This post is going to be a
mashup of several different threads running through my mind lately. I don’t
have a very good introduction, nor do I want to spend time on one. Let’s just jump
in and see if anything useful coalesces by the end.
The first topic is
academia. That’s the employment sector where I work currently and where I’ve
spent most of my adult life – my many years of post-secondary schooling
bleeding into the indentured servitude of a post-doc, and continuing from
there. As many of my colleagues would attest, academics are mainly
overachievers, a lot that is seldom satisfied on any measure of performance. We
are walking careers, ambly taking research from the field into the office and
from there into the bathroom. In only ten minutes, we can come up with research
questions that would only take ten years to address, meanwhile scribbling out
lists of critically important things to do that frankly (most of the time) may
only ever turn out to slightly affect about three other people on the planet.
Many academics are
perfectionists. A perfectionist is seldom satisfied; s(he) is always looking
ahead to what item next requires perfection. There can be a momentary flash of
happiness at the crest of a long-sought accomplishment, but the joy is often
short lived, because the vanquished imperfection falls into obscurity as the
next goal looms disproportionately large on the horizon. Friend: “Congrats, you
just published your first research paper!” Brain: “But my lab mate has already
published two!”
This has all been re-circulating
in my mind lately as I was promoted to a new academic position this summer.
That should be great, right? While there is some level of satisfaction, I’ve
noticed an increase in my anxiety over the last few months. I seem to be easily
reminded of Dr. Everybody Else has clearly published more than me and in much better
journals. I think about the graduate students who finished after me and yet have
already leap-frogged my place on the long academic totem pole to more
prestigious positions. I realize that I am not that great at grant writing,
that I haven’t come up with any groundbreaking discoveries in my field, and
that I’m nowhere near the top of any of the myriad metrics academics invent to
vault themselves to great positions of scholarly honor.
About seven to eight years
ago I came face to face with this perfectionist in me. It was interestingly
about the time I came out as gay and finally decided that I had had enough of
hiding and ignoring who I am. We didn’t have any sort of major battle, but
rather a tousle, and though there was no vanquishment of this foe, I at least took
the first significant steps of acknowledging the existence of this formidable
character and determining that he wouldn’t be the only voice allowed to cast
judgment on my life’s circumstances.
The lifeblood of
perfectionism is competition - with onesself and with others. It is both a
sustaining fuel and poisonous liquid at the same time. In the complete absence
of competition, the drive to accomplish, to push, and to improve is diminished.
Achievement usually requires motivation. So it serves a purpose in that regard.
Yet, under hypercompetitiveness, the fuel becomes poisonous, because no
accomplishment is ultimately satisfactory. In a world of 7 billion people, it
is almost impossible to become number one at one thing; it is truly impossible
to be number one at everything.
Competition is everywhere
is American society. It is manifest in couch potatoes jumping up from the sofa
when their team scores a touchdown, it is present in the pressure the high
school student feels to get accepted to the best colleges, it is in first class
airline seats or platinum credit cards, it is embedded in stock market indices,
and mad rushes to buy the cheapest gifts on Black Fridays that have now crept
into Thanksgiving Thursdays. Capitalism is competition, and America
The second thread is
social media and the on-line persona. For all the good that this decade-old revolution
in communication has brought to modern society, there have been generous
servings of ill too. In the compression of thought requisite in a Tweet, complex
ideas are reduced to imprecise strings of words bereft of context. In tailored
social media profiles, digital masks are worn that give incomplete or false
impressions of the personality behind the mask. Poor behavior somehow seems
more justifiable on-line, as if digital distance was somehow a license to
eschew social responsibility. Friendships can be easily and instantly made, but
even more rapidly terminated when one party decides to “block” another.
Political divisions deepen as people collect around the more flambuoyant
digital voices that have mastered the posture of contrived self-importance. Misinformation
is given extra buoyancy and inertia as it circles the globe via electrons,
freed from the old-fashioned constraints of evidence.
For most of us, our
on-line personas are self-crafted caricatures. My profile doesn’t convey all of
my personality, let alone those less-than-flattering photos that get quickly
deleted from my cell phone. If you carefully read through a digital feed of my
life, you are less likely find mention of the many failed job applications than
the job that I finally landed.
These caricatures can have
a corrosive effect on a number of really important things. For instance, they
can erode self esteem, as when I fail to forget that my college friends do also
have unflattering photos and failed job applications that I know nothing about
in addition to their advertised successes. The digital distance also has the
tendency to erode intimacy, a wonderful invention of social species that most
of us want in some measure in our lives. Through social media I may gain a
window into what a high school aquaintance who lives across the country likes
to eat for Sunday brunch, but know nothing about real thoughts, feelings,
concerns, and goals that motivate and guide this individual.
Next, anxiety. Lots of us
suffer from it. In fact, this recent New York Times article discusses its
prevalence as a mental health concern, especially the dramatic increase in
anxiety among young people. We live in a time where there is a tremendous
amount to be anxious about – health, safety, job, debt, career, terrorism,
family members, climate change, rejection, politics, natural disasters,
poverty, rapid technological innovation. Sadly, there is even motivation for
people in politics or commerce to promote our feelings of anxiety – why not if
it will garner votes or lead to more sales?
Looking back it is not
difficult to see periods of my life when my anxiety has been more problematic
than the annoying background hum that accompanies most of us. Graduate school
was a definite one. Coming out was another. These were periods when I grappled
with perfectionism. I still have anxiety about such internal matters. But as a
token certificate for growing up a little more, there is also now anxiety about
my children and family, about where society is headed, about really daunting
environmental problems like climate change.
Is it a paradox that we
live more comfortable lives than any generation before us, but are so racked
with anxiety?
The final thread:
self-esteem in the LGBT community. Most of us would describe the process of
self-awakening and coming out at cathartic. Having been imprisoned to fear or
shame for years or even decades, the act of casting that aside is liberating,
an intimately personal act performed on a more public stage. It is a moment of
self-determination and self-affirmation. But does the luster wear off?
As a collection of sexual
and romantic “misfits”, many of us in the LGBT community have endured difficult
and challenging experiences growing up. These could have included harassment,
physical or emotional abuse, misunderstanding, violence. We have probably all
been scarred, at least a little in the process. Coming into self-awareness notwithstanding,
I think many of us carry forward an additional psychological or emotional
burden that developed because of those formative experiences.
After coming out, do we
carry those burdens into the LGBT community in unhealthy ways? Are we quick to
judge or reject others in an unfortunate reversal of the mistreatment we
ourselves have received? Can we form friendships and date in healthy ways? Do
we avoid the social maladies that hurt others like ghosting (an inexplicable
practice of suddenly pretending a date or friend no longer exists) or expecting
perfection in a partner (knowing full well of one’s own imperfections)? Will gay
men see the harm in endlessly competing with each other for more perfect
physical bodies, greater “masculinity” (as if somehow the goal of being a
perfect gay man is to nearly emulate a straight man in everything except the
gender of your sexual partner), or a meticulously manicured social life
designed to induce envy in others and mask an undercurrent of loneliness?
We continue to fight for
equality in employment, housing, marriage, and just general treatment by
society, especially given the unfortunate political setbacks we currently face
in the US
****
Where does all of this
lead? Well, I think I’ve painted a picture of competition and comparison that
is largely unhealthy. The excessive focus on competition and outcomes certainly
can be debilitating for me. One key to any successful recipe is to keep the
ingredients in balance. I wouldn’t want to trade in my ambition or motivation
for laziness or ambivalence, but to paraphrase Darth Vader’s warning to the
technical mastermind behind the Death Star: “Beware you don’t choke on your
ambition”.
It takes a conscious
effort to keep the tendency to compete to healthy levels. It takes significant
mental labor to keep the unhealthy comparison to others at bay, especially when
we are surrounded by messages of inadequacy from a hypercompetitive society.
But it is necessary for sanity to remember that self worth isn’t measured
externally (either by gay or straight people, or by friends, bosses, or peers
for that matter).
On the career front, it is
prudent to remember why I’m an academic. I love discovery. I love asking
questions. I love thinking about how science can lead to answering such
questions. I love being outside and in nature. I love seeing something in
nature that perhaps no other person has ever observed. Maybe this is why my
hobbies also tend towards being outdoors in my hours off work. I can be a student of biology again – hiking,
exploring, photographing, and learning – with less pressure to turn academic
study into some sort of business.
On the personal front, I
need to remember that I am unique and (usually) likeable. I’m headed forward,
and upward (whatever that means), having fun and adventures along the way. That’s
enough for me.
