It has come to attention, since joining the real world, that the world itself strives to pull its members to mediocrity and conformity. Life needs to fit into these perfect, little, preconceived notions of what is right and wrong. Titles, positions, and status are all reinforcements of this concept. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, I'm just stating an observation. In the previous years of my life, I was the person rattling the cage bars, making sure those like-minded persons with whom I associated and I were heard. Protests against the established order, petitions, committees, ahh the good old days. (I hate that I've become one of those people that pines for"the good old days").
Nevertheless, my new career has me stressing the need for conformity among my clients. I loath that I have to do this, but I understand the necessity. You have to understand the rules before you are able to make short-cuts around them, and the boys I work with do not understand the finer points and nuances of society. It is still upsetting that I am not allowed to be myself while at work. Hiding myself has even spilled over into my everyday life. I have come to notice that I, like so many others, spend many of my days the same way: wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, repeat. After a little while this forms a rut with only far off dreams to look forward to. I am not sure I want to live my life yearning for the next vacation.
All of the aforementioned mental incongruencies have led me to understand that I need to continue my education. I want nothing more than to earn my doctorate. I have applied to Auburn University for a PhD in counseling psychology. Lord knows I would love to be accepted into that program, and I am not giving up hope, but it is a far reach, so I am applying to a few Masters level programs. Either way, I will be back in the collegiate setting soon. I want to study identity formation in the individual. I believe that the way an event is viewed by the individual it is happening too is more important that the actual reality of the event.
Our identities are made up of the sum of our parts, for lack of a better phrase. I do not yet understand, and may never, why a certain instance in life can have such great influence, but none-the-less, any event can change the way in which we view ourselves. Once this view is changed, it can be difficult to understand how we can fit into the schema we had once formed. It goes back to those "perfect, little, preconceived notions of what is right and wrong...[the] titles, positions, and status..." I mentioned earlier. When an event happens that moves us out of our preconceived notion of where we stand in life, then the transition can cause internal strife, leading to a need for an external outlet with which to understand one's feelings.
I'm sure all of this sounds like gibberish to everyone else. That's why, or at least one of the reasons why, I want to return to school. I want to understand this process more clearly and be able to describe what I believe in a more coherent fashion to those around me. Understanding what's going on with myself or someone else is almost useless if I cannot describe the process in a coherent fashion. This job has taught me that.
I got out of college and thought that I would be moving into just a larger world of intellectuals who sit around coffee, listening to good music, and debating the finer points of life and the mysteries there within. This, sadly, was not the case. Don't get me wrong, I have had some meaningful conversations with people about politics and religion as of late, but the vast majority of the past nine months of my life have been spent trying to drum out the sound of football stats being quoted and cheers for "talented athletes" being shouted at ear-piercing volumes. I learned quickly that there is a big difference between understanding the basic foundations of a field and putting the use in the real world. I cannot talk about cognative behavioral therapy, the finer points of Yallom (I can never spell his name right), or politically motivated terrorist activities by using the jargon I have come to incorporate into my everyday language. Hell, I believe that the harded word I use on a day to day basis at work is "complied". I have to cut down my "pretentioius" language to fit into the notions of conformity placed on life by those around me.
Well, I have far passed rambling, and should end this entry. Who knows if I will return to this blog. I would like to, it's been theraputic to just have a free flow of thoughts, but time always seems to get away from you. A final note, "We live in a moment of histoty where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing (R.D. Laing)".
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