II. 3. Poor Pamela, Lucky Dave
There is a set of circumstances which casts an extremely powerful influence over our ever changing self-perception: our natural vocations. As a matter of fact, they represent its most cherished, its sweetest part, since A) following and developing them requires less effort and causes more joy than any other activity, and B) they bring us self-confidence through reinforcing our sense of uniqueness and even superiority to others. A self-perception where vocation occupies a leading spot in its hierarchal structure is one of a very happy person…
Each and every one of us possesses natural vocations organized in unique constellations. ‘A born artist’, ‘a born musician’, ‘born chef’, etc. are not mere expressions; they bear the truth about somebody’s extreme skills, which couldn’t have been appropriated by even the most sophisticated education or elaborate training. The majority, however, is not so lucky. Our inborn vocations are not always that strong, or visible. They are buried deep inside us, and it takes them a lot of time to reach the point of public exposure. The unfortunate truth is that most of us leave this world without having manifested our natural talents. Some people don’t even realize their very existence. This occurs either because of the environment, which makes their natural inclinations irrelevant to their struggle for survival, or because of lack of character… Or, most often, because of both. Usually it is the combination of outer and inner circumstances on a certain stage of somebody’s life that might either kill their innate vocations, or make them flourish.
Our proud march through the toddler’s age is especially vulnerable to factors detrimental to our inborn qualities. Since we haven’t yet developed a very high degree of self-awareness, we are also far from having the character to resist harmful outer circumstances. That is why early childhood is an age of crucial significance to the pace and direction of our personal development.
Let’s say that there is a second edition of Leonardo da Vinci snoozing in Pamela. Unlike the other three year olds, she sees the world in beautiful shapes and colors, which never stop amazing her. Each day brings new excitement coming from the continuous revelation of how lovely everything around her is. Until one day she discovers the pencil… Her animation is beyond limits. The environment has offered her a splendid opportunity to pay back for what has brought her so much delight. And like Leonardo in his creative inspiration she devotes her mind, body and soul to expressing herself, completely forgetting to eat, drink or pee. It is only the pencil and the white wall against her that are important… Without hearing the usually noisy Pamela from the kitchen, her nanny is happy too: she can totally devote her time to the important phone chat with her boyfriend. Soon one of Pamela’s parents comes back from work. He has had a bad day or a fight with somebody, or a pang of his midlife crisis. The ugly circles covering the living room walls are way more than he can handle, especially at this particular day. For the first time in our little girl’s life he loses control. He flies at her, grabs her by the wrist and slaps her several times. Then he reaches for the pen and breaks it into pieces. His yelling drowns her horrified cries. A second later he is by the table, breaking one by one the color pencils, which someone has given her just the day before. And so on… Guess if that girl would soon think of taking a pencil in her little hand, let alone drawing. And when this ever happens again, it would hardly be done with even a hundredth of the excitement she has felt in that first creative moment.
Vocations are the first individual qualities on display in one’s behavior. They can play an extremely significant part in determining the person’s perception of reality, hence the development of the character. At different points they can serve as detrimental or stimulating inner circumstances, the effect of which can echo throughout the person’s life.
When a kid is continuously praised and encouraged for doing something which he likes to do and does with ease, it could serve as an incredible compensation for the things he is not able to do…
The environment repeatedly challenges little Dave with circumstances, which he, unlike his classmates, has hard time overcoming. He can’t throw the ball far enough, he is a slow runner, and some of the others don’t get tired of mocking his speckles. But Dave is very good at writing short stories, and his parents have already enrolled him in the writing class at the community center, where he has gained the admiration of instructors and participants alike. And even though it’s not that he doesn’t care about his deficiencies in comparison to the others, their mockery is less likely to stir a deep complex of low self-esteem, simply because he carries the awareness of his alternative capabilities. As it turns out, Dave is a winner, because he has managed to keep at a top position of his self-perception a circumstance, product of his self-projection drive. If it wasn’t for his strong vocation, and the environment (his parents), he could have been quite unhappy. His inability to throw the ball, and his speckles would have constituted the top layers of his self-perception, which would have triggered his self-preservation drive in either avoiding others, or trying to pathetically make everything possible to be liked. But now, because of his realized vocation, Dave is quite independent, and his perception of the environment is a positive one – the clowns that mock him are a relatively insignificant circumstance in its hierarchy.
Yet in some other cases, even if acknowledged, vocations can be harmful to one’s harmonious co-existence with the environment, since the latter could turn out to be adverse to their display. Occurrences like these have their roots in the social, economic or cultural situation surrounding the person. In a dictatorship, for example, your interests, or even tastes, as natural as they could possibly be, are being severely censored, if their manifestation doesn’t fit into the regulated pattern of behavior. In the middle of last century the governments of the Soviet bloc used to forbid people, especially in their young age, to wear long hairs and beards. The way you looked was not your personal choice; your tastes were subordinate to official rules. Not to mention the way you thought or felt, or perceived reality… The consequences of this assault on individual freedom would be bitter and visible through the rest of your life…
In our lives the sense of vocation is the first inner circumstance to determine individuality. It is given to us by nature. We are not talking here only about talents; tastes, interests, even the simple channels of primary curiosity could be all viewed as innate inclinations, which define us as human beings at a very young age. They are also the first to kindle our self-awareness, because their manifestation is for us the first sign (besides the way we look) of how different we are to the others. That’s why if at this age someone with authority undermines or opposes our vocation, he risks deranging our whole personality, since vocation is our personality. At the same time getting to know and preserving our God-given strengths at the top of our self-perception could make us stay true to ourselves and develop within us a very positive and beneficial perception of the environment.
© 2009 Peter Budevski