I will follow me; follow me where ever I may be
There isn't an ocean too deep, a mountain so high it can keep,
Keep me away from me...
Okay, so I took a lot of poetic license here. My apologies to the original song writer. It says what I have been trying to say for weeks now.
I wondered many weeks ago how we lose ourselves. It was a question stimulated from watching Sister Act. I always cry when I watch Sister Act. I cried the first time I saw it and I still cry each time I see it. It remains, however, one of my favorite movies. I cry because somewhere along the path of growing up and the path of life, I feel like I lost myself. I cry because I don't know how that happened.
Mind you, I would not change one iota of my life. I am where I want to be and most of the times I am who I want to be. I believe that the tears come from not knowing how to pursue paths in my life that bring me joy each day. Music is one of them. Not music in a rock star, teen idol, stardom kind of way. I so am not up to singing on stage and strutting my stuff. It isn't who I am. I get stage fright so bad I want to throw up. I surely would have ended up a drug addict if I'd tried to go that path, which is one of the reasons my family dissuaded me from doing that. I guess they didn't know any other course to pursue either.
And that is neither here nor there. It does give some history and set up the subject of this blog for you.
Question: How do we lose ourselves?
Answer: No one teaches us to find ourselves in the first place.
Or let me qualify that by saying—in my experience, there are fewer people who find themselves than there are people who lose themselves. And as an addendum to that qualification—I've also found, in my experience, that most people don't know they are lost. They only know they are dissatisfied, unmotivated, and/or angry, and/or feeling guilty, and/or…the list can go on!
I have a friend whose son wants to grow up to ride dirt bikes and get national advertisers to pay him for it. You know, like race car drivers do. He thinks because of his goal in life, he doesn't need an education. My gut reaction to that was—OMG! He wants to WHAT? I suspect his mom's gut reaction was similar.
And then I got to thinking about my own child and how I would approach the same or similar situation. My kid had a bent toward art, poetry, photography and writing. My gut response to that was the same as my mom's and her partner's—you can't make a living that way.
After some thought, though, I realized that is not true. Many people make their livings that way. They may not be vaunted artists and poets and photographers; however, people make livings, good livings, through those skills every day. And they love their jobs. And they know who they are and where they are going and what it takes. They are able to make their joy become their job. What better way to live?
So instead my approach was research and learning. What skills does it take, who does it and who do you admire, how did they get to the position they are in.
I would do the same thing with a boy who wants to grow up and ride dirt bikes. I'd do it because I know my gut reaction is there because I was taught to think that way. If I look beyond my gut reaction, then I have to admit our society is populated with people who do things like ride dirt bikes for a living. Let's talk about football players, baseball players, race car drivers, musicians, writers, poets, movie stars.
Successful ones are few and far between, you say? I agree. When you look at them statistically on a national average, they are.
Those careers have a short life, you say? I agree. One can only get beat up so many times each day before the body don't like it no more. Or one can only play the leading lady so long before they become a mature woman. Or … you get the picture.
The skills they employ, however, are not few and far between and no matter how old you get, the sills are still valid.
Let's refine it down even further. Let's say Olympic Athletes. I cannot even begin to imagine what one does with ones life when they spend most of it for one moment, hoping to get a gold medal. Can you? Can you imagine being the parent of a Christi Yamaguchi? Can you imagine what would happen if her parents' had said—I don't think so! You can't make a living that way!
We would have missed so much beauty. And Christy Yamaguchi would have lost herself.
The trick is to be supportive and find alternatives and then watch them grow. The more you fight with your children, the further apart you withdraw from them.
I'm not suggesting my folks should have supported me in becoming a rock star. I am suggesting they might have supported me in learning about and experiencing the things that could lead to a dream. Help me learn who I am. Who I AM. Not who society says I SHOULD be, or how society says I should be SUCCESSFUL. Or even what society say is successful.
As parents, we can't predict our children's paths. We can't walk it for them. We can only give them the skills to figure it out for themselves. And I don't know if you parents have noticed this—the more you say "no, you can't", the more inclined they are to rebel. And pretty soon you get into the teen years and it is tug of war and you spend your nights wondering where you went wrong and if they are going to live beyond the ripe old age of 19.
So I go back to my little song up there. There is one thing all of us need to remember—not only about our children's lives, also about our own.
I will follow me.
I am my first relationship. I am my last relationship.
I don't care if mommy is looking down at me when I am born; I am still my first relationship. She is out there, I am in here. It is mommy's goal to teach me about myself and the world I live in and how to survive.
In the end, it is my goal to survive with joy. There are lots of words for it. To survive with my wants and needs met. To not sit back at age 50 and wonder where I lost myself.
We all have to work for a living. It is part of life. We spend the majority of our waking hours working. It is what we do. If we weren't working a job, we'd be out in the fields planting and harvesting food, chopping wood, etc. Or hunting and gathering. It is how we survive. It is how everything survives. One needs to eat and have shelter and have a safe place to be. Once survival of the body is accomplished, then we start looking for what makes us … what we are beyond survival.
Well, in this society we've got most of it knocked. We have time to explore and learn who we are beyond survival. Our children have the opportunity to become more than a hunter-gatherer.
At least for the most part. I shudder to think of all the people in our society who still must eek out bare survival. Just because I do not mention it here, does not mean I am not aware of it.
My message is this—relationships are what we do in life. We cannot avoid it. Our primary relationship in life is with ourselves. No matter how far you run or where you go or how many times you change careers, mates, houses, or cities—you will always come with you. You are the constant in a universe of change. You may constantly change and yet you are your constant.
Make friends with yourself.
And then as parents, help teach your children the same thing. Think beyond the box of our family and societal enculturation. Teach your children to think beyond that box.
