Uncouth PerspectivesNot on the rug, man.

I have been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves.

The tumultuous economy has affected many.  For a while I thought I might be untouched, but things are looking a lot more shaky than they were.  This affects me in very interesting ways.  Most of the problem is not actually my personal situation, though it is scary.  Mostly, people are just a lot more grumpy and cynical.  It wears.

Where I have been most affected is my plan to finally finish my Master’s degree in Religious Studies.  I finally got myself ramped back up to get it finished and now with pay cuts and bleak times ahead, I just can’t justify taking on the loans I now need to take on to get it finished.  I’ve paid for my school as I’ve gone along and taking on debt is just not appealing right now.

A good friend told me that I didn’t need an advanced degree to be legitimate.  While I’m not trying to get my Master’s in Religious Studies to legitimize anything–I’m doing it because I want the knowledge and the experience–it got the meat juices flowing.  Unless there is specific knowledge you are trying to get, degrees are mostly part of myth–a right of passage myth.  By going through the steps and the process, you prove you can participate in the process of advancing in society.  Note that I am not saying the degree process is false or wrong, but there is a mythical element to it.  While our educations provide foundations, it is our experience and our ability to learn from that experience that generates the bulk of our knowledge.

How many people define themselves by the degrees they have?  Or, more to what I’ve been thinking about, how many people look down at themselves because they don’t have degree X.  Or aren’t doing Y and so failure is the only thing in sight.

We all have an idea of who we are and who we want to be.  There is going to be a natural difference between who we think we are and who we are (in sum of our experiences).  It’s often too easy to overlook a bad deed or a poorly worded retort.  Let’s face it, it can be awful hard to admit “Wow, I really screwed that up and was not very nice.”  Most of us seem to learn to apologize, but I’m too aware of how many people seem to not understand there is a difference between just saying the words and meaning them.

I’m curious what happens when we let these ideas of who are or who we want to be get to mythical proportions.  It seems like it would be too easy to swing into grossly arrogant or pitifully depressed.

I know this happens to me, for example, when I think about past relationships or where I think I should be right now in my life with romance.  I always assumed that I would get married (once) and have a rich and happy partnership.  I feel like I have a lot to offer.  People around me like to be supportive and tell me what a great husband/father/potato I would make–I want to scream at them to stop saying that, because it just makes me feel worse about it all.

I’ve learned a lot about myself and how to be a good partner through the failed relationships I’ve had a long the way–and that’s also not sailing they are all failures just because they ended… but I’ve definitely had some failures.  But a lesson I am coming to see is how I struggle with myself because of the dichotomy of how I see myself versus how I really am.

But it’s not just pining about relationships.  Romance is just an easy go-to.  I think this happens with all kinds of things:  education, careers, personal achievement goals, whatever.  It’s important to have something to strive for.. and it’s incredibly important to hope.  But it’s also important to remember what those things are and not get so caught up that we forget either who we are or what we are doing.  Sometimes it’s good to just be yourself.  Sometimes it’s good to just enjoy the journey.

Ah, but the truth is, it’s always good to dream.