- Their entire lives, my children have been hounded by one simple yet relentless, cruel and existentially meaningless phrase. I’m pretty sure yours have, too. It has nipped at their heels as they’ve negotiated, alone or with assistance, every transition our society requires them to make on their lonely way to maturity. It has dogged them mercilessly through every audition – for a place in pre-school, kindergarten, high school and college; summer jobs and school plays; making new friends and keeping the old. It has nagged at them as they’ve learned how to make choices that will be both pleasing to themselves and satisfy the obscure ambitions of their parents – choices about what clothes to wear, what food to eat and how much of it, what music to listen to, what summer camp to go to, how to share their own feelings and protect their own privacy. It has whispered insidiously in their ear as they have sought to fashion some kind of understanding of who they are, what kind of person they want to be or think they should be, and what sort of place they feel entitled to occupy in this world. Right now, as one daughter graduates from college and the other from high school, its voice is perhaps as shrill, insistent and inescapable as it has ever been throughout their brief lives.
That phrase, of course, is “Just be yourself”
It's kind of the same as "follow your dreams" or striving for the "American dream". It was cool when America didn't have so many people or trade with anyone but itself, but at this point we have enough doctors and lawyers, there is no gold you can pan out of streams everywhere in California and we need plumbers/electricians. Chances are that 90% of these kids that are told they can achieve these dreams will never come anywhere close, and they'll know before high school that the whole thing was a sham. People need to be a bit more honest with kids I think, then the next generation may not end up as entitled and useless as the current one comparitively.
The thing is I don't think most anyone actually ends up following their dreams, but either directly follows their parents' dreams for them or goes in the direct opposite direction. And then when you mix in the fact that unions lost the propaganda war so badly that skilled blue collar work is considered so undesirable you have pick an intellectual pursuit with the constant refrain of a college degree being the only thing necessary to have the American Dream you end up with tons of people either not hacking their way through med/law school or pursuing Art History or something else that was never meant to produce tons of marketable jobs.
My wife is an MD. She started pursuing a DDS, when that didn't satisfy she started pursuing a PhD, when that dream changed she went to med school. She as had two residency programs. The target shifts as we learn more about the target and about ourselves. There's nothing wrong with this. There *is something wrong with telling people they can only have one dream.The thing is I don't think most anyone actually ends up following their dreams
I think a lot of people end up following their dreams. I just think they have many, many dreams that are constantly changing. I think the big fallacy here is the idea that we are supposed to have one dream and hold to it for the duration of our careers.
The most important thing that I can do today is repeat this phrase to reinforce it. The other thing that people either forget or don't want to talk about is that you're going to fail. A LOT. Over and over again - You're just going to fail less badly each time on average.I think the big fallacy here is the idea that we are supposed to have one dream and hold to it for the duration of our careers.
I think I agree with this partially. I feel people's dreams also develop and change as they get older/reality sets in and end up following parts of their dreams. For instance, I love making music, but I know how making a living off music works most of the time. So I learned/got pretty decent at recording, mixing, an mastering so I could a least make a living doing what my dreams were, even if it's no my music I'm making. In reality I just love music and want to be part of the engineering framework of sounds that touch people lives.
There's a common piece of advice for that, too. "Fake it 'til you make it." The story reminds me of a recent meme,Sometimes you just have to fake it a little in this world.
Choose a major you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. Because that field isn't hiring.
I hadn't seen/read that meme. Pretty funny, thanks.
“Just be yourself” is an idiom that means that one shouldn't try to fit in for the sake of fitting in against one's own better judgement. Where the fuck does the author get this?: This might be the dumbest thing on the internet, and I want my three minutes back, Salon.A man who knows himself is someone who is dead certain of what he wants and makes all his choices – about career, mate, income level, spirituality, politics – with a view to acquiring it. A man who knows himself is one who cannot entertain the idea that he might be wrong, or that there may be two or more viable ways of interpreting an issue or solving a problem. A man who knows himself projects that arrogance into his judgement of others, and formulates opinions about them that are almost inescapably ill-founded and unshakable.
I agree that "just be yourself" isn't the most helpful advice, but this isn't what it means – the idea is that you should do what you want to do rather than acting like you think people want you to. That's not the same thing as refusing to think or consider that you might be wrong.A man who knows himself is someone who is dead certain of what he wants and makes all his choices – about career, mate, income level, spirituality, politics – with a view to acquiring it. A man who knows himself is one who cannot entertain the idea that he might be wrong, or that there may be two or more viable ways of interpreting an issue or solving a problem. A man who knows himself projects that arrogance into his judgement of others, and formulates opinions about them that are almost inescapably ill-founded and unshakable. In the life and ideas of a man who knows himself (or even thinks he knows himself), there is no room for the whimsy, ambivalence, doubt, nuance, curiosity and inquisitiveness upon which all creative thought is based.
That characterization of "a man who knows himself" rings false to my ears. It describes someone with unexamined self-confidence, not someone who truly has self-knowledge. The deeper you go into trying to know yourself, the more you realize that it's hard to pin down the object of that knowledge, and hard to distinguish the self you're supposed to know from the world, or life. You'll start to become more aware of your inseparability from the others on whom you depend, and of just how fluid your own nature can be and how it slips free from your grasp each time you convince yourself you've got it. For a while at least, uncertainty increases with self-knowledge. Thus true self knowledge is more an ongoing practice than a project that gets completed, and a project that encourages humility and empathy more than the kind of clueless arrogance described here.
Exactly. I also can't help but notice that despite the fact that the rest of the article is about her daughters or a generic "she"/"herself", this suddenly talks about a man, and is filled with stereotypically male traits.
You know, I don't really think that it is. I'm only speaking for my own personal experiences when it comes to this particular phrase, but at the end of the day, "just be yourself" is fantastic advice, if it's actually taught in a meaningful way. We have to teach our kids as they grow up what "yourself" actually means. Instead of carving out what we think it means, we should be giving the kids the tools and knowledge they need to be able to define that. And when they end up on a path that seems "different" to our ideals for them, we should intervene only if it's a path that will be dangerous for them. That's what we do as parents, right? Guide and protect? I grew up in a home where "yourself" was defined for you; we were a strict Mormon family, so a great deal of my path was already regimented. But when I got out of the Mormon church and met my wife, the phrase "just be yourself" meant so much more, and was immensely freeing. "What is this 'myself'?" I'd thought. "How do I define it?" And then she helped me explore and discover who I felt that I was, and what made sense to me. As such, I want to raise my kids in a manner that keeps them curious and exploratory. Teach them to research so that when they have a question or someone poses a new concept, they have the tools to figure out what that concept is to them, and formulate their own opinions. The question I want them to ask more than anything in the world is "why?". Then, with all the information in hand, they can answer it themselves. "Just be yourself" is cruel and fraudulent only if the parents and influential figures in a child's life has set them up such that "yourself" is "how you're supposed to act according to me", and not something that was genuinely fostered by the child, with gentle mentorship from their parents.
I have to say, I've never been a fan of the phrase "find yourself." It implies a finish line, as if someday, somewhere, you will look inward and say, "this is me." -I suppose there are things about me that are relatively constant, but "who I am" is certainly fluid. Who I am right now isn't necessarily who I will be five years from now. I think, what I'm getting at is that we can send our young people on a fools errand. We need to enjoy the journey and not the destination, because in this sense, the journey is the destination. Does that make sense?
Article 1: "just be yourself" is terrible advice Article 2: Rachel Dolezal steps down from chair position because a lot of people didn't like how she decided to not be herself. Eh... EDIT: UPDATE: IN FACT (this was just too good to not add): from a jezebel article quoting another article“It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,” Ruthanne Dolezal said.
Actually I find my issue with Rachel Dolezal is that she's 'being herself' as it were. Where who she is is manipulative and dishonest, and ignorant of why living in blackface and lying about your family is an extraordinarily bad idea, or malicious enough not to care.
Sap though i may be, I do generally believe that humans are inherently good people or at least not inherently bad. As a result I confess I do have trouble with the assertion that someone, anyone, is lying because they were just born a liar, and so on.
My much longer reply got deleted, so I'll try to be shorter. Dolezal is being herself not because she was born a liar, but because she became one over time and rather than evaluate, and try to become someone else (i.e. stop lying to get things) she continued to do so. She learned that lying works, and was uncritical of who that made her as a person. JBY is advice that encourages tunnel vision, and an undue faith in the rightness of who we are at a given time simply because it's who we are right now. That's what makes it bad advice. Dolezal believes in the validity of her attempt to 'become black'. She believes that rather than being a liar, she's 'trans-racial'. What she sees as transitioning to being black, the rest of the world sees as blackface and costuming, and then lying about it. Hence, as long as she continues the charade (blackface, costuming, paying a black man to pretend to be her dad) she is a liar. That said the pretend father and the lies about her adopted siblings make me think malice might be involved too.
No one’s going to pour venom into your ear while you sleep, or stab you to death behind an arras, for doing your best to remain a decent, open-minded and generous person in a trying and cynical world, even when you’re not absolutely convinced that you are one.
This phrase really creates a confusing climate for these kids. Their parents and teachers are telling them "just be yourself," while their peers are telling them what they should and shouldn't do. It's really a constant struggle of them trying to be themselves while their peers reject whatever version they think is the right one. This article hit the nail on the head for me. randomuser is right in saying that parents need to be more honest with their children. Constantly lying to children is seen as the humane thing to do here in America, but is really detrimental to them in the end. This reminds me of the debate over whether you should let your children win when playing games with them. Many successful athletes discuss in interviews how their parents never let them win while playing sports; they had to earn it. Whether that's something any of you could see yourself doing or not, it's important to consider! I'm not sure how many illusions I want my kids to have about the world, or when I would want those illusions to end. It's tricky.
I have a four year old daughter. We have a number of "matching games" and at first I would let her win a few games and lose a couple too, in order to teach her how to handle both experiences. Now, she openly kicks my ass without me pulling any punches. I wish she would let me win from time to time. But, I get the sentiment from the athletes, it makes sense. I think being competitive is a great thing in life. Learning how to lose AND win with dignity is important stuff.
I'm sorry I brought up such a sore subject! :) I'm glad your daughter is showing that kind of promise from such a young age. I hadn't considered winning with dignity! That lesson will be a hard one to teach, I think. My main thesis of parenthood is probably just going to be "have empathy for everyone." Hopefully my kids will have some friends that show them how to win and lose well, too.
My main thesis of parenthood is probably just going to be "have empathy for everyone."
That's a solid foundation Ty-Guy!
Reminds me of this piece about 'do what you love' (DWYL) from Jacobin. By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.Superficially, DWYL is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who is the audience for this dictum? Who is not?
Another problem with DWYL (and a way it can tie into classism) is that it creates a culture where one is expected to love what they do. Even if you are DWYL outrageous hours and inadequate compensation are still negative, and they are even more negative when you work a soul sucking job you hate.