Process or product…

I decided to do a final check-in on a few posters today so I could get a few more shots before the show tomorrow, and I started thinking that while I was still interested in what people were writing, I was becoming more and more interested in how people were using the space. By and large people have left ‘dreams’ that they would accomplish if they only had the nerve. Not surprisingly, many of these are similar:  quit my job; move somewhere; travel the world; start my own business; tell someone I love them.  I love that these short stories have been collected, and I am even more tickled by the unusual ones:  start a community of like-minded people; speak French; write every day; tell Dove to stop being a hypocrite.  Often, these posters have become sites for jokes or attempts at wit. Quite a few posters have been taken down at this point (not by me), one was taken and an apology was left behind.

I have noticed that rather than being particularly concerned with what kinds of dreams are listed here (how many are the same? what are the trends? outliers?), I’ve become more interested in how people use the space, and where they use it best.  The signs that are a little less visible are the ones with the most writing.  The ones outside of popular cafes are mostly empty.  These are the sites too where there are the most jokes and disparaging remarks. The more ‘hidden’ signs (none are really hidden, but not all of them are in-your-face), are where it seems people take the most care in their writing.

For example, this one is a bit tucked away:

Jeanne Mance at Bernard

Whereas this one is right at a popular intersection:

Parc and St.Viateur

But I really also like that people engaged with the project differently (both seriously and not) on the same poster.  For example, right next to “fart in the metro” is “créer un groupe avec des gens avec la même vision”.  I appreciated too that the posters seemed to be self-managing, and sometimes dialogic.  Watching how people have responded to this project has made me think of many new ideas to engage the public in anonymous conversations.  While the idea of The Courage Project still really engages me a great deal, I find myself wondering more and more about what other kinds of topics the public might respond to, and how can a project like this be used create spaces where ideas are shared, exchanged and displayed in public (and perhaps still anonymous) ways?

On Failure

Posting commencement addresses on blogs about seeking inspiration and such must be some kind of tired old cliché, but I’m preparing to do it again.  I suppose there is a kind of commencement address genre that begins with parables or autobiographies and then somehow ramps up to the “important life lesson” that usually amounts to something having to do with personal growth, professional success and the bumps along the way.  Often, those bumps are referred to as “failures”.  JK Rowling recently delivered an address entitled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination”.  In it, she describes her rags to riches story and how reaching her very lowest point permitted her to “strip away the inessential” and to stop pretending that she was someone she wasn’t.  In effect, Rowling posits that failing at post-graduate working life meant that she could focus all of her energy on what was really meaningful and important to her, rather than looking for meaning in the check-list of acquisitions or the points of accomplishments that may or may not accrue on one’s CV.  Just the other day, Conan O’Brien addressed Dartmouth students stating that “There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized”.  It is this moment of rupture, he argues, that causes us to re-evaluate our dreams, and might be “the catalyst for profound re-invention”.  I never thought I would find myself quoting Conan O’Brien, but I find this to be the truest statement and perhaps the most relevant to this blog.

Having lived through more than one profound disappointment (one might even say failures) over the past year when I saw some of my greatest fears realized, I must agree that living through such a rupture has given me some clarity – if not towards what I want to be, at least it has given me a sense of what I don’t want to be or do, and what kind of person I do not want to become.  Strangely, this has not been something that I have given considerable attention over the years.  Many years ago, my dream was to get a PhD and to become a professor.  I worked hard to get that degree, but in the process, my view of the direction I was heading changed.  Many many people ask me what the point is of getting a PhD if I’m not going to go into academics.  To them, I have no concrete answer except that I am sure it was not a waste of time. It seems that my dreams have changed, and while I don’t know yet what they have become, I am certain that my recent ‘failures’ may have given me an opportunity to re-evaluate and re-invent.   I listen to the words of those who have experienced ruptures in their dreams (another way of saying this might be ‘had their fears realized’) and it occurs to me that the dreams might not always be on the mark.  And not achieving them might not always be a failure, but rather, an opportunity.

If you’re interested in watching those commencement addresses, you can find them at the following links (but be warned O’Brien’s address doesn’t get interesting until about the 16:30 mark).

JK Rowling Addresses Harvard (2008)

Conan O’Brien Addresses Dartmouth (2011)

You (we)re the one

I had hoped not to talk about heartbreak on this site, but I don’t see a way to avoid it if I am to continue with any degree of honesty.  Because one of the truths about writing in a forum like this is that I am constantly considering my audience, and I am often imagining that the person reading this piece might be the same person who broke my heart. It’s a bit like starring in the movie of your life – who is watching it?   One of the great unspoken truths about myself is that I tend to think of my audience before I do most of anything (I know I’m not alone here)!  This is a source of great conflict for me in most of my everyday activities.  Who do I play the piano for?  Sing for?  Write for?  Maybe I’ll take it further and ask who I listen to music for?  Who do I read for?  Who determines what I think is funny, or how I talk or hold myself, move my hands, nod my head?  Of course,  I understand that we engage in performances every day that have everything to do with our audiences/interlocutors–but taking the conversation in that direction would also be directed at a certain audience, and I’m not really interested in engaging in a theoretical discussion here.  I’m more interested in what this all has to do with fears and dreams, and that leads me to heartache.

During my ‘crisis’ last year, I dropped everything to focus on resolving my problem and finishing my degree.  Throughout that time, I leaned very heavily on one particular relationship – I felt as though I had nothing else, it was the thing holding me up.  I lost sight of who I was and what I loved.  I stopped seeing friends, I unplugged, stopped playing the piano, stopped going outside.  I stayed in, wrote, cried, panicked and unleashed all of my fears on my partner.  I leaned so heavily on that relationship that at some point, it broke.  And in the end, I broke along with it.  Eventually, I finished my degree and moved on to my next job, but I was left wondering who I was, what I liked, and who my people were.  The ending of that most significant relationship marked the beginning of my crise d’identité. Of course the identity crisis probably started well before the relationship ended, but I was too busy scrambling to hang on to the relationship to notice that I had sight of lost everything else.

After the relationship ended, I spent the requisite one-month period in my pajamas watching every episode of Mad Men in succession, and then I emerged looking to throw myself into something new – that wasn’t another relationship. It was as though I had awoken from a long (years long) slumber. I started new community projects, art projects, singing projects, got a gig with a band, started seeing old friends who I had ignored for a year but who had (thankfully) not abandoned me.  In short, I started doing all of the things that I had let go of because I was too absorbed in my professional crisis, and too (naïvely) focused on taking care of this relationship. In part, the new projects were a way to fill the hole that the break-up had left in my life.  More significantly, the new projects have been an attempt to  find out who I am and what I like in the absence of a significant other and a dissertation to occupy my mind.  I have come a long way in figuring out who I am, and I have begun to trust myself more, and to know what I love, and to not worry so much about what others might think.

But still I have this nagging feeling that on some level, however subconscious, that relationship still figures into these new projects.  In the back of my mind with each new endeavour I wonder:  would he find this interesting or exciting? would he be proud?  Sometimes I don’t trust myself to love what I love and I worry that my likes/dislikes/interests are infused with ‘shoulds’ that I carry around from past or present relationships.

My fear is a life governed by this kind of thinking. My dream is to trust myself to find the things that I enjoy, that nourish me and bring me happiness, and to have the confidence that I do what I do and I love what I love because I love it and not because someone else thinks it’s good or important.  To never judge what is good by anyone’s standards but my own.

And yet, as I write, I wonder what he would think of this.

'Please don't break my heart' by Sandy Smith, August 2007. View of solo exhibition "You are the one" at Arcan Mellor, London Central (Source: sandysmith.co.uk via thickwithatmosphere.tumblr.com)

The Courage Project

The Courage Project is public engagement project  exploring the relationship between our fears and our dreams, and the pursuit of happiness.  As part of my own personal exploration, this blog is a space for me to write about my thoughts and ideas around expectations, courage, successes, failures and the stuff of navigating life.

This interview was filmed by Hawert Jorna for Concordia TV.

You can contact me at:  thecourageproject@gmail.com

More on courage

I’ve been thinking a lot about courage these days.
One of my dreams has always been to sing and play the piano outside of my home (i.e., in public). But I’ve always been too afraid or shy to actually try to do that. Also, I have this convincing voice in my head that tells me that I’m really no good at it, and I should leave the singing and playing to the real musicians.

When I was in high school, I performed publicly all the time. I suspect a particularly traumatizing event at a piano competition may have scarred/scared me for life. At the very least, it was a humbling event that made me realize that I was not as good at the piano as I had thought I was. I can recall a few negative singing events as well. A similar humiliation occurred with ballet. The cumulative effect of those experiences in my late teen years made me decide to leave those things that I loved behind and focus on more career-oriented ‘subjects’ like science. Somehow, I always thought that I needed to have a ‘subject’. Perhaps I was looking for something that I was good at that I could call my own, that others could identify me by, or recognize me. Or something that I could recognize myself in.

Perfectionism is one of those ‘symptoms’ I listed in an earlier post, related to self-esteem issues. If we don’t do something perfectly, we expect that others will think poorly of us or will see us as failures. This is the relationship I have developed with music over the years. I have been afraid, for most of my adult life, to make imperfect sounds on the piano or with my voice, around other people, and even to myself. Two years ago, I received the extraordinary gift of a piano. When it was moved into my apartment, I stared at it for weeks before I played it. I had no idea what to play. I didn’t think I could. I knew that any pieces I could remember, I would play badly and feel frustrated and embarrassed (my neighbours can hear everything). I decided to swallow my pride and start lessons. I can say, categorically, that this piano has been the best thing that has happened to me in the last several years. Through it, I have met extraordinary people with whom I have made music, enjoyed music and founded very significant and life-changing relationships.

While I still tell people that I don’t really play (even though I now play keys in a band – that actually performs shows), I am beginning to see myself as someone who can make music, or at least someone who is getting closer to being that person. I also started singing in a choir-a musical interaction with others that I never thought I would do again. We do performances too, and the act of standing up with a group of people to sing confers a feeling of membership that I have never enjoyed so greatly before.

Perhaps it’s not courage that has spurred me to reintroduce music to my life, but something about it makes me feel a bit more brave. As I learn to live with those fears instead of always working to (perfectly) conquer them, my peripheral engagement with music is helping me recognize something about myself that I hadn’t seen before:

My dreams don’t have to be big to be important, and achieving them doesn’t mean being perfect. Reaching these dreams has just meant living with the discomfort of the fear, and relishing in it.

Protected: Finding direction

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

The borderlands of dreams and fears

Dreams, fears and the spaces in between. What happens in the space between the dream and the fear?  Is it a productive space or a reproductive space? My friend Jason pointed out yesterday that the space between dreams and fears might be a thing in itself, and questioned whether being a something demanded having an opposite. I don’t believe it to need one, that’s the kind of thinking that gets us into trouble in the first place. However, I do think that he is right on the point of the thing. The space in between might in fact be a site of productivity, creativity and nervousness. It is, perhaps, where we want to be, because without the fear, the dream might not seem so big.

When we let our fears govern our decisions, our productions, our interactions and our thoughts, we are perhaps operating on what David Foster Wallace called our “default settings”. These are the settings that Wallace argues are hard-wired and sets us up to be: “deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” This default setting, according to Wallace, is set at around birth, when we are programmed to see “the world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.”

Of course, the language he is using suggests that there is something natural or innate about this default setting, which denies the obvious and important roles that culture and social interaction play in development. It also seems like a very Western understanding of how humans interface with society, but let’s suspend the criticism for the moment and examine the usefulness of his argument. Wallace, in a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon University discusses how the best education we could receive would be one that encourages us to adjust our ‘default settings’ and learn to live in the world, as a part of the world, not as someone the world happens to. His speech might be construed as one that encourages young adults to learn to be more compassionate and aware of others and our surroundings. But it is more than that. Wallace’s speech highlights the biggest struggle facing individuals-in-the-world: being in the world. Take for instance the following:

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

And so we reach the part of this blog post that is about dreams and fears. If there is an interstital space between dreams and fears, surely this is the site where the default setting is adjusted? Is there not something transformative about actually identifying those fears and understanding how they have in part constructed dreams and in part obstructed them? How about paying attention to the “constant monologue” inside our heads, and how much of that is fear-driven. And then, how about learning how to “exercise some control over how and what we think”. Of course, adjusting our default settings means stepping outside of our comfort zones.

via katykelley.tumblr.com

It means learning to understand all of the distorted ways that we have perceived ourselves in the world, and attempting to reconfigure them so that we may see ourselves in-the-world, as part of the world, not as outsiders watching the world happen without us. Reaching our dreams must require that we first leave our comfort zones. Taking a step out of that comfort zone requires courage, disruption, rupture…but most certainly, if we do it, we can expect to leave behind “unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

Wallace, David F. (2009) This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition

That which it is not

For several years, I was steeped in post-structuralist thinking that concerned the deconstruction of dominant binary modes of thinking, emerging through language.  In particular, I thought a lot about Derrida’s notion that we cannot get past language (and culture, by extension), and that through language any word or concept that we articulate has both a positive and an opposite.  Our thought, then, is founded on this kind of binary thinking, in which one half of that binary construction is privileged or afforded power.  More recently, I began to wonder how this kind of thinking affects us psychologically, when we consider what, where and who we are, and what it is possible to be.  If we consider that the privileged form of the binary is natural or “the way things are”, it seems impossible to view a possibility outside of this either/or type of binary construction.  However, Derrida argues that the logic in this kind of thinking is flawed.  In discussing Derrida, Burr (1995) writes:

to give anything an identity, to say what it is, is necessarily also to say what it is not. In this sense, presence contains absence. That is, to say that a quality is present depends upon implying what is absent.

Thus, both sides of a binary are interdependent and related.  Dualisms depend on each other to exist – there is no inherent logic to the either/or debate, rather, dualisms imply a both/and logic.  Thus, when we refer to the thing, we also always refer to that which it is not.  Perhaps that bears relevence to how we have constructed our dreams, and the fears that we must transcend in order to acheive them?  Dreams and fears, while not being dualistic per se might be regarded as existing within this both/and logic.  To have the dream, must we not also live with the fear, or at the very least, refer to the fear – that which is not the dream.  To live the dream, perhaps we must not conquer the fear, but rather live with the fear, because the dream does not exist without the fear – it is its not-fear.  The danger of the fear is that it might take hold and exist as the absence of the realization of the dream – the not-dream.  However, it is useless to focus on either the fears or the dream – rather, the emphasis might be on the importance the fears lend to the dream. The fears are always there, they just need to be transformed into a platform for the dream.

Fear of abandonment

When I was 17, I met the kind of experience high school nightmares are made of. I arrived at school one day, and none of my friends were talking to me. When I tried to approach them, they turned around and walked away. This lasted for days. I ate by myself, tried to busy myself with projects during spares and lunch periods, approached other peers and tried to insert myself into their tight social circles. I felt alone and humiliated. Eventually, one of my friends broke the silence and offered to talk with me about what was going on.

Instead of explaining herself, she gave me this poem:

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn,
and I will listen to you.

Almost 20 years later, and I have not forgotten the words to this poem. I felt humiliated and scorned, yet grateful in some way for this new perspective. Now, I am constantly, painfully aware of the space that I occupy in interactions. I try to be careful with my friendships, but in looking out for them, I often fail to look out for myself. I have become so afraid of losing relationships, that I neglect to really cultivate them. I fear conflict, and most of all, I fear that I will be labelled a ‘bad friend’ once again. My fear of being abandoned prevents me from being vulnerable and open and from taking risks. My fear of not being a good listener (or friend) means that I spend more time paying attention to the space that I occupy than really giving people my ear.

My dream is to have relationships – both friendships and intimate relationships – that are vulnerable, open, risky and rewarding. This dream is a project. A work in progress. It is a dream that I imagine we all have – most of us share common dreams. However, it is a dream that is hampered by this fear that I am working to conquer.

The way forward

Here’s a thought.  The things that I want the most in life might be the things I am most afraid of.  My dreams:  a job that I love, a family, unique opportunities that I have the courage to recognize and take on.  Things that I fear:  abandonment, being tied down, wasting unique opportunities, being alone and not being ok with that.  It seems that the things I fear are also the things I dream of.  Or, at least they are related.  How often do we articulate the fears that are in the way of our dreams?  I posit to you that this is not such an easy endeavor.   Identifying our fears is a job unto itself, never mind overcoming them.

I have determined, that at least for myself, articulating about my dreams and their associated fears has been a fruitful way to move forward.  In addition, saying those dreams out loud–to friends, colleagues, my therapist–has helped me to orient myself towards them, and at the same time to recognize how my fears stand in the way of those dreams.  Also, learning that fears need not be conquered, but rather lived with in ways that do not impede the dreams-a kind of radical acceptance-is project at hand.

The way forward? For me, it’s a matter of deciding where I want to go and who I want to become rather than continually taking whatever is on offer.  This is not about taking control or anticipating an outcome.  It’s simply about choosing a path.

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.””

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland