Influncers & Influences

My wife, Emily, recently asked me about my influences and it has me thinking about the spiritual significance and difference between being an influencer versus someone who is an influence. She asked the question, “Besides members of your family (because a typical response to this question often involves parents and/or grandparents), who are are some of your influences?” 

Digging back into my life growing up I began to review my experience in various churches, neighborhood friends, the college and seminary I attended, and the geography I’ve crossed and what has brought me to live here in Greensboro now. Like all good questions, this one opens up others related to it and brought me back to the topic of “scenius.” That was something I spoke about last December during our community meeting for worship on campus. Influences are most certainly part of one’s scenius. 

When looking for influences, I am overwhelmed by all the people who have invested love, time, and energy into my life over the years. I am filled with a sense of deep gratitude and wonder at the many ways people have helped me believe in myself, believe in the possibility of that which is not yet realized, and believe in the power of friendship. Many of the influences in my life were not trying to influence me but were simply living their lives as best they know how. Though not always linked, I think many of the best forms of "influence” come in the form of friendship.

The poet David Whyte writes of friendship in his book Consolations: 

“In the course of the years, a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves; to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties, and even their sins, and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.”

David Whyte

All of this is set in the context of a proliferation of the role and capitalization on those deemed, and even demand to be, “influencers.” Being an influencer is solely driven by consumerism and social media’s algorithmic illusions of lifestyles sold but rarely if ever authentically embodied. 

Friendship as influence is subtle, humble, flies under the radar, and is done out of love and compasion for the other. It is a caring and hospitality for another’s soul, making space for what is yet to come, without need of reciprocity or recognition. Influencers are a stark contrast. Their infuence is formulaic and repetative, generalizable (all people should be like, own, act like, live like me), and most importantly, marketable. To be an influece is an honor one receives over the course of a genuine life and choices made, even when circumstances less than optimal. Influencers demand attention, and as soon as the circumstances (in this case, the market) shifts, whatever influence they once had washes away. 

Let me turn the question back to you: “Besides members of your family (because a typical response to this question often involves parents and/or grandparents), who are are some of your influences?” 

-Wess