Rantings...

In the shower as I was getting ready for the Partner Fair on Sunday morning, I started thinking about how fortunate/blessed I was feeling that I was discovering all this stuff about myself now, during the course of the Artist’s Way exercises and my BPS class, but how much cooler it would’ve been if I had started this self discovery at a younger age, perhaps even before college. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was some sort of a program for teens that guided them through all the angst we tend to go through as we’re struggling to define ourselves? [I think the idea was also partially influenced by reading Kerri Smith’s “Letting Yourself Soar” lecture.] We have all these courses in high school that teach about Math, History, Science, etc. but nothing really that helps us with the considerable work of defining or getting to know ourselves. At least when I was in school there wasn’t, if they DO teach this kind of thing nowadays, somebody let me know.

I started thinking about how maybe people are unhappy because they don’t know themselves well enough to know what will make them happy. The kind of stuff we learn in school doesn’t prepare us for dealing with the real world and all the emotional/psychological turmoil that goes into trying to figure out who you are and what kind of life you want to live. John Taylor Gatto wrote a book a while back, called The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling where they talked about how today’s school system had originally been set up by the government and big business to mass produce workers with enough basic knowledge to work in their factories (a good summary can be found at http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm). These schools weren’t set up to give people the tools to figure out how to define themselves as human beings, how to figure out what would bring the most happiness/fulfillment into their lives, to determine what their rules/values were and how to stick by those rules/values once defined. But that’s the true stuff that we need to be prepared to deal with as we move into adulthood. For many of us, coming out of school, we aren’t armed with the tools or the wherewithal to answer these questions for ourselves. Instead, all we have are images of what the media tells us the answers are – buy this car and everyone will think you’re successful, wear this label and you’ll be cool, be this pant/dress size and everyone will admire you and you’ll be happy.

Instead of taking a good hard look at ourselves and determining our own value systems, we pick whoever seems to look happy and try to pattern ourselves after them. The problem is that we’re DIFFERENT. Every single person is different from everyone else. Instead of taking the time to figure out ourselves for ourselves, we let other people and other external forces like the media, influence or tell us what we should be. Then we let ourselves be judged by other people because we haven’t defined ourselves using our own definitions, so we don’t know if we are being ourselves correctly!

We have to flounder around picking out a major on the basis of who knows what, getting the grades, getting a “good job,” getting a stable career, meeting the perfect partner, spawning the perfect kids. But how do we know that this will make us happy? Humans are all so different from one another…how can there be one commonly conceived path to happiness/fulfillment? Why does everyone buy into that same dream?

Wouldn’t it have been cool if we had had classes to help out with things like defining our own commandments, assessing our own self images and determining for ourselves what is/is not attractive about our own bodies, listing out our values and beliefs and the reasoning behind those things so that when the time comes to defend or stand up for those things we know why we’re doing it to the deepest core of our beings. It would’ve been cool if we had been encouraged to explore our individuality as opposed to having been forced to conform to a common mold. Why do we all have to excel at Math AND Science AND Reading AND History AND whatever else to be considered good students? Why can’t we define our own subjects, determine our own curriculums based on our interests? Why can’t we pick our own teachers for that matter? People whom we admire and respect without having to be told we should. Sort of like the apprentice/master craftsman relationships of the Middle Ages, but more collaborative and less cheap, slave-labor-ish.

What would the world be like if we celebrated our differences instead of fighting over them and trying to get everyone to see things the way we see them? What is it about us that makes us want to convince everyone that we’re right? How can there be ONE single truth when we come from so many different perspectives and backgrounds and economic situations?

Why aren’t we encouraging/making mandatory the regular practice of self-reflection and contemplation? And giving ourselves the tools not just to question, but to FIND the answers we come up with?

It seems like such an enormous undertaking, but it’s necessary and worthwhile. All the cliché’s about journeys beginning with a single step, the Daffodil Principle, etc. are totally true. You can’t get anywhere new by just standing in the same place. You’ve got to take the first step and then have the courage to take the 1000 incremental next steps afterward, one step at a time. We've got nothing to lose except our fear/self-doubt and our true selves to gain.