A journey of renounce

After I wrote last week about the conflict between two apparently equivalent philosophical approaches I could not help myself thinking about the possible reasons why the "self discovery" idea was son popular, particularly among better-off middle-aged women. The quest to know "who they are" is pervasive and, in the case of some of my friends, has almost reached the qualities of a religion, so there must be powerful forces behind it.

Two basic premises for any search are that something is unknown (or uncertain) and that there are reasons to believer that the search can be fruitful. But if all these people are trying to find who they are that is because they do not know it yet. How is this even possible? We live in an age when we are more encouraged than ever to fight for our dreams, to express ourselves, and yet many of us believe that we do not know who we are.

Photo:  Ruud Kattenberg from PxHere

Focusing on the fact that this response to the problems is most common among women gives me the hint that the issue could have a gender-specific angle. In particular, while most boys and men are encouraged to express their views, be ambitious and pursue their goal, most women with similar attitudes are frowned upon and told to fall back into "their role" as submissive and caring members of society, which in practice frequently means renouncing themselves in part or as a whole. This kind of pressure is very visible even in primary schools, where many girls are told, even today, that they have no business pursuing a career in engineering or computer science. But compliance in this case leads to a life-long repression of their personal inclinations, with the result that, once the kids are grown and they are not so urgently needed around the house, they find themselves with nothing to show for their life and have to start searching, in the hope of finding that self that they left behind when they were in their teens.

Surprisingly, this problem of renounce is not unique to women. With many significant nuances, some men who have devoted all their efforts to succeeding in their careers eventually find themselves just as lost as their female counterparts. but for a different reason. While many women do not have a chance to pursue their interests, many men end up pursuing their own so intently that they get lost along the way. They have many things to show (a name, a career, a big house, expensive holidays) but at the end of the day they have forgotten why they do it. Of course they do it because that is what is expected of them, what they are good at, but they do not remember any other goal than just "succeeding". 

The luckiest of them manage to achieve undisputed professional and material success somewhere in their forties, but without a bigger goal they have nowhere to go from there, and that is where the "midlife crisis" ensues: they find themselves a young woman to reassure them of their physical appeal and start engaging in unjustifiable hedonistic behaviors because (and that is mostly true) they have worked very hard to earn that right. But at the bottom or their souls the problem is the same as for women: they have been so busy fulfilling the expectations that were laid upon them (by their family, their social group) that they have not realized how long they have been renouncing themselves. Once they manage to fill the mould prepared for them, once they have checked all the boxes, they notice that all that was not enough to satisfy them, to make them feel "complete".

And having lived all their lives trying to fill a mould, to comply with a predefined pattern, the easiest path ahead is just finding a new role that they can assume. Many men unearth hobbies from their youth, while women sail off in a journey of discovery. However, my impression is that these endeavors can be destined to failure unless we are brave enough to try to define ourselves and not just find a new tag that we can wear.

Defining ourselves is a long and arduous work: it takes a lot of trial-and-error to identify the things we like, because simply assessing if something would be acceptable to our social group is not enough. We have to be honest and brave enough to admit the things we like or not by ourselves, not just because they are popular among our friends. Also the fact that certain preferences would earn us a membership to a certain group does not mean that we have to embrace that group blindly.

Being honest with ourselves takes a lot of effort and many people are not in a position where they can afford to do it, but if you have chance it is always better to do it properly than going for a half-hearted effort that will leave you as stranded as when you started.

One of my first admissions from this strange period was that I really needed to put some of my thoughts in writing (even if the readership is scarce) and have now managed almost 200 entries. The second (more recent) admission is that it was probably not the best idea to start a PhD thesis under these circumstances and this is a question that I have not fully resolved yet: among other things, I have not spoken to my Thesis Advisory Committee yet. I will have to do it at some point, whenever I am ready. For now, I can only hope that I have been able to provide some insight into how to end our journey of renounce and turn it into a honest journey of discovery. Godspeed to you!