Baggage Claim
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We each have our own "passions" to bear, and mine includes the baggage that got stowed away in the overhead compartments of my psyche, where "the past comes alive!"
I started to really notice it a few nights ago while my wife and I and some new friends were making teams to play trivial pursuit. When our friend E. ended up on my team, she said, "Yay! I got the SMART one!" - and she meant it! This struck me as something that would have gotten a huge laugh back "home". Me, the smart one? Baahhhh!
In this place, no one knows my past; they only see my present, and they actually see me as intelligent! The stigma of being the geeky, big-nosed flunky in my k-12 days has never left my psyche. Even now, I struggle to keep those old lingering ideas from undermining my confidence. At one time, being seen as the the "air-head" or the "absent-minded one" was so normal to me, that when our friend said what she did, it came as an unexpected shock. Here, away from those who knew me back in Sisson, Pickering and LEHS, this part of my identity, in all its insecurity, is unknowable to anyone I subsequently meet.
Without anyone to recall the past and define me in the old ways, I am being redefined. (I should note that I believe we are in concert with others in the definition process. We define ourselves and our definitions are shaped by others.) In fact, my wife is currently the only one who still jokes about my air-headedness, mostly because she has seen how forgetful I can be, especially at the end of the semester, when research piles up and papers come due.
In this place, I am an intellectual, a "normal-nosed" professor; but in my mind, back in Mass, I am a goofy, "x+2 is all I know" big-nosed geek from a white trash family, who should have ended up a ditch-digger or in jail.
I think it is psychologically interesting how a new place can lead to personal redefinition because, at the same time, the old definitions still linger, but only in the mind.
Sometimes I feel angry about my treatment back east; I feel like I was wronged and that my life now is an active refutation of all they ignorantly believed about me. I'd really like to see My old h.s. guidance counsellor again and castigate him for the arrogance and condescension with which he treated me. Telling me I should go work at Sears; he ought to be ashamed of himself!
All the same, I sometimes wish the people I have met in this "new" place could know what I went through back in Boston, so they could understand that I am not what they seem to want to make me into: a priviledged white guy who is most probably wealthy and knows nothing of degradations and of the struggle to rise up and get out. The new definitions are just as off as the old ones, but now I am seen as the opposite of what I once was, and that can be just as frustrating and hurtful.
Nevertheless, I carry on in spite of the invasion of external attempts at categorization, living my life, as much as I can, on my own terms. In this regard, I received my most important lesson from my first and best life-teacher/friend/soulmate-sister, who very determinedly declared, "I am what I am, let what is consequent follow."
Words to live by.
We each have our own "passions" to bear, and mine includes the baggage that got stowed away in the overhead compartments of my psyche, where "the past comes alive!"
I started to really notice it a few nights ago while my wife and I and some new friends were making teams to play trivial pursuit. When our friend E. ended up on my team, she said, "Yay! I got the SMART one!" - and she meant it! This struck me as something that would have gotten a huge laugh back "home". Me, the smart one? Baahhhh!
In this place, no one knows my past; they only see my present, and they actually see me as intelligent! The stigma of being the geeky, big-nosed flunky in my k-12 days has never left my psyche. Even now, I struggle to keep those old lingering ideas from undermining my confidence. At one time, being seen as the the "air-head" or the "absent-minded one" was so normal to me, that when our friend said what she did, it came as an unexpected shock. Here, away from those who knew me back in Sisson, Pickering and LEHS, this part of my identity, in all its insecurity, is unknowable to anyone I subsequently meet.
Without anyone to recall the past and define me in the old ways, I am being redefined. (I should note that I believe we are in concert with others in the definition process. We define ourselves and our definitions are shaped by others.) In fact, my wife is currently the only one who still jokes about my air-headedness, mostly because she has seen how forgetful I can be, especially at the end of the semester, when research piles up and papers come due.
In this place, I am an intellectual, a "normal-nosed" professor; but in my mind, back in Mass, I am a goofy, "x+2 is all I know" big-nosed geek from a white trash family, who should have ended up a ditch-digger or in jail.
I think it is psychologically interesting how a new place can lead to personal redefinition because, at the same time, the old definitions still linger, but only in the mind.
Sometimes I feel angry about my treatment back east; I feel like I was wronged and that my life now is an active refutation of all they ignorantly believed about me. I'd really like to see My old h.s. guidance counsellor again and castigate him for the arrogance and condescension with which he treated me. Telling me I should go work at Sears; he ought to be ashamed of himself!
All the same, I sometimes wish the people I have met in this "new" place could know what I went through back in Boston, so they could understand that I am not what they seem to want to make me into: a priviledged white guy who is most probably wealthy and knows nothing of degradations and of the struggle to rise up and get out. The new definitions are just as off as the old ones, but now I am seen as the opposite of what I once was, and that can be just as frustrating and hurtful.
Nevertheless, I carry on in spite of the invasion of external attempts at categorization, living my life, as much as I can, on my own terms. In this regard, I received my most important lesson from my first and best life-teacher/friend/soulmate-sister, who very determinedly declared, "I am what I am, let what is consequent follow."
Words to live by.
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