You’re Already Here
Dear Friends,
As always, here’s the audio and a semi-transcript below for those who prefer to read.
Two things have become clear to me in the last week:
That for a long time I have associated my worth with the amount of work I do and fail to do
That my sub-conscious but most prominent aspiration has been to be someone that is able to work all the time and know everything.
It goes without saying that these two things are problematic, especially because, on top of those two things, is my desire to please. Even so, there are still other things I care about and are important to me - the emancipation of the black race, writing a book I'd want to re-read multiple times, and being in a position to pass on knowledge to others, guide and encourage them to be their true selves. So it is not even that I have no desires for myself that are solely mine and without any external influence or prodding. The problem is that I have prioritised things in a way that put my desires out of favour.
I am convinced, even though it is not something to which I would readily admit, that people's opinions, acceptance and validation of me, my mental capacity and work ethic, somehow became more important to me than my own desires for myself. If this was not true, I would allow myself to do what it takes to bring my desires into being and not be afraid to do those things badly until I am great at them.
Here was my response to a prompt for a french class about a super power I'd chose (excuse my french, I am learning):
Si je pouvais avoir un pouvoir surhumain ou magique, je choisirais de n'avoir pas peur de faire mal les choses. Si j'avais ce pouvoir, j'écrirais beaucoup de livres mal jusqu'a ce que je puisse écrire mieux et puis, j’écrirais des bons livres intéressants. Je parlerais toutes les langues que j’aime comme le français, sans honte, jusqu'à ce que je devienne fluent et puis, je parlerais avec un accent parfait. J’apprendrais à dessiner et je dessinerais les bandes dessinées qui montrent les messages drôles, profonds et vrais. Je commencerais avec les chiffres de bâton. Je travaillerais lentement et je ne m'inquièterais de rien. Je ferais ce que je veux sans doute, sans honte, sans considération aux autres personnes et leurs avis. Ce n’est pas la téléportation ou l’invisibilité, pas même la capacité de lire dans les pensées, mais pour moi, si je n’avais pas peur de faire mal les choses, je pourrais faire tout ce que je veux faire ! Ce serait magique.
I am basically talking about all the things I would just do, if I was not so afraid at being bad at something. Write bad books until I wrote a great one, speak all the languages I want to learn with a terrible accent until I became fluent. Learn how to draw and draw comic strips that have funny, profound and true messages, work through things slowly, without worrying about anything. I will do all I want to do without doubt or shame or thought to what others think. It's not teleportation or invisibility, or even the ability to read minds, but for me, if I had no fear of doing badly, I would do all I want, and that would be magical.
It was really sad writing that. Sad because if I heard a friend say those things about herself or himself, I’d feel bad for them and I’d want them to see otherwise. Nonetheless, I was also happy that I could be honest with myself, and admit, very openly, that the reason I don't do all the things I want to do, is because I hate to do badly. I just don't like sub-standard performance, and so rather than 'suffer' through that mediocre patch, I often do nothing.
I keep thinking to myself that I don't know what I want or what I am doing, but that is not true. I do know what I want for the most part. I just don't know how I will get there and I am too afraid of failing or meandering to figure it out myself. It feels easier to be told what to do or guess what to do based on what people say and how they react to me.
Don't get me wrong, not everyone's opinion matters to me. I don't really care about money or things, so I typically ignore people that emphasise materialism or consumerism. I admire people who have built competence, wisdom and success over time, people who add value to human existence by doing the best that they can, and showing love at the core of it. I care what people like that think. And I think I make up versions of them in my head. I assume many things about how they work and how they came to be who they are, and then I hold myself to that imaginary high standard.
However, over the course of this first year of my PhD, I have come to realise some things. - things that turn my misplaced priorities on its head. And it is that there are no expectations of me beyond what I expect of myself. It has been really difficult for me to accept that, because this is not what I have believed for most of my life. Of course it is my show, it has always been, but I have mostly behaved as though it is not.
So this year has been difficult for me - not so much because of the assignments etc that I have gotten to do, but because, for the first time, I have accepted and decided to face the reality that I must prioritise my own desires for myself. That takes discipline and commitment to myself, which I never really developed before. Any discipline I had was in fear of failure, not so much in expectation of my success. You can't really thrive in a PhD program if you are satisfying someone else's curiosity or desires. You have to be purposeful and self-directed.
There's no one to tell you what to do and give you a gold star for doing it. The best you get is guidance and advice that will still require your decisions, active participation and forward movement. This is all somewhat new for me. I have nothing to hide behind and this model of feeling like a constant failure, just because that is what I am used to, is a recipe for disaster. It doesn't fly here.
All this is important, because even though I can't see beyond what is right in front of me right now, and I have no firm plans for it, my PhD is important to me because I chose it for myself even when not everyone agreed with me or when some reduced what I wanted to do to "you like school sha". I don't think I realised that I was taking a really big step forward in this lesson of 'being and doing me'. I think I thought it was a one time thing then I could go back to taking directions, this time from intellectuals whom I actually respected. But the reality is very different, and this year has taught me that I have to follow through on this decision to be myself.
So right now I am learning to be myself alongside doing this PhD, and I have to admit, I am not finding it easy to do. I am learning to coax myself out of being paralysed because I find that I have too much to do and no idea how I will do it all. I am having to deal with regret: " maybe it was too much to take both Friday evening and the whole of Saturday off". I have to deal with knowing that I came here to find something out, but am extremely unsure about it because no one else has found it out already, and also that the problems in the world are so many, forming such a complex web that it feels impossible to untangle only a portion of it (it's not). I am having to learn to be honest - "It's okay to skip this. It's actually necessary to skip it. No you're not a bad student for skimming, remember, "only peasants read from cover to cover". I am learning that 10 pages really can be summarised into 3, and I won't really have missed the information on the other 7, it doesn't make me any less capable or in the know. I am learning to make my desires the most important. Learning to learn. Learning to trust my capacity and be unashamed to improve it. Learning to insist on my own self. Trying to figure myself out, and what it is that I am actually doing here. Wandering if self-confidence is a pre-requisite and how I somehow fooled all of them. Realising that some deadlines will just not be met, but the work will be completed. Praying for the discipline to take care of my mental and physical health. Realising that I am mostly alone, but not lonely, and I don't mind it. Wishing so hard, that I would just be myself and free myself.
I don't want anything else but to free myself completely and to trust God. I don't really trust Him, maybe just a little bit, but I want to trust Him completely.
The conclusion? That I am doing the best that I can. It doesn't feel enough, it never does, but at least I can acknowledge it - the invisible progress I am making.
I am looking forward to that moment in the future where I am doing what I want to be doing just for me and no one else. But then reality hits me. That future is here now. I am that future person doing what she wants because she wanted to do it, and then I understand better, why He's always telling me to be grateful. It is because I am already here. I am already her.
I hope this helps you today.
Love,
O.F.P.