(no subject)

[mrissa]

The problem with kindly lies is that, as always, false currency drives out true. When you are a sullen and be-pimpled pre-teen plagued with growing pains and glasses that constantly slip, who has had to pull her tights up over a bulky bandage because she sprained her ankle trying the amazing athletic feat of walking backwards, and grown-ups boom, "Don't you look nice!", the sound of it stays with you for a decade or more after, and it takes a few sharp metaphorical blows to the head to realize that now they really mean it when they say something similar.

And one morning you sit putting stamps on your short story submissions and thinking that you should probably designate a shelf in the new music room bookcase (when you get one) for some of the magazines and books you've got stuff in, because the library tables are overflowing a bit, and it'll only get worse in the summer, and possibly one or two examples would be more tasteful than the entire collection. And it hits you that all those times people said, "I know you can do this," it was because they knew you could do this. Because you can, you are. But it sounded so much like, "You can be anything you want to be!" and, "You are limited only by your dreams!", and you knew those were lies. You couldn't have been just anything.

But you can be this.

Oh.

Comments

[fredcritter.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Interesting. Good thinking.

Interesting timing too. mrissa meet fastfwd who just posted You Don't Suck (http://fastfwd.livejournal.com/227978.html). Don't be shy—you have mutual friends.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not shy, but I'm often reserved, even when I have mutual friends. Still and all, that's a message I can get behind.

[fredcritter.livejournal.com]

Oh, heck. I knew that. I just forgot for a moment or something.

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

I was linked to this, and I just wanted to say that I can really dig what you're saying.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Lovely. Thank you.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

"You can be anything you want to be!" and, "You are limited only by your dreams!", and you knew those were lies. You couldn't have been just anything.

I'm not so sure those are lies - I think what limits us is our own fears, and the optionions of those around us that we consider important (and who often don't know what the heck they are talking about). Joseph Campbell talks about following your bliss, and I'm beginning to think he's right, and that it's a crime of the highest degree to make someone not believe in themselves and in their dreams of what they want to be.

If you had "them" in your life, telling you those things, you were very, very lucky. The "them" in my life kept telling me that what I wanted was impossible, was only a dream, and that if I tried I'd only end up failing and that I needed to be "realistic."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think this is a subject on which it's very easy to fail a child in either direction. If you pre-determine what they can't do, you can create self-fulfilling prophecies that might not otherwise have been correct. But it's also no kindness to tell a 17-year-old who is still struggling with fractions and decimals that she'll be able to go on to college to become a pharmacist with no problem. (I know a kid in that situation.) Even an 8-year-old is old enough to hear, "If you want to be a pharmacist, you should study hard and do well in science and math."

And I can very easily think of things I couldn't have been: I could not have been an astronaut. Not because I'm afraid of it or because my parents wouldn't have supported me, but because my vision is terrible and I have an alarming tendency to pass out at the drop of a hat. I couldn't have been a prima ballerina not because my parents wouldn't have let me ruin my feet but because my bone structure was obviously wrong for it and physically could not have accomplished the things they do, no matter what kind of training I went through. I am not extroverted enough to make a good politician, no matter how much support I got from friends and family. And so on.

I once sat with a young man in his early twenties for half an hour explaining a very fundamental bit of algebra to him over and over again. His situation made it clear that he was an otherwise-bright young man and that people had attempted to teach him this in multiple different ways at multiple different times. It may be that he was taught math badly as a small child, or that someone told him he couldn't do math -- but it also may be that his brain was not wired for it. The state of math teaching is bad enough that it's hard to say for sure what's holding sway in a particular case, but if we know that some people's brains are wired not to be able to recognize faces, I don't see why nobody's brain should have any hard-wired trouble with integral calculus.

When "they" were telling me and my peers that we could be anything we wanted to be etc., we were already old enough that we couldn't. The girls who were saying they wanted to be ballerinas were already too old to train to be ballerinas, but the teachers encouraged them anyway because it was sweet and feminine. They had no doubts that I could be a nuclear physicist, but it was still something to sneer at. It doesn't mean that the people in your life were right to discourage you -- I don't even think that the kid I mentioned before should be discouraged from wanting to be a pharmacist. I just think that telling her what she will have to do to get from here to there is a lot more useful than telling her to follow her dreams without any reference to what those dreams mean.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

"...It doesn't mean that the people in your life were right to discourage you -- I don't even think that the kid I mentioned before should be discouraged from wanting to be a pharmacist. I just think that telling her what she will have to do to get from here to there is a lot more useful than telling her to follow her dreams without any reference to what those dreams mean."

Yes, and yes.

A lack of roadmap is just another obstacle. And if you don't know how to go 'round, or even where to go, how can you move past it?

- Chica

[brooksmoses]

Your experience with the young man who couldn't do algebra is reminiscent of the times I spent with suzimoses when we were dating, helping her study for math exams. Except that there it was days, not just a half hour -- enough time to determine with considerable certainty that her brain has hard-wired trouble with it. (And, a bit later, the college counselors pretty much confirmed that. So she stopped listening to all the people who told her she wasn't good at math -- she was listening to them by being exceptionally stubborn about it, you see -- and switched her major from math to English, and was vastly happier.)

So, yeah -- a hard-wired inability to do math certainly does exist.

[brooksmoses]

(I'm not sure if this makes sense, completely; it's late, and I'm losing coherence and rambling. But I think it's got something useful in it, maybe.)

Also, on the ballerina thing, though -- I think that there's a certain aspect to childhood dreams that amounts to seeing any given profession in terms of the figurehead jobs. My brother was going to be president when he grew up; now that he's grown up, I suspect he will end up doing something that affects public policy, but probably not as an elected official. I was going to found a company to build cars; now, I'll probably be an engineer doing something that might help someone design fuel injectors. And it doesn't really feel like I've "lost" my dream; it's just that it takes a fair bit of growing up to realize that the little things are worthy things too, and so it's changed a little. So maybe it's not so bad to encourage the ballerina dream a little (with some doses of realism thrown in, though!), in expectation that it will change shape into something achievable as they grow up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well...yes but...I think if I had a kid who was expressing a desire to be a prima ballerina, I would try to expose them to as broad a bunch of dance types as possible. People who would be physically unable to become a prima ballerina might well become successful modern dancers or use various other traditions. But if they were continuing to be encouraged in the direction of ballet, that might be self-defeating. I knew too many people for whom dance team in high school was the pinnacle of their achievement in their main field of interest. Seems like a bad idea.

Quite possibly we're thinking of different ages of kid at this point, too.

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I think "Don't you look nice!" is far too tame for you. :)

As a side note, my sister used to write for publication (she still writes, but largely journal entries and online discussion groups now; she's not likely to give it up, whether it pays or not). She hated to have someone call her work 'nice' -- she said it was 'one of those four-letter words' -- because it didn't tell her anything about what the reader really thought. Same thing for 'good' and 'okay'.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Usually "that was a nice story" means "your story bored me." Alas.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

When I say something is nice I mean that I like it. I'm shy about showing exuberance - I've been exposed to too much hype on tv and in the media and am generally suspicious of it.

You make very good points in this post. I think I have yet to make that realization that I really can do the things my best friends have always told me I could do. I know I can't be a ballerina. Not without something like a whole new body. :)

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

...you knew those were lies. You couldn't have been just anything.

But you can be this.

Yes. Yes indeed.

It's just hard, after years of kindly (and unkindly) lies, for us silly monkeys to understand this.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes.

I had a similar moment with "well, you're young yet" this summer.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Although I think some of the 'you look nice' to awkward teenagers is to do with adults seeing ahead - looking at bone structure rather than acne, for example. It feels pretty similar from the inside, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That could well be it with some of the "you look nice." I think more of it, statistically, is something like the following:

Oh, that kid looks like she's put a lot of effort into looking tidy and well-groomed for her band concert/debate match/church event/etc. She also is standing in a way that makes me think she feels awkward and unsure. I will try to make her feel better!

And I even understand the impulse. Truly I do. But I try to still be more specifically honest -- "That dress is a really good color with your hair," for example, if true, can be a good sort of compliment for a kid to have. It's something positive that can't be brushed off, and it won't undermine later compliments because it's actually true in a way the kid can see.