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by Alexandra Johnes

To lack [self-respect] is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.....It is the phenomenon sometimes  called 'alienation from self.' In it's advanced stage, we no longer answer the  telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game.
-Joan  Didion, "On Self-Respect"

Last Spring, as part of a senior project, I took Tai Chi classes and researched how meditation is used in mind/body medicine. I read several books by  doctors who use meditation as a form of healing, in stress-reduction clinics and as treatment for people suffering from severe pain and panic disorders. One doctor in particular, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches a method he calls mindfulness,  in which he has his patients meditate in order to achieve total mind/body awareness. Zinn instructs patients to focus on their pain and to become aware of it. This often helps them realize that they can live with their pain. No pain is too extreme, he says, in the same way that no emotion is a wrong emotion.  Awareness is the only absolute, and the only thing that allows people to live in the moment. Not live for the moment, but live in the moment.

I left that project feeling extremely aware and extremely at peace. After  three years of struggling to find answers, happiness, and a sense of purpose, I  began to appreciate my present state of mind. I began to revel in the struggle, confusion, and push of not knowing. And as I approached graduation, my high school experience suddenly made sense to me. I understood life as a system of  games. High school was simply one of them. I came to realize that playing games was both understandable and necessary as long as we are aware that we are  playing them. I realized that a major struggle throughout high school had been my struggle to resist playing its game. I spent my three years at boarding school governed by my passions rather than playing by the rules of the  institution. And in refusing to play by its rules, I made it increasingly more  difficult for me to function within its realm.

By rules, I do not mean the actual do's and don't's, but rather, I am  referring to the prompts the school sets up in order to fulfill its goals as an academic institution. I did not respond to those prompts the way the school had  intended for me to respond. I did not respond as intended because I did not  understand the point in doing so. Let's take an essay question as an example of  a kind of prompt. While I always understood what I was meant to learn from answering a particular question, I was never quite able to do so because what I was meant to learn rarely seemed to satisfy what I thought I needed to learn. I required immediate answers and did not trust that answering the assigned questions would, in time, help me along the path to understanding.

Instead, I chose to take what I considered to be a purer path. I followed  my heart. I followed my passions. I only did what felt right to me. I only did what was immediately gratifying. And while every aspect of the high school  regime relentlessly tugged me away from following this personal path, often  confusing, disheartening, and depressing me, I did not stray from it for the  better part of three years. I thought I was taking the higher road. I thought I was living the ideal meshing of the personal and the political.

In his essay "Dulcis Est Sapientia," David Gray points out that the mind does not register, or does not make sense of, information where it is not  accompanied by another factor, a will to understand....[B]y making sharp divisions in what knowledge we consider 'useless' or 'useful,' we set up barriers; we put on intellectual blinders which keep us from steering off the  familiar one-way track to understanding. (3)

He suggests that while he is perfectly capable of learning Swahili, he would never be able to because it does not seem useful to him: "I can see no  connection between Swahili and any other knowledge I have."

Gray is pointing out that learning requires a will to learn, and that  this will derives from the degree to which we can relate the prospective knowledge to knowledge we already have. He argues that "education should stress  the context of ideas above the mere presentation of facts." He would have liked to use me as an example. My education history is a case in point. I only truly learned when I could connect my learning to myself, to my own personal agenda. However, where Gray would see my experience as cause to re-orient the way education approaches students, I also see it as cause to re-orient the way students approach education, and in the larger sense, to re-orient the way people approach the world.

Gray is pushing to make learning a more natural, and thus easier and more  enticing, process, for students. And while this goal is a valiant attempt to draw people more into education, a much needed action, it also makes students lazy. Because, while we may be able to bundle education into a cuter and cuter package, we cannot do the same to our surrounding environment. Teachers can help students make connections, but once in the real world, students must perform  this task themselves. And this task does not come naturally; it requires work.

This revelation came to me recently when I found myself immersed in my passions but only understanding them minimally. Having followed my heart, I landed this fall at film school. In a directing class, my professor casually  asked me what the theme was of one of my favorite scripts, and I found, much to my embarrassment, that I didn't quite know it exactly. In fact, I couldn't communicate very well at all what it was about, the script that I loved so much.  I had eaten up its surface meaning. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly enough,  this scenario seems to be part of a trend. I understand very little about those things which I am most passionate about. I am not very versed at putting my  passions into words. This habit of mine is of particular concern when considering film as a medium of pop culture. Too often we absorb meanings of  popular culture without ever knowing exactly what meanings we have absorbed.

Furthermore, only following my heart, only learning when I could relate  new knowledge to previous knowledge, limited me from learning for learning's sake. In Walker Percy's essay "The Loss of the Creature," he argues that a tourist can never really 'see' the Grand Canyon as it really is, because his or her vision will be tainted by pre-existing expectations. Similarly, in Jane Tompkins' essay "Indians," Tompkins, in her desperate search for the most valid  account of the history of the American Indians, dismisses every one, ultimately  not 'seeing' any of them. In "Looking for a Lost Dog," Gretel Ehrlich comes to realize that in her search for her dog, she misses experiencing her journey. In  each case, the subject, in looking for something in particular (the Canyon as expected, the real history of the Indians, the dog), misses seeing what  is right in front of them.

Similarly, in looking at new knowledge only as it related to old knowledge, I missed out on seeing the knowledge as it stood on its own. I saw it only as it related to my immediate state of mind to my immediate place on my  personal path. The same "familiar one-way track to understanding" that Gray  wants to tap into locked me inside of it, blocking a clear view of the outside world. I evaluated all new knowledge in terms of its usefulness to my understanding of myself. I saw each piece as a prospective answer to my personal  pondering; if the piece did not offer some sort of resolution, I dismissed it as  being irrelevant.

What I'm leading to is this: Life takes work.

Both following your heart and following the high school regime require work. Neither one is easier. Following your heart may appear to allow more room  to slack off because you may not have teachers and institutions to report to, but, as I have demonstrated, the only person you are cheating is yourself. And  one is not necessarily better than the other. Both have their merits, and both  should be reaped of their benefits.

A common saying comes to mind here: "Don't let college get in the way of your education." Growing up requires finding a delicate balance between following your own path and following the paths designed by others. The key to  finding this balance lies in awareness. In order to be truly aware, we must not  only recognize the games, the different paths, options, views surrounding us,  but we must also play at these games, always working towards a greater understanding of them. Rather than trying to walk along the sidelines, I should  have played better at the game of high school. I should have let the institution push me and prompt me the way it had intended to. I would have learned so much more. Now, I need to push myself to play harder at my own game, to look deeper into my passions. I need to work.

To recognize that life takes work is to accept the rules of the game and thus, to have self-respect. As Didion says, people with self-respect know the price of things. They

are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the  venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which  everyday is a holiday because you're married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds. (149)

People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the  teacher might be wrong, that their hearts may take them in the wrong direction.  They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may choose not to play  the games at all, but when they do play, they play in full awareness of  the rules. They know the odds. They know that it takes work to play well.

Works Cited

Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem.New York: Pocket, 1968.

Ehrlich, Gretel. "Looking for a Lost Dog." Women's Voices:  Visions and Perspectives. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II, Esther H. Schor, and  Robert DiYanni. NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1990. 91-92.

Gray, David. "Dulcis Est Sapientia." Exposé. Ed. Gordon Harvey. Cambridge:Harvard,  1990. 2-5.

Percy, Walker. "The Loss of The Creature." The Writer's Presence. Ed. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. Boston: Bedford, 1994. 376-89.

Tompkins, Jane. "Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History." Ways of Reading. 3rd edition. Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Boston: Bedford, 1993. 584-602.

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