Learning Experience
Our culture in the U.S. has a problem.
Actually, it has a great many, but on this occasion I wish to expound on one in particular which has long plagued me. Here in the U.S., we have a problem with failure. We have unrealistic expectations about the amount of it we should have to experience. We are taught to avoid it, to berate ourselves when we experience it, and to criticize others when they fail. This has led, in my case personally, to an attitude of perfectionism which is beyond toxic.
This is absurd.
Failure is the most certain path to learning, and if we never fail we can be sure we've never learned much or tried to do anything worthwhile. I know this, intellectually, and yet every time I meet with failure I grow more stressed, more discouraged, more disinclined to try new things. I am turned aside from the path of growth by my own conditioning, and driven into the ditch of depression and self-loathing by values I never chose, but which I nonetheless act on. While I am actively doing the inner work necessary to dissolve these poisonous values, I have to actually find them and examine them in order to deal with them. For many reasons, over the last several years, I grew quite lax in this. That, I can happily say, has necessarily changed; changed for the better. I begin now to truly understand that we never fail as long as we never give up.
Some weeks ago, I chose to take on a role of mentorship with a group of teenagers. My role isn't complicated, and it can be summed up succinctly as being an excellent example. I take it a step further, personally, and try to be the kind of person I wish I'd had in my life when I was the age the young people I'm interacting with are. This comes with a couple of things which I think are unorthodox in the lives of younger people in general. The first is that I want them to know that regardless of how I seem now that I'm in my thirties, I have failings, flaws, a past. I want them to recognize that getting where I am now has been a process so that they have an opportunity to hold themselves to a less perfectionist standard. I was raised not to question or challenge the adults in my life, to view them as infallible when they very obviously weren't, and held myself to a standard that no sane person would consider reasonable. In many ways I still do; but I am still learning.
The second is that I would simply like to be present to engage with them, because when I was their age I had no one I could do that with. All the people my age were developmentally years behind me, and all the people older than me but on my level could not, for whatever reason, take me seriously. I was deeply lonely, and that feeling of loneliness (and often of helplessness) continues on into my present. While I have people now that I can go to with problems, the damage is done, and will take work to undo.
When I chose to do this, I did so from a position of deep calling to share the benefits of my life experiences with others. I love to learn, and I learn best when I'm able to serve as a teacher or guide. I knew that I would be pushed to be the kind of person I wish to be more in doing this than in any other area where I could serve. I couldn't have been more right. I am an artist and a craftsman and my primary occupation is as a maker of custom fine art and jewelry, though you'd never know this based on my productivity. It could pay better, and I could do more, but I'm so busy putting out one fire after another that I rarely have the time or energy to get anything done. Because I struggle with mental health challenges I rely on the support of family for my survival and this often causes me to feel forced to serve as an instrument more than a person; cooking, cleaning, heavy lifting, home repairs. This is not objectively the case and my family have many complaints about the resources I consume, but it distracts me from pursuing my own good far more than they realize. So when I was approached with the idea of organizing an event which would allow me the opportunity to help a bunch of awesome teens make a custom piece of jewelry for themselves, I seized it and ran with it. I not only genuinely wanted to do this, but recognized an opportunity to "put on my own oxygen mask first" without being heavily criticized for it.
I knew that it would force me to develop some skills I didn't already have, except as theoretical knowledge. What I didn't know was how much I would learn in doing so. By working on preparing the materials for this project I have forwarded my own business interests in a single month's time by what I would conservatively estimate to be a year or more if I pursued them without the motivation of the project. I have learned how to turn stones into beads and how to industrialize the process so I can do it quickly and efficiently. I've developed budgeting ability. I've gathered materials and begun creating attractive displays for the finished pieces. I've gotten my long-deferred foundry operation running and have actually begun converting aluminum soda cans into stock material, something I've been talking about doing for years. I had most of the pieces in place; I had a foundry, access to tools and resources, but no significant drive to tap them. Because of the way I was raised, self-interest was simply not sufficient to motivate me.
This proved especially true in how many failures I encountered. The lapidary drill bits I originally purchased for drilling holes in stone had a critical flaw: they only work well at very high speeds, which the drill press I was using couldn't actually achieve. I overcame this problem in a week, and came out of a depth of depression over how mercilessly I'd failed in a matter of days, something which would normally take months. A solution presented itself, and then another, and then another still, and where Sunday there seemed to be no hope, on Friday I had totally blown the problem out of the water, developed a new process, and was ready to move on to the challenge of casting some small charms in aluminum.
Here I have failed. I do not have the charms completed, and while I foresaw this possibility I am still very disappointed by it. Even this is progress, though, because at one time I would have been devastated. As it stands now, I have already solved the problem and I can complete the charms within the next several days. They're not absolutely crucial to the project and I now know more about working in molten metal than I would have learned in a year on my own. I have failed, repeatedly, catastrophically, a half dozen times this week and a half dozen more the week before. But I am learning; my GOD am I learning, and if not for this project I wouldn't have even dared to try. Thanks to the establishment of a deadline, I've grown by leaps and bounds compared to the last several YEARS of my life.
Which brings me to the last things I would like to be able to impart to these young minds. When I was their age I had no reason whatsoever, aside from my own convictions, to believe I was worth anything to the adults in my life. I was a liability, a burden, and I felt it deeply in spite of reassurances that I was not, that I somehow represented the hope for a better future. The adults in my life never expressed to me in any way that I was benefiting them unless I did as I was told and was thanked for "helping", which I always found somewhat condescending. I want these young men and women to know unequivocally that I am getting at least as much benefit from my role in their lives as I hope they are receiving from their role in mine. I am still learning, and they are some of the best teachers I have.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I look forward to continuing to grow with you.
Actually, it has a great many, but on this occasion I wish to expound on one in particular which has long plagued me. Here in the U.S., we have a problem with failure. We have unrealistic expectations about the amount of it we should have to experience. We are taught to avoid it, to berate ourselves when we experience it, and to criticize others when they fail. This has led, in my case personally, to an attitude of perfectionism which is beyond toxic.
This is absurd.
Failure is the most certain path to learning, and if we never fail we can be sure we've never learned much or tried to do anything worthwhile. I know this, intellectually, and yet every time I meet with failure I grow more stressed, more discouraged, more disinclined to try new things. I am turned aside from the path of growth by my own conditioning, and driven into the ditch of depression and self-loathing by values I never chose, but which I nonetheless act on. While I am actively doing the inner work necessary to dissolve these poisonous values, I have to actually find them and examine them in order to deal with them. For many reasons, over the last several years, I grew quite lax in this. That, I can happily say, has necessarily changed; changed for the better. I begin now to truly understand that we never fail as long as we never give up.
Some weeks ago, I chose to take on a role of mentorship with a group of teenagers. My role isn't complicated, and it can be summed up succinctly as being an excellent example. I take it a step further, personally, and try to be the kind of person I wish I'd had in my life when I was the age the young people I'm interacting with are. This comes with a couple of things which I think are unorthodox in the lives of younger people in general. The first is that I want them to know that regardless of how I seem now that I'm in my thirties, I have failings, flaws, a past. I want them to recognize that getting where I am now has been a process so that they have an opportunity to hold themselves to a less perfectionist standard. I was raised not to question or challenge the adults in my life, to view them as infallible when they very obviously weren't, and held myself to a standard that no sane person would consider reasonable. In many ways I still do; but I am still learning.
The second is that I would simply like to be present to engage with them, because when I was their age I had no one I could do that with. All the people my age were developmentally years behind me, and all the people older than me but on my level could not, for whatever reason, take me seriously. I was deeply lonely, and that feeling of loneliness (and often of helplessness) continues on into my present. While I have people now that I can go to with problems, the damage is done, and will take work to undo.
When I chose to do this, I did so from a position of deep calling to share the benefits of my life experiences with others. I love to learn, and I learn best when I'm able to serve as a teacher or guide. I knew that I would be pushed to be the kind of person I wish to be more in doing this than in any other area where I could serve. I couldn't have been more right. I am an artist and a craftsman and my primary occupation is as a maker of custom fine art and jewelry, though you'd never know this based on my productivity. It could pay better, and I could do more, but I'm so busy putting out one fire after another that I rarely have the time or energy to get anything done. Because I struggle with mental health challenges I rely on the support of family for my survival and this often causes me to feel forced to serve as an instrument more than a person; cooking, cleaning, heavy lifting, home repairs. This is not objectively the case and my family have many complaints about the resources I consume, but it distracts me from pursuing my own good far more than they realize. So when I was approached with the idea of organizing an event which would allow me the opportunity to help a bunch of awesome teens make a custom piece of jewelry for themselves, I seized it and ran with it. I not only genuinely wanted to do this, but recognized an opportunity to "put on my own oxygen mask first" without being heavily criticized for it.
I knew that it would force me to develop some skills I didn't already have, except as theoretical knowledge. What I didn't know was how much I would learn in doing so. By working on preparing the materials for this project I have forwarded my own business interests in a single month's time by what I would conservatively estimate to be a year or more if I pursued them without the motivation of the project. I have learned how to turn stones into beads and how to industrialize the process so I can do it quickly and efficiently. I've developed budgeting ability. I've gathered materials and begun creating attractive displays for the finished pieces. I've gotten my long-deferred foundry operation running and have actually begun converting aluminum soda cans into stock material, something I've been talking about doing for years. I had most of the pieces in place; I had a foundry, access to tools and resources, but no significant drive to tap them. Because of the way I was raised, self-interest was simply not sufficient to motivate me.
This proved especially true in how many failures I encountered. The lapidary drill bits I originally purchased for drilling holes in stone had a critical flaw: they only work well at very high speeds, which the drill press I was using couldn't actually achieve. I overcame this problem in a week, and came out of a depth of depression over how mercilessly I'd failed in a matter of days, something which would normally take months. A solution presented itself, and then another, and then another still, and where Sunday there seemed to be no hope, on Friday I had totally blown the problem out of the water, developed a new process, and was ready to move on to the challenge of casting some small charms in aluminum.
Here I have failed. I do not have the charms completed, and while I foresaw this possibility I am still very disappointed by it. Even this is progress, though, because at one time I would have been devastated. As it stands now, I have already solved the problem and I can complete the charms within the next several days. They're not absolutely crucial to the project and I now know more about working in molten metal than I would have learned in a year on my own. I have failed, repeatedly, catastrophically, a half dozen times this week and a half dozen more the week before. But I am learning; my GOD am I learning, and if not for this project I wouldn't have even dared to try. Thanks to the establishment of a deadline, I've grown by leaps and bounds compared to the last several YEARS of my life.
Which brings me to the last things I would like to be able to impart to these young minds. When I was their age I had no reason whatsoever, aside from my own convictions, to believe I was worth anything to the adults in my life. I was a liability, a burden, and I felt it deeply in spite of reassurances that I was not, that I somehow represented the hope for a better future. The adults in my life never expressed to me in any way that I was benefiting them unless I did as I was told and was thanked for "helping", which I always found somewhat condescending. I want these young men and women to know unequivocally that I am getting at least as much benefit from my role in their lives as I hope they are receiving from their role in mine. I am still learning, and they are some of the best teachers I have.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I look forward to continuing to grow with you.