I was the poor kid in an elite school, it was required that everyone grow up to be brilliant, and I have spent my adult life kicking myself for what I haven’t done, and also wondering why so many seemingly not so smart people manage to achieve so much.

I have ignored my body to the point of total neglect, but have been inspired recently to take up yoga, because it still partly cerebral!

I am white but I wear a headscarf, so I am often perceived as a migrant, so I feel suspended between worlds.

Anyway, great post, thank you.

To everyone – so many of us have different cultural explanations for and versions of what seems to be a too-common experience of feeling isolated and competitive and like our worth is only our work-related achievements. (Not to be too flip, but: my friend Hilary and I have a little pretend sitcom in which we turn to each other at conversational moments like this, shrug, smile, and say, “Thaaaat’s capitalism.” Then the creepy laugh track comes in.)

But really, is it a white-supremacy-culture thing? an assimilation-to-white-supremacy-culture thing? a midwestern thing? a poor-kids thing? an immigrants’-kids thing, as in Lisa’s example? seems clear it’s something that’s happening in different ways in lots of different spaces and cultures, across identities, at least within the U.S. society I think most of us (?) are writing from.

I really appreciate how open and honest you all are being in your responses, reminding us how social messages are internalized differently and yet pervasively, pervasively and yet differently.

I know for me that relearning, learning to see myself not as an atomized individual but as part of communities, and to envision society/the world as a community-based, interconnected space and try to live in ways that enact and connect to that vision on the local scale — collaborating rather than competing, connecting rather than behaving in ways that increase isolation … that is an ongoing and sometimes challenging process within a very individualized, competitive, and hierarchical culture — but one that I think is necessary and inspiring and totally worth all the perceived risks.

I used to think the list of achievements was a Midwestern thing – that was all I knew to blame at the time. When you grow up in middle America, there is this expectation that you can/will account for your time. This includes leisure time – what did you do? Did you read a proper book or did you stare at the TV? Constant productivity – are you busy? Get busier. I am still unlearning this and perhaps have not even started down that path, can only see it from where I stand, intellectually knowing I should go but so terrified to leave behind the safety of known/understandable anxiety. I can only accept it as a class component, a racial component, an able-bodied privilege, if I walk down there. Due to my able-bodied-ness, I fear I will turn around and run back, weak. That potential humiliation is also terrifying. I want to be better than that. I want to meet someone on the path who reminds me to stay. Don’t look back. Just because it hurts doesn’t mean it is wrong. Like when my acupuncturist puts the needle in my leg. Breathe through it. She is there, and I trust her. Who is on the path? Or do I just go alone because we all have to do it that way?

I live in a new city where I don’t know anything about the history and do not speak the native language. I live a five-ten minute walk from the ocean and go there sometimes. I only learn about myself there because there is no one to explain it, the place, to me. At night, the street lamps shine on the water, and you can see the bottom of the sea, the plants sloshing around at 9pm in sub-zero temperatures. I feel like the plants. Stuck, seen.

I can go back to my own blog and write about how real these things are for me, which is what I intend to do, but this is my long-winded way of saying thank you for sharing this. It is so real to me that I got chills as I read. As you look back on where you were, I wonder what looking ahead can be.

Also identified with your “perfectionist” tendencies, though mine have risen from growing up working-class and always feeling like the dirty/poor kids with something to prove to the world. As I break into my mid-thirties, I’m only just being able to acknowledge this.

I’ve been obsessed with Griffith Park lately, wrote a short story where the main action takes place in the parking lot by the Astronomer’s Monument, and had the chance to hike up there last time I drove through LA. A fascinating gorgeous spot and a great location for examining issues of history, class, colonialization and nature vs. urban.

Thanks, for this Jess. I hope you don’t mind, but I started to walk behind you guys.


http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2009/02/response-to-jess-everything-in-sink.html


rebecca – it is beautiful to read that you are in the midst of this process. truly, beyond isolated individualism and fear that keeps us from connecting is a whole other, better way of relating to ourselves and others. none of us will do it “right” every time, and that’s okay, and completely worth the risk.

isabel – i think that insight about how perfectionism is not just damaging to us as individuals but also is damaging outwardly is really important – it’s doing more than just hurting us one at a time; it’s a barrier to relationship building, community building, movement making and a world that is about cooperation and connection. thank you for taking the conversation in that direction. (and i haven’t read kohn — will try to. thanks for the recommendation!)

love to you all,

j

I could have written this sentence.

When I was having my nervous breakdown (which was pretty mild, as nervous breakdowns go), one thing I would do that I later filed as an unhealthy habit was just walk for hours. Not to go anywhere in particular, just walk around and around the campus (land belonging to what people so many centuries ago?) or the neighborhood or sometimes when it was cold in circles at the 7-11 at 4 in the morning when I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t handle anymore sitting and thinking about how miserable I was. I thought this was messed up and it sort of was, but now I wonder if I wasn’t, to a certain degree, subconsciously self-medicating.

I have spent a lot of time in the year and a half since then thinking about perfectionism and competition and the ways they messed me up and, later, when I was starting to lift out of the myopic world of depression, the ways they might be messing other people up. The ways, also, they alienate us from each other, make us approach each other guardedly, defensively, focused on ourselves and how we come across instead of on other people and what they can share with us or teach us or say to make us laugh. I agree with you completely on their being a part of hierarchical/oppressive systems and cultures.

You’ve given me a lot to think about – too much for a comment! but I do want to ask – have you ever read anything by Alfie Kohn? Most of his work is education-related, which is how I got into him, but he’s a lot more radical, I think, than you might expect (though it makes sense when you think about it because – what better way to examine our deepest cultural assumptions than by examining what exactly it is we are teaching our children, who exactly we want them to become and how we want them to do it?) and he writes a lot about competition/competitiveness/”achievement” and its costs, the downsides of praise and focusing on results – you might find him interesting.