and they’ll stretch. I’ve got room for one more and you’re worth the effort. Just let me call the cameraman – I’ll need to take your picture…“Provide… for yourselves… a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”-The Gospel of Luke, (Chapter 12, Verses 33-34)
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