I am a failure

In the past, I've written a lot about the expectations that society places on us such in terms of having a certain standard of living, owning certain technologies, and looking a certain way. These things, ultimately, are culturally based and have been determined for us by advertisers and marketers who want us to feel as though we are lacking something and as a result, need their products to be whole (living up the Jonses/Oprah and all that jazz). In our society, how much money we make determines our status and value within society - the more the better. How much we measure up to the cultural ideal of beauty determines our value to prospective mates and society at large. The reality is, however, that few of us match up to the expectations commercials, TV shows, movies, and other media place on us. We don't fit the mold. We are, in short, failures of the modern materialistic society.

In a show on CBC Newsworld last night called Naked on the Inside, they told the story of a woman, amongst others, who was, well, fat. Over time, she had come to embrace her figure, despite the entire world telling her that she should be skinnier. At one point, she described that as a young girl not only was she large, but bossy. Her parents tried hard not only to get her to lose weight, but to reign in her "take charge" behaviour. She said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

I've always been large, despite always being active, and it was always my first instinct to take charge. It was hard for me because these two dominant aspects of who I was, being fat and bossy, were seen by others as something I should change. Who I was wasn't good enough, in fact, it was wrong. That was very hard for me to deal with.

For many years now I have done presentations for businesses, schools, and community organizations on the history of treaties in Saskatchewan. In the period after the treaties were negotiated, First Nations were subject to a governmental program of assimilation (which was contrary to the promises of cultural non-interference made in the treaties). One of the primary vehicles for the assimilation program was residential schools, which were setup to segregate children, sometimes for long periods of time, from their families and their culture, with the goal of making them into good little white children (albeit, with brown skin). Kids weren't allowed to have their hair long, wear traditional clothing, or speak their native language - brothers and sisters were sometimes even separated from each other within the same school. Missionaries and nuns then attempted to indoctrinate the children into European culture - its language, customs and religion. When I try to get people to understand the effect this had on the children psychologically (and I am not even talking about the effects of the physical and sexual abuse that was common place in the schools), I get people to imagine being told on a daily basis (both directly and indirectly) that everything you are, your parents are, your grandparents are, and your entire people are is wrong. Your beliefs, your customs, and absolutely everything that makes you and your people unique, including the color of your skin and the god you pray too, is wrong. It always has been. To Europeans, First Nations were failures - they didn't know how to live and had to be taught. It would have been a devastating message to hear and it was one that left many people confused and ashamed of who they and their families were - the result was a shattered people who fell into dysfunction to help them cope with the psychological anguish they were going through.

From the time that we are born in this world, we are exposed to the expectations society has for us and the reality is that few of us match up to what we see on TV - few of us are rich enough or good looking enough - very few are both. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out why so many people nowadays struggle with their self-image and self-esteem. Why so many people starve themselves to death or gorge on food to make themselves feel better. I don't think it's a mystery why so many people turn to drugs and alcohol, to gambling, TV, sports, movies and video games. Too many of us simply don't feel good about who we are because we feel like failures - we feel like who we are is wrong - we don't measure up.

The truth is that for many years now, I have struggled with what is expected of me by our civilization. The reality is that I don’t have a "real job", I’m not married (I have been with the same woman for 7 years – we are not married, but have lived together for 6 and a half years – we may not be married in the accepted sense, but she is my partner and I her’s), I don’t have kids, and I don’t own my own home. Last year I made roughly $15,000. I am balding, I don’t have a six pack, my TV is only 27 inches and isn’t HD, my basketball skills are deteriorating (I am probably shooting about 38% from the field this year - if that) and the truth is that I’m not very good at poker (even though I love it). And despite my best intentions, I have never written a real book – I have never been able to get over that last hump needed in order to publish something that will help me "make something of myself." In many ways I feel like I am a failure – in fact, in the most cultural interpretation of the word, there is little doubt that I am a failure. I am not what people at 32 years of age are supposed to be in the modern world. Some days, I am perfectly OK with this – I take a certain amount of pride in my way of life. While I don’t have a lot of money, I have a lot more leisure time than most. I spend more time than anyone I know (other than my retired parents and my nieces and nephews too young to go to school) engaging in what most of us would see as leisure activities – sleep, spending time at my local coffee shop reading, walking my dog, and reading and commenting on blogs. But some days mother culture yells in my ear “your friends all own houses, have children, and are vacationing in the Dominican” and all those years of cultural indoctrination I had come to the foreground and I too feel like who I am is wrong. But instead of missionaries telling me, it's Donald Trump.

The good news is that as I grow older, and hopefully wiser, mother culture becomes quieter and slowly, but surely, I am replacing her expectations with my own. Like the large lady in the documentary, I am starting to embrace who I am and what I have made my life into. I no longer expect myself to make a tonne of money, become famous, change the world, or even own a house - those things would require me to work 40 hours a week and well, I just can't do that at this point and time. Instead, I just expect myself to continue trying to understand what the fuck is going on in this world and inside of me. I do not think that I am special in anyway, nobody is. I just wish that instead of us all sitting around feeling as though we aren't good enough because our lives aren't as fun as those on TV, and our bodies (determined by genetics and our environment) don't match those who starve themselves for a living and model god-awful clothes. In a way, perhaps being a failure as determined by our culture is what we all need to strive for - I'm in no way suggesting that everyone live like me, shit, it barely works for me. I'm just saying that instead of following the well worn path forced upon us, we need to find our own - create our own ideals and expectations. We all may end up happier. Or not. But it can't get much worse than this, can it?

Cross-posted at Dodosville.