I like watching little children go about their lives, you get a sense that they are always just hanging out in the big meadow of life. The life of a child has its challenges but they set no barriers between the different areas of their life or with other people. Two seven year old(s) can become best friends just by playing together one afternoon.
We adults are a little more complicated. We break down our lives into subsections, work, family, friends and we behave differently according to what section of our lives we are dealing with. We create pretty little fences to separate each aspect of our life. These boundaries are necessary. The size of each area determined by much time and, more importantly, how much effort we are willing to dedicate to each aspect of our life.
I think we set these priorities based on our sense of self, or our identity. When people have a strong sense of identity, they set their fences in a certain way and keep them that way forever. Only a life crisis prompts change. An old coworker of mine was a workaholic, but through a couple of bouts of cancer, his relationship with his 11 year old son became the most important thing to him.
Not being able to rearrange our life priorities over time is a recipe for profound dissatisfaction. A sense of life not being what you expect, lack of motivation, going through the motions and sometimes even depression are symptoms of allocating priorities out of sync with our present sense of identity and values. Our sense of identity changes over time, no doubt. That doesn't just happen to odd fellows like me but to everybody, whether they notice it or not.
Sometimes we know that our present set of priorities is not ideal. A single mother of three may be forced by circumstance to work too much to support her children. As long as the mismatch is experienced as a labor of love, it is not a problem. Otherwise tension and resentment will grow.
We can also be on the fence about our fences. We may decide to straddle two areas of our life that are incompatible. We then have to deal with a lack of strong footing on either side. Besides, it's a very uncomfortable position for men (and women) to be in. Occasionally, we all find ourselves there. Straddling permanently as a way of life is a sign of having set poor boundaries.
Do I use just my sense of identity to set boundaries? In my case, when work and children issues collide, using my sense of paternal identity alone does not help me decide what to do. Both caring for children and providing for them financially are important parts of my interpretation of what it is to be a father.
When identity fails, I try to solve these conflicts by applying a core value. For me, core values are those ruling principles that would survive as a guiding force even if my memories and life experiences where gone. I have watched people with Alzheimer's lose their memories, with them their sense of who they are dissolves, but somehow, some of their core values seem to stay with them a little longer.
By watching your choices during a challenging situation, you can see your core values at work. This is not a theoretical exercise. Dealing with the difficult choices and actually paying attention to how the process is developing is the only way to understand what you stand for. Your stances will determine your life map. This map cannot be purchased from others, it has to be drawn by your own hand. Using someone else's map to lead your life is possibly easier at the beginning, but it will make you get lost in the long run. Any life story that starts with "my father wanted me to be a lawyer and I didn't know what else to do", hardly ever has a happy ending.
For me integrity, empathy, practicality and balance have always been good counselors. Counselors that I have many times ignored at a certain price. Core values can be hard masters. If there was a pill that would give us all the courage we need to live according to our values, I think the world would be a fantastic place.
The process of creating a balanced, ecologic set of priorities is daunting, but it may be the only path to real satisfaction in life. I see time and time again, successful, young, talented people self destruct and die early. 27 years old seems to be the magic number.
Maybe because they never really aligned those pretty little fences with their own core values, lost in a whirlwind of trying to obtain fortune and fame by pleasing dozens of toxic people.
No comments:
Post a Comment