Bad Ideas

In the past few months, I've been in a disturbed state. My life itself has been pretty stable. For the first time in my life I'm not trying to get somewhere else physically or professionally. I've lived in one place for two years and it looks like that will continue. I have a job that I like (even as I question my fitness for it) and that pays a living wage, colleagues who don't harass (except for that one woman, and she was more of a temporary nuisance), and some semblance of future security. These are not things that I've had in my entire adult life. At the lower level of the hierarchy of needs, I'm as secure as anyone can hope for. In some sense, some of the goals that I set and re-set for myself ages ago have been attained.

Yet, I am disturbed.

The security that I've found has allowed me now to look at some of the ideas by which I live my life. That may explain my intense reaction to those self-help responses of my students. I'm partly projecting my own psychological and intellectual work onto them.

I have lived according to some very bad ideas. They aren't original bad ideas. In fact, most of them are pretty cliched. You can get a notion of those ideas in the content of my "Daddy Issues" post. You can see them in my comments on other blogs when the discussion turns to abuse. You can also see them in my own comments on this blog in the way that I vacillate. I'm fighting between what I'm supposed to believe and what I do believe. What I do believe, and what I must say to prevent people from disliking me. I'm trying to sort out the differences among these voices. The "supposed to believe" voices, the ones that say "you have to believe this or people will hate you," have always been the loudest and have had the most power. The "do believe" voices are quite often frightening. The end result feels like intellectual weakness and neurosis.

In the sorting, I've had a few epiphanies that have revealed the rotten ideas. One of those rotten ideas is, "make everyone around you happy, even at the expense of your own integrity." This is a difficult idea to recognize as bad because it guides etiquette and feminine behavior. This is the rule of being a "good girl" and therefore worthy of love, or at least toleration. I don't think I'm naturally disposed to being that "good girl." Yet, I have constantly followed the "good girl" script because it seemed to be the only way that people would like (or at least tolerate) me, even as I secretly believed myself to be completely unlikeable. It seemed to be the only way to survive.

So, here we have two bad ideas: "keep people happy at the expense of your own integrity" and "you are completely unlikeable." The second actually leads to the first.

For instance, I found myself sitting between two people. One person made one assertion, the other made the opposite. I suddenly became confused about my role in this conversation. I agreed with one and I just as readily agreed with the other. I was trying to make nice. I was trying to ingratiate myself to both. In the end, I felt like a fraud because, really, I completely agreed with one; but, to say so, meant I might hurt the other's feelings. Worse, agreeing with one over the other would lessen the chances of one of them liking me. The horror!

That situation involved two equal people. Two people who did not have any power over my life and neither of whom was more powerful than the other in relation to me. In situations in which I perceive one person to be more powerful than the other, I have gravitated toward the more powerful person in order to hide myself behind that person. In other words, if I can't please everyone in the room, then pleasing the most powerful person would be the wisest course of action. I was -- am -- like the weak new inmate in a stereotypical prison show. I'm the one who finds the baddest inmate and throws myself at her mercy in exchange for protection because I know I can't protect myself.

Ah, there is a third bad idea: "you can never protect yourself."

Tangential but related to this set of ideas is the concept that any given situation has an appropriate response, like a script. I've recently discovered that, for much of my life, I've been able to discern that script better than I have been able to discern my own, natural response. In recent years, however, I'm less likely to figure out or perform the appropriate responses. I realize the futility of pleasing everyone and lose my self-respect when I try. I haven't yet learned how to not follow the script while also interacting with other people. As a result, I have withdrawn, living more or less like a hermit and have become shockingly, socially awkward.

Pathetic, I know, and completely unoriginal. Yet, these are some of the core beliefs of my existence. I let atrophy anything that prevents the pursuit of these beliefs. If I must make everyone like me, and if one way to make everyone like me is to agree uncritically with everyone or the most powerful person in the room, then I must not work on developing my own ideas or I must blunt or recant my own ideas in the face of disagreement. This is quite a handicap for someone in a profession that requires the development of ideas in the face of disagreements or challenges.

That handicap has had real results. People will say that I can tell a good story; but no one ever would say that I had good or original ideas -- or any ideas at all. Throughout graduate school, I avoided any theory because theory meant ideas that had to be evaluated, and evaluation might offend someone. I took my cues from what other people said rather than from the work under evaluation. I didn't speak up much in class because to do so would mean offending someone. Offending someone meant that everyone in the room might not like me, or, worse, the professor might not like me.* Better to sit back and be silent, absorbing what everyone says and write papers that were long on narrative and short on theory (unless, of course, I had figured out the professor's theories, then I could support those). I even began by hiding myself behind an advisor who was abusive but powerful, until I could no longer take the abuse. That had profound effects on me, as well.

I discovered another bad idea in my writing class while free-writing. We were supposed to be writing in the voice of one of our characters. The prompt was "what does that character want?" That is the driving force behind a story. The character I chose is the autobiographical character from the section of my story that is the weakest. Because the character is autobiographical (more on that at another time), what she wanted was really what I wanted. Because of the character and because of the story, as I wrote, I became more and more and more disturbed. I had realized, for most of my life, I have wanted not to want. I have wanted numbness. I have wanted to set my life in motion then mentally check out.

That is a really bad idea, wanting to be a zombie, and fits with another bad idea: "if you want something, you will never get it. The more that you want something, the less likely you will be to get it." This bad idea has put me at odds with my own ambitions. This bad idea has made me Eeyore, saying, "why bother?" Perhaps it is the flip side of "work hard and you will succeed." Whereas the "work hard" ethic places control for all outcomes in the hands of only the individual, the "why bother" ethic strips the individual of any agency. In the first, the individual is all powerful. In the second, the individual has no power.

All of these bad ideas, taken together, make me think that I've sold myself very short for my whole life. I've undercut my own abilities, my own desires, my own intellectual development, and the possibility to find honest joy and satisfaction. I have served these bad ideas at the expense of myself.

Yet, I have not eradicated myself, despite all efforts external and internal. Something of myself rebels against these ideas. In fact, sometimes the rebellion is the only way I know that there is anything left of myself. I end up perpetually at extremes. Compliant good girl trying to please everyone at one moment, and furious rebel and contrarian at the next. Neither are accurate or honest. At best, I can hold off both in a stasis of profound ambivalence. I hate that because my energy feels caged.

These bad ideas aren't disturbing me. I realize that they were beliefs created in the sick environment of my childhood, and I know that I am now an adult and don't have to be afraid of the monsters in the closet (or the smoke monsters in the jungle) that would eat me if I didn't obey them, even if I really am still afraid of them.

The process of excavating these ideas disturbs me. Having to walk around in the rest of the world among other human beings while excavating these ideas disturbs me. Figuring out how those bad ideas have shaped my life in specific ways disturbs me. Not knowing yet how to act without those ideas disturbs me.

Being disturbed feels good -- or, rather, not bad. It doesn't feel like something I should reduce or escape. "Disturbed" feels like something I should embrace. I return to that concept of holding opposing thoughts, the Asher Lev image of crucifixion as being pulled between two opposing ideas. This disturbed state is that mid-point from which creativity emerges.

*Interestingly, I no longer have the problem with speaking up in class-like situations, but I still have that nagging voice telling me that I am dominating the discussion and now everyone hates me for it. So, I end up apologizing for speaking up.