A poem for the 4th

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I am traveling on the fourth and must publish something every day to meet the 60-day challenge I’m committed to. I am not a poet, but I thought it might be nice to schedule to share someone else’s poetry on this holiday that always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I stumbled across this and felt it shares elements of my usual content–what results when we disconnect ourselves from our natural world. Cynical, but that’s how I often feel on this patriotic holiday.

Concrete Jungle by Ali Gartner

We used to think seven generations ahead
Now we are become selfish
Only thinking about me, myself and I
Only thinking in the present, not learning from the past.
We used to stroll barefoot through the overgrown grass,
Its morning dew tickling our feet
Now we step outside onto the rugged concrete
No more natural than the over processed food we eat
We used to walk down the snow sprinkled trail,
Maybe catch a glimpse of a bobcat, playing eye tricks with its tail
Now there is only one type of bobcat we see
The one that is fur free, clearing the pavement of all debris
We used to walk through a footpath in a forest of pine
The smell intoxicating our lungs and mind
Now the only smell to be found comes from plastic trees
Swaying on my rear-view mirror, labelled pine breeze
We used to watch the valley play hide and seek
Shadowed by the mountain’s immeasurable peak
Considered the largest thing known to man
Now skyscrapers are the most extravagant and titanic part of the plan
We used to sit next to the stream, the wind caressing our crown
Watching the magnificent untamed beasts roam far, far from town
Now they are just characters of folktales, memories we pass down
An adjective to describe someone, no more a noun
This could be our reality
If we continue to live in impracticality
No more vast, endless oceans-
Only littered swamps, the colour of a witch’s potions.
No more soaring birds overhead-
Only planes, so loud they rock your bed.
No more woods
No more natural goods
We have little time
To change our self centered, one track minds
Before we are stuck with a great heap of jumble
Left only with an artificial concrete jungle.

So you want to be smart…

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Let’s talk about the word, smart. What do you feel when you say or hear this word? I dislike this vague but cruel word very much; let me explain.

Yesterday, my daughter (who like me is a lover of precise language) said to me, “I think I’ve figured out the difference between the word clever and the word smart. I think clever refers more to problem-solving and smart…”

I cut her off. I know, I really need to stop that, but I have lots to say about this little awful word, and I jumped in and said, “I think the word smart is used to … elevate people.”

And she said, “I think it’s meant to put other people down.”

“We’re saying the same thing.”

“Oooh, you’re right!”

Forever, we’ve used the word smart to refer to people who have academic intelligence—the intelligence our society values above all others. If you get good grades in school, you’re smart. (Never mind that grades are inherently biased and often reflect the teacher’s preferences for certain students or have been skewed with “extra-credit”. Ugh, a post for another day.)

If you’re good at information recall, even if it’s useless information, you’re smart. If math formulas come easy to you, you’re smart. Oh, and of course, the more “education” you have, the smarter you are. If you have an advanced degree, you have unequivocal evidence that you’re smart. If you’re a college professor, you can wear your job like a badge of smartness. If you’re an engineer, well same goes for these guys, right?

And if you’re not smart, what are you? Are you the opposite of smart? Yikes. But that’s how kids in school feel when they don’t demonstrate academic intelligence. I want to scream every time one of my children say, “I’m dumb” or “I’m just stupid” when they don’t know something—often knowledge that they’ve not had the opportunity to learn yet, or just something unnecessary to their lives so they let it go from their memory bank. (Which is actually smarter? A brain that purges irrelevant information or one that recalls useless details at will?)

There are so many ways that people can be intelligent and frankly, other types of intelligence are much more likely to lead to a satisfying and meaningful life than being academically gifted. I don’t want to stereotype engineers, and I definitely know this doesn’t apply to all of them, but they have a reputation of not being particularly savvy when it comes to social skills. And those professors are famous for not having real world skills. Sorry, professors.

So what about those clever people with sharp wit that make us laugh but flunked out of school. Are they smart? I guess they could be considered “street smart” but that definitely doesn’t carry the same value in our culture.

What about the fast food worker who makes stunning art in her spare time? Is this a form of smartness or do we reserve that word for the educated elite, and call this woman creative? Because creative and smart are not the same thing, right?

How about the stay-at-home mom who juggles the care of two small children, cleaning, meal planning and shopping, bookkeeping for the house, and still manages to organize weekly social gatherings with her friends. That takes some serious energy, organization, and determination. Does it take smarts? Do we value her contribution to society the same way we value a college professor?    

What about the person who never goes to college but instead busks in busy city centers with his guitar and his voice, moving from place to place, discovering that he prefers the simple things in life and forgoing the social norms for this vagabond lifestyle? What do we think of this guy? Do we throw a few bucks in his guitar case because we think he’s smart?

But we all seem to want our kids to be smart. Really?! Why? It’s a values thing. We elevate smart people and pay them more if they make it through education. But being smart has its pitfalls. More on this in a few days…

Lying to Ourselves

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You never empathize with me.

You like arguing against me.

You manipulate me.

You don’t care when dad is mean to me.

You’re never on my side. You don’t seem to even be able to see my side.

You gaslight me.

I’m learning about cognitive distortions. Not for my new role at a non-profit for families with children who’ve been diagnosed with mental illness, but because of the challenging relationship I have with my own 15 yo daughter. When she said these things to me yesterday, did I recognize them for cognitive distortions? Yes, but I still let them sink in and hurt me deeply as a mother.

One way to deal with cognitive distortions (black-and white thinking, overgeneralization, using a negative filter, disqualifying the positive, to name just a few) is to examine the evidence. Here are the facts from my perspective:

I’ve been a consistent advocate for my daughter. When she was in school, I insisted she have plenty of time to work on her interests, prioritizing that over any schoolwork that was sent home. I advocated for her choice to leave school to direct her own learning, providing what I saw as ample evidence that she is perfectly capable of acquiring any knowledge she needs. I’ve advocated for her privacy and for her right to learn things through lived experience rather than having us structure her life for her.

I’ve put intense effort into prioritizing relationship over control and refused to impose consequences to “shape” her behavior. I make sure that I’m available to her when she wants to share something she’s learned or some content that simply amuses her. I implore her father to see her as a person, to recognize the things she does well and to show interest in her interests, to build connection with her.

What I don’t do is agree with her view of the world. We are in different camps on most current political and social issues, and I don’t affirm her views that she believes are grounded in sound reasoning, because I don’t believe they are. Unfortunately, general society supports her views. This has damaged my credibility in her eyes and she rejects me as a mentor. She seems to look for every scrap of evidence that I am not to be trusted and every mistake I make (and I know I make plenty) gets tallied and used to obscure anything that might be construed as good parenting.

I look for every possible thing I can agree with her on and make sure I vocalize it. We spend way more time together than most mothers and daughters, mostly I believe because her friends are in school, so she comes to me to share her thoughts and discoveries. We have amazing philosophical conversations and her language skills are phenomenal. She is indeed my daughter in her thinking style and her passion.

She doesn’t see this part of our relationship. Or rather, I think she unconsciously rejects it. Because she believes my influence is tainted, she wants nothing more than to not be me. This is so incredibly painful because I’ve spent my adult life intentionally gaining the wisdom I would need to parent her soundly. I have so many resources and practices that could help her become more self-aware and confident. But she is determined to be broken, in need of fixing. The system has poisoned her against me. There it is, dear reader. The reason for my anger.

I blew up yesterday after we created this list of how I “make her life hell”. She’d sent me a biting text in the night outlining why she hates living in our home, and I had hoped to find a way to address some of her cognitive distortions. I spent the morning preparing myself for the conversation because too often I allow myself to get triggered by the way she sees my presence in her life and I respond defensively.

But I failed miserably to contain my pain and maintain my practice of patient calm. I went completely off the deep end and slid back into the me I was in my twenties: sarcastic, truth-telling, intimidating, tone dripping with contempt. I hadn’t seen that woman in decades. And I proved my daughter totally right. Years of work down the toilet.

I am a terrible mother. Our relationship is destroyed. Cognitive distortions? I hope so. I’m new to the concept, but I fear the evidence is not in my favor.  

Easy First Day

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First day on the new job! And I’m still in my pajamas–okay not really. Actually, I’m in my smelly workout clothes, but headed to the shower here soon.

My primary task for the day was to write a first draft of a mission and vision for the department I’m overseeing. When I was facilitating masterminds and trainings for women entrepreneurs, one of the exercises I encouraged my clients to do was to use Simon’s Sinek’s model of Start with Why to write a vision and mission.

In his popular TED talk, he explains that successful companies don’t just market what they offer, but rather they communicate why they exist. He describes the “Golden Circle” that is three concentric circles with the inner circle labeled “Why”, the middle circle labeled “How” and the outer circle is the “What.”

After following Sinek for some time and picking up the language he uses to captivate his audiences, I started adopting the “I imagine a world where…” to introduce people to my own vision for a better world (why I do what I do,) and then “I believe…” to describe how we might create that world. Then the “what we offer” to clearly describe a company’s offerings (that aligns with the described how/mission) to help create the world that was being envisioned.

Make sense? Here’s my rough draft:

At the IFF, we imagine a world where childhood is recognized as a time for developing a strong sense of self, resilience and flexibility, ownership of one’s experience, and deep supportive relationships so that once adulthood is reached, the creation of a satisfying and meaningful life is natural and attainable.

We believe that emotional intelligence along with a keen self-awareness and sense of purpose are what make living a satisfying and meaningful life possible. Children who are encouraged to identify and explore their emotions in environments of unconditional support are more likely to become emotionally intelligent adults. When children have a safe place to go to be around other children and engage with the world, they’re more likely to discover their talents and interests. And when youth have the support of other youth and healthy adults when faced with adversity, they know they can handle life’s challenges and they develop the necessary skills to tackle future problems.

What we offer:

  • literature-based curriculum designed to help young children develop emotional intelligence and language skills
  • curriculum to help older children discover and develop their core gifts
  • learning environments where this curriculum is delivered by caring adults and youth mentors; we can also come to you
  • drop-in centers for youth who need safe places to spend time with other kids or just to hang out and read a book
  • focused youth and advocacy groups
  • leadership development and transition support for teenagers and young adults

Thoughts? Feedback? I’m realizing it would be more cohesive if I mention community in the We Believe (how) section. I have a little while to spend on revisions, but you get the picture. Open to suggestions…

If only I could write like her…

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I’ve been pretty good about working ahead and scheduling for Sunday so I could remain unplugged one day of the week. Unfortunately, this week got away from me and here I am, Sunday morning, hooked up to the internet, breaking one promise to myself so as to keep another and publish something every day for sixty days.

So I’m going to share an essay from Carol Black. Oh, if I only could write like her! I reread this essay this morning trying to pull the most profound quote to share with you, so you’d be compelled to click the link and read the whole thing. I got caught up again in her beautiful prose that wrenches at my emotions.

Every essay she writes is heartbreaking and beautiful. Every paragraph is so elegantly persuasive; it feels impossible to choose just one passage to pull out and highlight, so know as you read this teaser know that the entire piece is equally compelling:

When we first take children from the world and put them in an institution, they cry.  It used to be on the first day of kindergarten, but now it’s at an ever earlier age, sometimes when they are only a few weeks old.  “Don’t worry,” the nice teacher says sweetly, “As soon as you’re gone she’ll be fine.  It won’t take more than a few days.  She’ll adjust.” And she does.  She adjusts to an indoor world of cinderblock and plastic, of fluorescent light and half-closed blinds (never mind that studies show that children don’t grow as well in fluorescent light as they do in sunlight; did we really need to be told that?)  Some children grieve longer than others, gazing through the slats of the blinds at the bright world outside; some resist longer than others, tuning out the nice teacher, thwarting her when they can, refusing to sit still when she tells them to (this resistance, we are told, is a “disorder.”)  But gradually, over the many years of confinement, they adjust.  The cinderblock world becomes their world.  They don’t know the names of the trees outside the classroom window. They don’t know the names of the birds in the trees.  They don’t know if the moon is waxing or waning, if that berry is edible or poisonous, if that song is for mating or warning.

Here’s the entire article: On the Wildness of Children.

YES, I’ll take it!

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So I took the job at the non-profit and am much more excited about it than I thought! It’s not great money, but I get to do things I’m good at (strengthszone) and will be working to improve mental health for the youth in my home state.

After extensive conversations with the Exec Director, I am very pleased with our mission alignment. It’s clear she values what I can offer in terms of a unique understanding of cultural impact on children’s mental wellness. She’s also giving me tons of trust and freedom to assemble a more honoring lexicon to use when describing children’s responses to their emotional experience and supporting them to healthier decision-making skills.  

I am contracted to write emotional intelligence curricula, coordinate and oversee the organization’s youth programs, build partnerships within the community with other organizations who offer programs for struggling teens and also those who need our programs, act as liaison to the national Youth MOVE National community, and potentially to offer trainings in the community around how to work with children to increase emotional intelligence and mental health.

This will be a project-based position with no clocking in and out (halleluiah!) I just need to go in every couple of weeks to share my progress on projects and ensure I’m not going too rogue. There will, of course, be other scheduled requirements such as representing the organization at events and offering content to various youth communities, but for the most part, I am free to complete my assignment how and when it works best for me. In fact, I’m even taking my kids to SoCal for a week this month to visit good friends, and it’s no problema. I’ll have to do a little work while there, but that’s okay.

This is a huge relief for me. I’ve not been part of the 9-5 grind for so long, instead enjoying (and thoroughly appreciating) being the captain of my own ship; I really thought I might be unemployable. Every job description I read felt like prison and caused my heart to sink as I thought about going back to Monday Morning Malaise. I may still have to supplement with another part time gig, but I’ll take this any day over the ridiculous job descriptions that sound like they’re designed for a team of 20 people or maybe a superhero or maybe just to make sure you know who owns you.

I know the day may still be forthcoming when I’ll have to succumb and take a “real” job, but I’ve managed to create income and keep my freedom for the foreseeable future and I’m so so so so so grateful.

Educating Freedom

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Some good friends of mine, a tight-knit family with parents in human support fields, both working with adults who are struggling to function (imagine that) were telling me how difficult it is to drop their 5-year-old daughter off at kindergarten. She screams and resists and they pretty much have to drag her into school.

Red flag? I think it should be. Yet, we’re brainwashed into believing there are no other options. This is what kids are supposed to do. They go to school where they’ll learn everything they need to know to function as human adults in our society, right? So what is it they need to know?

Historical facts and dates? They’ll forget those. How the world works? I learned everything I know about physics when I became a second grade teacher because I’d forgotten every little bit of science I learned in school. How to read? When I was a third grader, I sat silently terrified, surrounded by “big kids” in a sixth grade reading class because I had already discovered a way to escape my life in highly engaging chapter books and devoured them voraciously. That’s all I remember about “learning to read” in school—oh, and that I was “smarter” than my classmates because of how quickly I sped through the colors of the SRA reading program. Algebra and geometry? What I learned in my high school algebra class was that I hated math; in geometry, I developed my social skills by convincing the kid behind me to let me cheat off his work so I could avoid my creepy perv of a teacher’s hand on my waste when I went up to his desk to get help.  What do you remember learning in school?

I’ll bet you remember learning how to sit still and raise your hand when you wanted to speak. I’ll bet you remember paying careful attention to the bathroom policy so you’d know how long you’d have to hold it. Or maybe, you remember coming up with clever ways to convince your mom you were sick so you could stay home. I remember thinking if I took the thermometer out of my mouth when my mom was out of the room, the reading would be off enough that she’d have to keep me home—clearly all that science was paying off!

I remember getting antsy when someone else turned a test in ahead of me because it meant I’d lost the race and someone else might be “smarter” than me. I learned that there’s only one right answer and not to ask too many questions. In high school, I learned really well how to fly under the radar, how to be invisible, how to cram for tests the night before so I could get away with ignoring my homework. I learned exactly how little I could do to still graduate, so I guess I learned efficiency?

I also figured out the best time of day to leave campus and walk across town to my boyfriend’s house. (Though there was that one day my dad randomly drove by and I was busted!) I learned that my hair and make-up mattered and that my wardrobe was insufficient. In fact, once when a boy was picking me up for our first date after I had agonized for hours about what I could wear, he looked me up and down and asked if I could change. I learned that the best way to get through high school was to be in the popular crowd, yet I never seemed able to quite break into that. The next best way was to always have a boyfriend, whether I really liked the boy or not.

So what did I really learn? I learned that using my resources was cheating, my worth was determined by how well my teachers liked me, needing others was bad, my thoughts and feelings held no weight, attractive people did better in life than nice people, that my gut was not to be trusted. I learned to please the adults who were always right and that authority figures had total control over my life.

I learned that anything I studied could be forgotten after the test, mistakes were punished and there were no do-overs, failing was to be avoided at all costs. I learned to study my teachers so I knew exactly what they wanted and just how little I could do to keep their favor or at least not attract their contempt.

And I learned what freedom means. It means giving up control over the majority of your time so you can have the freedom to buy a house and toys. It means busting your ass to build someone else’s dream so one day when you are old, you can stop working and be free to finally figure out what your dream is. It means sacrificing your childhood and your sense of self so you can appreciate living in a free country where you get to watch other people live their lives on reality TV.

There’s a powerful reason that five year old girl screams when she’s dragged into that classroom. Children know what true freedom is…and what it isn’t. Alarm bells are ringing in her head and heart; she recognizes that environment has no real interest in who she is and its sole purpose is to suck away her one and only childhood and educate her how to be in this free world of ours.   

Broken

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Ha! So, I am looking for work. I really must create additional income for my family. The pressure to do so is taking a serious toll on the climate in my home and there’s so much more I could whine and complain about when it comes to this topic, but if I don’t comply and get a job, my family will likely fall apart. (I believe getting a job may just be the impetus that breaks us, but the other way—where I stay home and try to be the culture keeper of a culture my family rejects while our financial resources continue to diminish—is definitely not working.)

If you’ve been in the job market lately, you know securing a position is a crazy hard task, requiring considerable hoop jumping and clever tactics just to get noticed.  I actually have a couple of offers. And they’re both really fucking with me. They are as follows:

Being the youth program director for a non-profit that connects families of children with mental illness with resources, offers programming for children with mental illness, and works to educate around and de-stigmatize mental illness.

Counseling people seeking to take advantage of their employer’s EAP (employee assistance program) and SUD (Substance Use Disorder) program, ensuring they know how to navigate the system and receive the support they’re seeking.

Good God. I blog about how we’ve been broken by our education system, and the only jobs I can get considered for are those that just put bandaids on the wounds we’ve created with our mess. I don’t fix broken shit. I know this sounds callous, but it is seriously at the bottom of my Strengthsfinder profile. “Restorative” is number 34 out of 34 themes, meaning it’s something I should avoid because it sucks the life out of me. Besides, we’re not really “restoring” anything! We’re jimmying fixes to plug the dike as long as possible before our collective broken conscience obliterates the instable wall that’s barely holding it in check these days.

What’s my sweet spot? My strengthszone if you will? Working with people to recognize and maximize their strengths, with people who are motivated to discover and live their best lives, in systems where people view the world through a lens of possibility. Maybe we can start taking the wall down intentionally and systematically, dealing with the fallout little by little and restoring human nature to the social stewardship that actually honors each individual for meaningful contribution instead of coercing compliance to the capitalist gods.

I like to think my natural role is to create environments that don’t require mental illness labels and/or don’t contribute to mental illness. Mental illness diagnoses, imo, are usually an indicator that the person didn’t conform to social norms and the oppressive environments we’ve designed OR they’re traumatized by them or by families in which the parents were traumatized by them. How about instead of destigmatizing mental illness, we prevent it?!  

Addiction is a maladaptive coping mechanism for attachment voids created by broken systems (including dysfunctional families.) We wouldn’t need to treat so much addiction, if we would recognize the cultural dismantling of unconditionally supportive communities and work to reinstate them.

If we could recognize the culpability of the systems we’ve designed in the creation of mental illness and addiction, we could potentially slow the momentum we’ve created toward humanity’s fall from grace. But what do I know?

In the meantime, I guess I join the giant triage crew—the industry that makes hordes of money on the needs of the broken masses. Question is, do I take the more instable job that allows me some autonomy and creativity offering at least the illusion of freedom? Or the more boxy job with secure pay and benefits? I hate this decision. I truly fear that either way, my own diagnosis is nigh.

I’ll take a shit sandwich, please.

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Do you still have nightmares about school? Last night, I dreamt I was sitting in a classroom as an adult, and I was supposed to be there as some kind of support staff, maybe a speech therapist? Anyway, the teacher was assigning some reading passages with comprehension questions, and I busted out, chanting, “This is dumb, this is dumb, this is dumb,” or something equally silly. In the dream, it seemed much more intelligent, yet also clearly petulant and ineffective. The teacher and students looked at me with disgust, clearly annoyed at the disruption, but other than that, my protest fell on deaf ears.

I woke up and wrote another scathing post about education. I realized that’s all I’m producing right now and may be portraying myself as just angry and cynical. So I thought I’d schedule that one for a later date and try to write about something a little less depressing.

Let’s talk a moment about the culture of Strengthsfinder 2.0. I love this assessment, mostly because I love how individualized it is and I love what I call “labels for good.” Most personality tests have 16 possible boxes to place people in and anyone who follows my blog knows how I feel about boxes. Is there such a thing as a box phobia?

Whoa!! I just realized a weird contradiction in myself. I always claim to hate metaphorical boxes, yet I am an obsessive collector of actual boxes. I have the strangest aversion to getting rid of any type of potentially reusable container, be it square or otherwise. There are numerous shelves in my house storing unsightly stacks (though nested whenever possible!) of empty boxes of various sizes. Hmm, what does it mean?!

Okay, climbing back up out of that rabbit hole. Maybe that’s an analysis for another day.

First things, first. When you ask someone what is meant by strengths and weaknesses, typically that person will say “strengths are what you do well and weaknesses are what you’re not good at.” If we broaden the definition of “strengths” we can start imagining a very different world. In Strengthsfinder culture, strengths are those activities that make you feel strong, they energize you, and have the capacity to put you in flow—that creative state where you lose yourself and all track of time in the doing. And the opposite, your weaknesses, are those things that drain you, that suck the life out of you, those things you desperately wish others would just do for you.

Now we may or may not be talking about your talents. Typically your strengths are also your talents, but you’ve probably engaged in activities you were naturally good at and had them drain you. When this is the case, I encourage people to really explore the context of the activity. Why, where, when, and with whom you do the activity often matter and can totally destroy something that could actually bring you much joy and energy.

And on the flipside, there can be things you are obsessed with that you’re not at all good at. If you’re energized by the learning and driven to push through the tough times (or willing to eat the “shit sandwich” that goes with learning that particular skill as Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her book, Big Magic,) then consider it a strength!

I’m not going to get into the details of the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment and all the many reasons I love it, and I think it’s important to share than I am not affiliated with Gallup and thereby not incentivized by them to promote this personality assessment, but I consider myself an evangelist because I am passionate about the culture around it.

I am passionate because I can imagine this world where more people have spent their childhood free to discover and engage in their strengths. Using these discoveries to guide and motivate their activity choices and explore possibilities for lifestyles that keep them in their strengths zone. How different would this world look if more people figured out how to make meaningful contributions that kept them in this zone? A world where when we met anyone new, we were looking for the unique contribution that person is here to make (instead of what’s wrong with them that needs fixing?)

What if we were energized by and valued for our work purely because we discovered our zone? Would we care as much about keeping up with the Jones’s? Would we have the same levels of anxiety and depression? What about lifestyle diseases? Or even cancer?

We know that stress is the culprit in most illnesses of all types. Wouldn’t a culture where we have meaningful work (that I would argue can be found in any field) that calls on our strengths and keeps us highly engaged, lead to reduced cortisol levels, increased empathy, increased intuition, increased creativity and innovation? How could it not?

There’s a movie coming out soon, Self-Taught: Life Stories from Self-Directed Learners, (the Kickstarter Campaign) that I cannot wait to see. In it we’ll meet adults who spent their childhoods outside of the mainstream schooling complex, adults who weren’t reprogrammed through years of “education.” I’ve been a member of the Alliance for Self-directed Education for awhile now and I finally have hope that such a world can exist—if only we have the courage to step away from what we know to try a different way.

It’s a huge cultural shift to imagine and we’re nowhere near the tipping point, but there’s still rapidly growing communities who can see this world also. They’re out there. And thanks to modern technology, if you’re truly ready to free your children and your family, you can find one–or create one. Are you ready?

I see dead people.

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Truly, I think we’re in the Zombie Apocalypse. It’s a perfect metaphor for our current society of people reduced to mindless producer/consumer states. There’s a general sense of discontent along with ridiculous rates of anxiety, depression, and chronic disease conditions and yet people accept this fate with little resistance, moving unquestioningly through the prescribed path to becoming one of the living dead: go to school, get good grades so you can get into a good college so you can get a good job so you can attract a mate, get married and have children, buy a house, fantasize about vacations and retirement, spend evenings numbing out in front of a screen, live for the weekends, you know the recipe.  

If you read my post, You’ve Been Schooled, you’ll find a list of ways that our school system prepares us for this bleak, depressing consumerist future. Children are reprogrammed to suppress their intuition and deny their own needs for play and self-discovery, never developing the strong sense of self needed to create satisfying and meaningful lives. They graduate from a system that directed nearly every minute of 10,000 hours (and this is without college) of their lives up to this point, disabling their own internal compass and ensuring compliance with our consumerist culture.

I believe humans come wired for contribution, each with unique strengths that support the whole. We’re driven to create and innovate, with bodies that reward us with feel-good chemicals when we’re engaged in those behaviors that call on our natural talents and when we lock arms with our fellow humans to maximize our resources. Ongoing movement throughout the day, generosity, and a sense of purpose are all natural parts of being human, so why aren’t most of us living a lifestyle that reflects this?

Because we’ve all been schooled. Broken like wild stallions. The human spirit is much stronger than it would appear these days, but how is one to resist the slow, steady reprogramming toward external drivers? Rewards and punishments, baby! Mandatory coercive schooling over a long period of time will break just about anyone. Soon a body wants to do nothing if there’s no external reward. We seek the “juice” through other means when our grades fail to provide dopamine hits; social media and video games become the drugs of choice for those who don’t conform well to the authoritarian paradigm of school.  

Most five and six and twelve year olds want that damned gold star. They want to please their teachers and be seen as competent. In fact, according to self-determination theory, along with autonomy and relatedness, a sense of competence is imperative to our psychological well-being. What happens when you don’t get these needs met? Depression, anxiety, addiction.  We end up creating an attachment void that gets filled with virtual or chemical substitutes for authentic connection.

This is nothing new. I’m just one more outraged voice among many who see the wreckage and fear the future of a world filled with sheeple. Why hasn’t there been a revolution?! To demand change requires courage to leave the mainstream, imagination and innovation to create new ways of doing things, risk-tolerance to try those new ways knowing we’ll fail many times before we get it right and others might mock us. Courage, imagination, innovation, resilience: all natural human traits that we’ve sacrificed to our “education.”