Meeting Myself: When the Horse Bucks
In the mountains, looking through the viewfinder. Doing what makes me happy.
As I was heading to Leeds the other day I met a guy in his late teens. He seemed a little out of sorts so I asked if he was OK. We sat and chatted for a while and he told me his story.
Just finishing school but with no real desire to be there and no idea where he wanted to go next. He’d begged his parents to allow him to sit the entrance exam to the local public school where a couple of his good friends went. He loved swimming and had seen they had a pool at the school along with so much provision for sport he could only dream, as kids do, of the sporting greatness that would befall him given half the chance.
He said he had struggled from the outset, he didn’t fit the mould try as he might. On the wrong end of jibes about the cars his parents drove, his glasses, the expense of gifts given to people at birthday parties. He tried his hand at rugby and cross country running. Wearing glasses (and subsequently not being able to) didn’t aid his ability to catch the ball, the fun was quickly eroded from sport in an environment where excellence was the bench mark set as the target for everyone, not enjoyment. He swam, joined the swimming club and enjoyed that and although he didn’t excel, he made the swimming team and enjoyed competing with both this and the water polo team.
Academia unfortunately wasn’t his strong suit either. He was pushed and at GCSE perhaps achieved a better set of grades than he could have hoped to had he stayed within the local state school system. A year at a different school in the hope of enjoying school life a little more yielded little more than some good friendships and a good amount of bullying for having come from a ‘posh school’. Focus waned and discipline with respect to school work become pretty much non existent.
Back to public school as the only way of indulging his love of water polo and swimming on a regular basis and pushing him to achieve the grades necessary for a university place and the pressure mounted. Everywhere he looked success was measured by expectations of high A level grades, offers of places at prestigious universities, promises of jobs in the City’s top law firms or financial institutions and by projected financial gains. Doctors, dentists, engineers, these were the people he was supposed to be if he wanted to be one of life’s winners. Choosing a degree in Psychology seemed like the right choice but in reality, it was so far from what he needed or, more importantly wanted.
A dark cloud of depression became a regular and then permanent companion, he went to the pub in school hours, missed lessons, drank too much and too often with friends in the evenings. He began to argue with his parents who were no longer a source of comfort when things didn’t feel right. Now part of the problem, their attempts to help and understand only seemed to contribute to the disquiet inside, manifesting as angry tantrums, all too regular aggressive drunken outbursts and ultimately lethargy. An unwillingness to leave bed, the idea of school and all that came with it too heavy a burden to shoulder. Coursework dates came and went, exams too and in amongst all of this the brutal theatrics of suicidal cries for help, threats, attempts at self harm and more yo-yoing between hatred towards his parents who weren’t fixing the problem and the desperation for the comfort only they could provide.
A-levels were flunked, exams were missed and the offer of a University place gone, his success as a failure was cemented. Add to this a girlfriend who was expected to shoulder the emotional instability of a boy who really now had no idea where to find his purpose, why he couldn’t be happy where others were, why he wasn’t bright enough to excel in the ways his friends and girlfriend were doing.
I looked at the boy and recognised the huge amount of shame he carried for seemingly not being able to meet the expectations of a world hell bent on measuring success in terms of financial gain or academic brilliance. I could see his guilt for the huge sums of money his parents had found for him to enjoy a more prestigious schooling and the burden of emotional torment he was placing on them along with his girlfriend and her parents. He seemed truly lost in a world where he didn’t fit, the epitome of a square peg in a round hole.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I drove to meet a friend for lunch. The boy I had met was a memory I had of me aged 19. For the first time since I was this boy, I had somehow been able to find the mental space and distance to understand what he was struggling with.
A subsequent session with my therapist left me with a brilliant analogy. When a horse bucks we might chastise it at first, but over time if the horse continues to buck, a behaviourist might realise that there is something that is hurting the horse and look to see what is causing the pain. Not fully understanding why I felt the way I did, I was unable to voice my problems and thus I turned to physical means of expressing my hurt. Over time as the right questions weren’t asked, my voice was lost, lethargy set in and I slipped into the solitary confinement of depression.
I still identify with that lost boy of my youth in terms of what I want to do with my life. There will always be the anxiety that accompanies comparisons to my peers though I am learning to give these and the associated negative thoughts less credence. Comparison truly is the thief of joy. Now I know that a relentless pursuit of what makes me happy is the only way that I will find the peace he and I crave. It would be relatively easy to go back to school or university and gain new qualifications to allow me to follow a prescribed career which would bring with it job security, financial stability and the relative definite of career progression but not the inner peace I crave. What I also realise now though, is that being a little lost is OK, that the disquiet that arises from not quite being in the right place is a gift. One that tells me it’s time to move, to change, to stop the horse from bucking. With each change, each new challenge met I’m slowly moving towards that state of happiness which, to me, is my raison d’etre.
We will always need the professions, they are the cornerstones of society. Now though, we have a world where free thinkers can excel. With the advancement of technology, AI and the cost effectiveness of remote working, there is a real opportunity for people to find something they love and make a career from it. My hope is that schooling becomes less of a production line for the classic subjects and careers and looks to nurture the alternative thinkers and help to instil the importance of being happy in what you do.