Two Paths Diverge

Perhaps it is uncharacteristic not to want to be younger, but, for me, younger means twenty-something, and twenty-something means the re-entry of questions of self.

It is a cliche, of course, to bring up self-fulfillment, but it does seem, by and large, that people who have personality also have traits. Skills, tendencies. Directions in which they would lean if they were left to their personal whims and desires. They would travel, or do nothing or bask in the sun, or seek out the snow or be around lots of children or hide from children. There are predisposition. There is at least a portion of nature in our nature-nurture construct.

With these predisposition comes a responsibility to them. They are you, and you have a responsibility to yourself. That is how we prefer to phrase it.

So much of human disappointment begins there. You are four and you love the ball but you can't quite kick it as you'd like to. You are 11 and long to be outside, but there is no one to go with. You are seventeen and - well, what manner of achievement do you not fall short of accomplishing. Fall short of and yet excel at. You're better than ever at reading, writing, understanding, communicating, meeting greeting and studying. You can kick a ball perhaps as well as new pro. You can go outside any time. And yet these are but the precursors of what is to come. So you think. Life will only get better, you will only get stronger and more proficient.

Perhaps.

There seems to be, divided in us, the need to fulfill our tendencies and the need to acquire recognition for them. The functions are apparently independent of each other, because we are drawn as strongly to recognition for random achievements as to that for accomplishments of our bona-fide pallet. To win a place on the debate team (when you hate to debate) and to win a hard game at football (when you love football) draw similar reactions from parents and supporters: pride, camaraderie, satisfaction. It is an addicting sensation to please others, and frequently while we are still in high school, we begin to seek out accomplishments that will generate this effect. We are as likely to stay on the Debate Team as in football, if we receive enough recognition for it.

The supporting network that surrounds people of any age is prone to praise of the person in question. Everyone likes to be supportive. What is wrong with patting someone on the back? Why not congratulate his law-school entrance efforts? Why not exalt a master's degree, a marriage, a pregnancy?

And yet, because the approval we receive from others is so important to us, this sometimes subtle but omnipresent support and, more importantly, our understanding of the conditions under which it is likely to be granted, begins to lead us as frequently into behavioral patterns that focus only on the end result and abandon consideration for the subject matter the patterns engage.

So, if book publishing is really important in someone's world -- his parents, friends or community value this above other tracks of activity -- it is as likely that this person, given any exposure at all to the field, will gravitate toward it not out of personal affiliation necessarily but because of the approval the act is likely to generate.

This involves several problems. First of all, it arises out of a chasing after an end result instead of a following of a process. This is negative only because end results are nothing more than processes in the future, stationed at the tail end of a previous process. And to chase the process that comes after the one just head is sort of...blind. No one can walk the road of the adjacent hill until he gets there and should be naturally preoccupied with his current surroundings. But so frequently, the present surroundings are overlooked. "I'll just do this for a few years until I can move to Montana and become a school teacher." Whatever "this" is, I'm willing to bet it is valued by the person's immediate circle of support. It may be laudable, prestigious, lucrative. The future, in this line of thinking, holds two main events: the closer event of praise and approval from family and friends and the distant event of the ability to pursue the course of action that is more closely associated with one's personality once the person has been vindicated for doing "the right thing" for long enough.

The trouble is that we become addicted to the praise. Some lucky people are able to muster the praise they need out of performing the activity(ies) they love. Someone is a doll maker and everyone loves him. He is the best doll-maker in France. Someone is a lawyer, and she is the best lawyer in Toronto. Such people, if they are personally built for the work they perform, have combined two needs that naturally come bound in us: the need to kick a ball high and have our mom approve of this action.

Throughout our lives and, as I have tried to suggest, sometimes quite early in adulthood, we begin to have to choose between approval and action. Not every action garners the same kind of approval, and it is interesting that we do not discriminate when it comes to praise: we'll take it no matter why it is given. How do gangs work so well. Someone told me once that a gang is just a family. I certainly see that. As a family it has rules and strict approval and disapproval of actions. Though gang activities may sometimes be against the law in the society within which a group thrives, they are not against the law inside the gang. There, approbation for activity not otherwise approved rules, and the members of the gang follow those rules instead of the ones of the city or state that it lives in. Those rules are the guideposts by which we acquire respect, approbation and praise within gangs and, consequently, those are the rules that we follow, because our interest in approval and inclusion in a social circle is stronger than many other needs of self-placement or -development.

And therein lies the next problem: we do not focus very much on marrying the praise we are to get with an action that is self-actualizing or personally laudable. We want the praise and raise the money for it in any way we can. Thereby, we can abandon the interests that we thought we would develop and pursue in young adulthood. The need for approval pulls us away from the need to self-actualize. And still, the latter lies heaving, usually buried, stifled and slowly leaking out a message of S.O.S.

Sometime around Middle Life, the leak has created enough of a pool to require attention, and people sometimes stop to gather it up and empty it out. Sometimes, they open the floodgates to the leak and change careers, get married or divorced, more to or from an exotic place and generally start over.

But always, there is the need of approval to consider. Only at such times for such people, the approval sought is that mostly of the person himself. We, as our own first and personal audience member are also part of the approving network, and our weight leans in more and more with time. Others have a much greater influence on the young in matters of self-opinion and self-worth than they do on a 40 year old.

And so, through the sheer force of the passage of time and the change in personal psychology that it brings in individuals, we are able to become less dependent if not on praise than at least on the praise of others.

It is the doom of many young people, however, to be bound in this inextricable, human way to what others may like or approve of. Combined with the rigid catharsis of society, in which certain achievements are bound to be valued more than others, this model of life, love and happiness spirals many into the centers of culturally important activities that leave them personally devoid.

Perhaps one day, the combination of being happily engaged in your life's work while generating the much richer praise that this is likely to elicit will become so advantageous that no one will give up one for the other, or mix and match the ratios in ever turbulent and hopeless effect.

Maybe one day we will learn how to pull optimal potential from ourselves and from others, and will only reward achievements that are also personally valuable to the rewarded. Then I only wonder what sort of consensual family circles there might be and what economies of expanded productivity and enthusiasm. Until then, we just stand by, on as tall a hill as we each can find, and admire those few who have merged personal potential with societal recognition. They are the bright stars in the sky. I think we even call them that.