WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Note: This post could be a sequel to this one on twenty-somethings, and/or this one on children and fear and/or to this one on children again and/or this one on drawing and life. It came to me while re-working with Gloria Steinem's book Revolution from Within (which ranks as one of my Great Must Read books)

Go back to being five, maybe six years old. Can you remember being proud of something new you learnt, something you’re good at, something you love about yourself? Remember offering to perform or “show off”? Can you remember the last time you did that? The last time you were that truly, unabashedly proud of your self, experience, or ability?

There are children you know, today, those who are at that phase when they still feel if they’re really good at something, they can say so proudly, or start performing and want everyone to watch, or are drawing, writing, trying to find a means of expression that is slightly more abstract. Notice how we deal with them? [this “we” being you, me, parents, aunts, uncles…] When they are a little younger, it’s amusing to see this kind of behaviour. Then we start to tell them to praise things in other people, in other children and not speak so much about their own skills or good things- that’s for other people to notice. Then when they are still older discovering poetry, or art, a sometimes laugh when a 10-year-old draws a man who looks only remotely like one, or writes a poem that isn’t exactly W.H. Auden: because they are too old for simple compliments or just pure encouragement when you can’t see evidence of any real skill.

This, in my opinion, creates patterns. They imply, to a person who is still only discovering their concept of self, of expression, of self-esteem, these things:

ð What you’re good at is not as important as what somebody else is good at. So praise other people, hide your strengths till even you forget you have them.
ð Don’t attempt anything unless you’re already good at it.
ð Your skill or ability makes you valuable/ lovable.
ð Pride in yourself is a terrible thing.
ð You’re not big enough to be taken seriously.

These are psychological patterns I can see in me, in friends, in almost every twenty-something. We are mostly well-adjusted, smart thinking, sensitive people, but hesitant to say “I’m good at this” or “I’ll try” or “I deserve better than this”. We want to be understood but it’s such a step to truly communicate feelings to another. Trust is another issue. We’re still only discovering other ways of expression: in writing, in art, even poetry or adventure sports: it’s hard to think you can jump in and try something without already having the necessary skills.

Children at three, five, even ten have a tremendous sense of self-worth. Lets’s nurture that rather than take it as amusement, or tease them about it, or try to discourage it. let’s never tell them to praise other people and be “modest” about themselves, or that self-love is vanity and other-love is essential and desirable. Let’s never laugh at their attempts at art, sports, fashion, poetry, stunting their growth, fostering in them a sense of inadequacy, of not being “good enough”. Let’s never tell them, or imply that they’re too small to make a difference.

Instead, let’s encourage them to laugh “too” loud if they want, dance “too” freely,dream big, speak their mind. Let’s allow them space to experiment with means of self-expression. Let’s take their attempts at life, art, anything else with respect so that they don’t grow up into twenty (or even forty!) year olds too timid to experience boldly or express honestly; and so that they don’t grow up feeling like their need either beauty, or brains, or speed, or that BMW to be loved, wanted, valuable.

If we ingrain anything in them, let it be just that They deserve because they Are.