My memory, like the average news service, is subject to embellishment. It is difficult to know at times if things really were as I remember them. Though to the best of my estimations high school was a game. Well, not a game, but rather a collection of little games. Any individual subject was not nearly as useful as the kind of “life skills” you acquire in the pursuit of high school survival.
One of the memories that still amuses me involves me sitting in an English class… Although I never really understood how to keep my peers happy, I was very talented at engaging my teachers. At some point during my education I realised the individual tasks I completed were of less importance to my teachers’ estimations of my worth than the general facade I exhibited. Just by remaining quiet, sitting up the front and having my hair in a certain fashion I was able to do basically whatever I wanted without any interference from teachers. My English teacher believed I was working and concentrating hard – and indeed I was, but on nothing vaguely related to the course work. (I was writing lyrics feverishly or formulating web designs or planning my latest programming projects.) Somehow I managed to top the class writing an essay on a book I had only read the first and final chapters of. I apparently topped my entire year at that level of HSC English (that same year). As Alanis might interject, “Who would’ve thought… it figures.”
Of course if High School was a game, surely the quote-unquote “real world” of commerce is just an extension of the same game? The same intrinsic roles for people to play, and, one supposes, another great opportunity to exploit societal expectations for your own personal gain? It sounds cynical – it is cynical! – but for most people you encounter, who you are (whoever that might be!) is of less importance than what you can do for them. Except in industries where creativity is prized, individualism at work is frowned upon. There are certain protocols to follow in most places. You are scarcely afforded an opportunity to forget that you are “part of the machine.”
So the question remains, at what point (and in what place) are we afforded the opportunity to be ourselves?
The best answer I can formulate is as below.
- Amongst your friends, whoever they turn out to be, and wherever you find them;
- In your creative endeavours, whatever form they take, and for whichever audience they are absorbed by.
The truth is we are all irritatingly complex, multifaceted creatures. To say we are one thing in one moment is no guarantee we are not also the opposite in another. Perhaps “who we are” is of less importance than “who we think we are.”
But of course I would say that….
