I have spent the past five years exploring different fields. I started my journey pushing graphic design and trying to get into web design. At the same time I developed my musical skills and learned to record. I was absolutely convinced that I had the talent and drive to make it work. Later I started to shoot music videos as I continued to improve my music production skills. I even mustered up the courage to do a few open mics to get over my stage fright. Eventually I took up writing when I started working in a book store. Even got as far as completing a novel and wrote two-thirds of a second one. I took a pause to wait for my real life experience to catch up to my character. Now I start playing with photography and film while still continuing to perfect my music quality.
After all of these endeavours I hit a block. I began to understand what it really meant to become a successful artist. It requires far more than determination, talent, or even luck. It required a whole set of skills I never could conquer and likely never will, at least not any time soon. It was the skill of self promotion. Marketing. Even though I spent these five convoluted years working in retail to fund my pursuits, sales was something that I never really took pride in. In fact, it was something I wanted to avoid if it wasn't a necessary part of my job. Trying to convince someone, persuade them into wanting something that they may not even need or will use to its fullest capacity was always against my nature.
Throughout my university training in psychology and philosophy, I had learned to believe that the best means of creating change in a person is allowing them to discover their potential from within. That is the only time when true transformations happen. The process of external coercion was morally conflicting.
My extended education from reading books ranging from economics to religion, to neuroscience, culture, and, of course, psychology and philosophy had taught me that the proper way to nourish someone's potential is to guide them towards its realisation. It cannot be forced. It must come from within, and in order to do so we must learn to guide ourselves, to explore, to fail, and ultimately to reach a revelation. It isn't an easy process. It takes time, and how much time is impossible to predict. But one other important lesson I have learned is that you cannot do it on your own.
This is the paradox of self-discovery. We require support, affirmation, and endless mounds of feedback from acquaintances and strangers alike. For the lucky ones, they are provided a safe environment to explore knowing that there will be loving support at home. Loving and capable parents are a source of guidance, as well as a security net. They will provided you comfort in the face of failure, and they will celebrate with you for every win. Without this foundation we are kicked in to the water prematurely fully expected to tread in the open. How can one learn to swim when they can barely keep their head above water? Furthermore, how can one teach others to swim when they haven't had the chance to learn themselves?
This cycle is a dangerous one and it has penetrated deep into the history of humanity. People forced outside of their development early have children and quickly transfer their lack of experience unconsciously. They fully believe their offspring will develop far beyond their capacity despite not fully understanding what that entails. Many believe that a formal education, a good job, and a fluffy salary is all that there is when the truth lies much deeper than that. It lays dormant within the soul where a child is forced to inhabit the body, expectations and responsibilities of an adult.
Having swam circles in the open water I have come back to where I left off. I know now that my initial intuition about where I wanted to belong was right the whole time, in psychology and philosophy.
I was underdeveloped. My parents didn't have the opportunity to advance their own development, so it left me searching for what that meant on my own. This entire operation, skipping from one interest to the next, was a tireless search for something that was there in the beginning. The only thing I needed was to reaffirm it through experimenting with everything else I never has the opportunity to try in the comfort of home. These hobbies were, are, and will be a part of me always, but the core of this process was the exploration itself. What I really enjoyed was the search. And now that that search is (hopefully) over I want to turn it into a career.
What drew me to psychology in the first place was the drive to understand the human condition. What makes up a person was interesting, and now with the experience I have had I have a better understanding of how a person becomes made up of anything. I want to continue to pursue how people become themselves, how their experiences make up who they are and how they will take them to who they will be.
I was lucky enough at the beginning of all of this to have found a partner who supported my search. Throughout these five years we helped one another figure ourselves out. She taught me how to swim, literally and metaphorically. We held each others hands when we broke down and kept one another afloat. Now that we have learned to be ourselves and see what we have become it is time to look forward and see where we are going. It is time to find solid ground.
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