I have struggledto select my college then I started understanding a major missing part of my life
skills that I assumed, 30 years ago, I did not think I needed on daily basis:
Letting go of perfectionism. As a first honor student, I thought I was capable
of tackle any academic issue and selecting any major I like without any
struggle. Later, I ended up switching my selection two times within three
years. Back then, perfect marks in high school were the ultimate evidence of controlling
academic performance, at least for my parents. This perception has made them go
easy on me in anything related to academia because they assumed that if I can
get high grades then I know what I am doing, at least in the learning domain.
So, they started to inflate unrealistic dreams that they did not fulfill in their
youth and project them on me unconsciously. For example, at grade 12 when I
showed my authentic interest in studying psychology, my father worked very hard
to convince me to ignore it. He instead started to tell me how engineers in his
firm are highly respected and how some of them ended up becoming senior
managers and gained tons of money. As for my mother, she tried to let my father
dominate our conversations to marginalize my unmatured interests for the sake
of practicality. After seven years of struggling in university, I graduated
with a broken heart and an average GPA.
Before thiseducational journey ended, I developed a sense of reflection that allowed me to
become less judgmental and more observational. Gradually I started to see with
more clarity how such misery started; by seeking perfection. My high grades
were a result of emotionless learning because I have not yet developed a sense
of preference for a particular area of learning. This made it easier for me to
tackle anything I was given to study. While my parents needed to build up my autonomy
at this important phase of my growing up, they preferred to calm their own
fears about securing a lucrative job for their son, and he rest is history.
As I write thisessay at my fifty, I can see how I needed to rework this paradigm of fear-based
decision making and why I changed my view about learning and working completely
by examining this ideology that is mainly built on unfulfilled experience of
managing fear in a mature way. It is fair to say that fear would never get out
of our mindset equation as long as we live. My understanding of this fact has
encouraged me to respect its existence rather than worship it and offer sacrifices
to maintain a small range living space. Today, with many disappointments and
endless embarrassing moments that followed an awakened curiosity, I became able
to help my growing up children to explore and try all the time with me as a
part of their safety net. Here is a picture of my youngest daughter's drawing.
I also highlight regularly to them that failing is as important as succeeding in building
anyone's relevant experience. As for my own journey, I started more than
fifteen years ago to move further in direction of exploring my own circuity
rather than trying so hard to calm my fears and aim for stability at the cost
of creativity. This approach did not make me as rich as being an engineering
degree holder/worker, but it has served a wider area of my wellbeing as I was
able to become a purposeful person. CORONA, two layoff waves and a recent
middle east war have passed with minimum number of bruises. Taking risks to
stay creative is a courageous decision that inner child would always reward it
with a positive bias. Offers of stable jobs usually come with atrophy of what distinguishes
us as individuals not because of affiliation and loyalty we need to show all
the time, but because we would gradually lose our intrinsic value with because
of endless comparison of our status with others. To explain this further, imagine
a fresh graduate who started working as a junior accountant, what would be a reasonable
point to aim for? a certification in accounting or perhaps a senior accountant.
These temptations are positional not personal. So, when suspected of any
creative activity that would jeopardize these goals, he or she would avoid it.
So, what about staying as a junior accountant and leading a simple life? This
direction of thinking is a result of deducting unnecessary complication that is
fear based. As a father of four, I have experienced firsthand how parents are
magnifying ideal cases for their children to a degree that drive them to pursue
expansions in their work to fulfill their own fantasies about their offsprings.
It is fair also to add how in some societies external measurements of parents
competency include the type of schools their children attend, district they
live in and lavish lifestyle they post on their Instagram. These elements
usually participate in this phantasy's creation and expansion. I spent around a
year practicing them with high confidence and was arguing against simplicity as
I used to view it as a form of weakness. Then when I simplified my life, I faced
very interesting test. I have received an inheritance that was large enough to
get me back to where I was instantly. This was an important revisit of
rationalizing my circumstances. Within three years of holding this fortune, I
noticed how being rich engaged my attention about maintaining and wisely
investing more than paying attention to daily life interactions. I also noticed
how tempting justifies my journey to fit a classical heroic story that can be
easily believed and glorified: a struggle of a person from bottom to top! Wow.
Our adult braincan rationalize and believe side by side in a coherent narrative that can make
us miss contradictions and only focus on specific parts that suit that
narrative. As a story writer, I have been practicing this way of connecting
events to serve my purpose of writing. As for my life story, I gradually began
to take a different approach. Knowing how little control I have over my distant
future is a relief because it gives me tranquility to focus on what is available
in status and observe simulation of future events as they come and go without
taking them seriously. For example, thinking about my children's academic
future is a distant concept and therefore, I might get triggered by a story I
read about in social media or a case of a friend then I would handle it as a weather
report of yesterday; something that actually happened but may not be repeated
in every detail. Seasons are a phenomenon that is reasonable to expect to be recycled,
not the wether.