Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Or, allowing your thoughts to sojourn undisturbed to the heights of creative composition
At thirteen, in a civics class I asked my teacher how it is that I could become not a citizen of the United States. He stated that I need to become the citizen of another country to which I said approximately, You dont understand my question. I dont want to be a citizen of anywhere.
As an undergraduate I conducted, at twenty-three years approximately, a social experiment regarding the contracts of social power. During this time I tested my ideas now as an adult of leading and following. Socially in all relationships I chose to neither lead nor follow; but to remain independent. The experience proved untenable because if not postulating or vying for social power I was incorrectly, repeated labeled a follower by those with the ambition to lead. Socially it seems that it is solely this dichotomy that is recognized.
This was written in October 2013, and I would consider these goals as current. With this as the subtext of where I am at today, and reflecting upon possible learning objective I could establish to improve who I could be as a leader the fifth point seemed to be the most relevant. I also asked the opinions of three coworkers in an effort to best define these learning goals for myself. Over and over again as I received the feedback from my friends my uncomfortable reaction was an internal squirming at the thought of following others, or leading groups. I asked myself, Why do I want to be alone? Why is this my must fundamental thought in relation to the dynamic of interacting with groups of others? I mused out loud, and our Student Life Coordinator, a graduate student in Buddhist Psychology said, Have you ever heard of Susan Cain? Who is Susan Cain? I asked. He took me to her Ted Talk and asked me to watch her presentation entitled The Power of Introverts. Her presentation explained of years of seeking solitude, years of stimulus reduction in my environment, and the self-concern for a culturally embedded sense of wrongness regarding my constant and socially variant need to be alone.
That was who I was: always vying to be the first in line to pass on my genes. When I was a Latino I fathered five children. But, I have found that that behavior was purely hormonally driven.
As a Latina and with estrogen, my concern and empathy with others has risen. I have a maternal instinct. I am constantly emotional, and it would be reasonable to say that much of my time over the past year has been spent crying because I now find it hard to not get my feelings regularly hurt. My thick skin has been replaced with vulnerability.