Brave New Kitty

Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology that studies, well, human development; how and why we become what we become. There are many, many developmental theories, some deeply complex and consisting of dozens of stages, some simpler and consisting of only a few stages. Some of the more famous developmental theorists/psychologists include Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget. As you may imagine, it’s a study I find fascinating.

One of the more eloquent theories on moral development, which I see as synonmous for how self-actualized we become, has been put forth by Lawrence Kohlberg. His theory divides moral development into three main stages: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Preconventional morality is egocentric: a person is largely unable to take the view of the other. Examples of preconventional morality include young children (this is how we all start out), criminal personalities, and narcissists concerned only with their own interests. In conventional morality, considering the views of parents and other authority figures becomes important, and gaining approval and fitting in become the moral focus in a person’s decision-making process. Examples of conventional morality are all around us in the form of any organization that stresses group conformity over the individual (religion, business, most schools, girl scouts, VFWs, etc.). In postconventional morality, finally, a person develops a logical decision-making process based on internal standards of right and wrong independent of societal approval. Examples of postconventional morality include the Founding Fathers, Walt Whitman, and existentialism.

Each stage is more advanced than its predecessor; all of us start at preconventional and must become conventional before we can become postconventional. While theorists use different names and divide these stages up a bit differently, they all agree that these stages exist and are as necessary, unavoidable, and uni-directional as childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The difference is that while biological development is a given, moral development is not.

Most people’s moral center of gravity is at conventional, which makes sense, considering a society is held together by its norms and rules. In this sense, conventional morality is healthy and necessary. It means paying your bills, showing up for your job, obeying traffic laws, respecting the rights and property of other people; all the necessary conventions for a society to function properly. Living within the rules of society is an important part of being a responsible, conscientious person. People who don’t make it this far often end up living on the fringes of a culture, such as criminals and vagrants (or if they’re talented, as rock stars, movie stars, or professional athletes. I’m not saying all rock stars, movie stars, and athletes are preconventional, but some of them certainly are; if you’ve ever marveled at outrageous celebrity behavior, I offer preconventional morality as an explanation.)

What does all of this have to do with leaving the herd? Well, by herd, I mean conventional morality, or at least, its seedy underbelly. When conformity takes precedence over individuality, conventional morality becomes the herd mentality. The herd mentality can be a brutal obstacle to developing internal ethical standards (that is, to becoming postconventional), exerting shame and guilt to keep people within its boundaries. If you’ve ever felt held back or pulled down from what you really wanted to do by social pressures—family, career, religion, sense of duty or obligation—then you know what this means.

So it isn’t that conformity in itself is wrong or unhealthy. But aspects of it are, and it’s your job to figure out which ones. To figure out, essentially, where societal obligations end and obligations to your own growth begin; where and how to leave the herd behind in search of self-actualization.

In a very real sense, gaining enough momentum to leave the herd is like a rocket gaining enough thrust to leave the earth’s gravitational pull. Not only does the herd hold us back, often we hold ourselves back. It’s scary to venture out on your own, and becoming postconventional means doing just that. It means entering uncharted territory, exploring the unknown, often in the face of disapproval, and having enough trust in yourself to brave the fear and keep going.

Is it any wonder so many people don’t make it past conventional?

Whether we make it or not, though, we are indelibly drawn to the postconventional. It’s in our spiritual and psychological makeup to continue growing and developing. We romanticize symbols of uncompromising individuality like the cowboy and James Bond because we intuitively sense the rightness in them; we intuitively sense that being an individualist first and foremost is honorable and desirable, that this is where we are supposed to get, even if we don’t exactly know why. In fact, we are so eager to see ourselves as postconventional that we’ve developed all sorts of ways to fool ourselves into thinking that we are when we really aren’t. I wrote about this in The Illusion of Nonconformity. If expressing your individuality involves buying a product or wearing a costume that declares your affiliations to the world, then it probably isn’t postconventionality, but rather the illusion of it. And this is true whether it’s tattoos and piercings or T-shirts with bible verses on them (and everything in-between). Consider this seriously, because such an illusion will hold you back from real growth! If your sense of individuality means being wild, naughty, or “different” for its own sake, it says nothing about your internal standards, nor does it provide you a moral compass with which to lead your life. (I know the bible-verse wearers will disagree, but such displays indicate a conformity and dogmatism that almost never have anything to do with true critical thinking or mature spirituality.)

Postconventionality is an inside job. Thinking critically about what’s important to you, what values you hold, how you want to live your life, how you choose to be creative. It’s about strength of character, moral fortitude, a solid sense of who you are. It’s about believing in yourself enough to choose your own path, dancing to the beat of a different drum, following your bliss, enduring the attacks of those who don’t understand. You respect societal norms, but you rely on yourself to determine your own happiness.

There’s much more to say about this topic, which I hope to get to in future essays. For now I’ll stop with this: Leaving the herd is tough. And yet leave it we must if we are ever to reach our full potential. I think we all know this intuitively, and I’m not really saying anything new or revolutionary here. But maybe having a more formal way to look at personal growth will help you clarify some things and keep you moving in the right direction. I sure hope so.

To thine own self be true. –Shakespeare

We all have, to some extent, skewed perceptions of ourselves that don’t quite agree with reality. Challenging someone’s self-perception can be a dangerous thing to do. Have you ever made what you thought was a harmless or obvious comment, only to have a person turn on you like a rabid dog? If so, it’s likely your comment poked the person in a sensitive area that they weren’t willing or ready to face.

Self-image can be an amazingly fragile thing, and challenging someone’s self-image, even if inadvertently, can be a serious mistake, often resulting in strained or even terminated relationships. There are some things you just don’t say to some people, no matter how sincere your motives. The results will never be good.

Unfortunately, I had to learn this the hard way, which is ironic, considering the family I grew up in. In my family, it was the ultimate taboo to say aloud what was really going on. “Dad is an alcoholic” or “Mom is an alcoholic” were absolutely unspeakable words. I spent my childhood skittering around these truths, and everything that went along with them, like thin ice on a winter lake; you know it’s there, but as long as you avoid it, you’ll survive. Later, when my sister became a fundamentalist Christian (which, by the way, is an extremely common occurrence for children who grow up in shame-based families like ours), this pattern continued: it was unthinkable to verbalize my opinions about her rigid, judgmental beliefs; I knew that to do so would be the end of our relationship (and eventually, it pretty much was).

The point is, I learned early on that saying what you really think can be devastating. So why then have I so often found myself in the role—almost always inadvertently—of angering people by pointing out an aspect of themselves that they didn’t want to see? I think it’s because of how I grew up. As soon as I figured out there was something horribly awry in my family, which was in my mid-teens, I began searching for answers. Honesty became very important to me. The desire for truth and understanding became the most important things in my life, and I think that somewhere along the way, I began to assume that they were the most important things to everyone who wasn’t like my parents.

But I was wrong.

Do yourself a favor, and commit this truth to memory, as I have done: People don’t want their self-images challenged. There’s a reason people believe what they believe, however accurate or inaccurate, and unless clearly asked for an opinion about those beliefs, none should be offered. I have found that comments I consider mundane have provoked powerfully negative reactions, and offering unsolicited advice about more personal issues, even—or perhaps especially—to people with whom I thought I had intimate relationships, and whom I thought valued my opinion, has had catastrophic results. Regardless of how close you are to a person, if they haven’t asked for your opinion on an issue that doesn’t affect you directly, keep your mouth shut. It’s simply poor boundaries not to, rude and disrespectful. This includes sideways comments that sound humorous but are really meant to poke at somebody because something they said or did annoyed you.

This issue of fragile self-image is something I’ve thought about for a long time (having had a fair amount of experience angering people by sharing a “helpful” opinion they didn’t want to hear), but it’s come up again recently with my changing views about addiction. For some people, it’s critical to see addiction as a disease. They feel threatened by the idea that addiction is a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility. Most of this comes out sideways at me, in the form of indirect comments or hostile humor. I’ve been troubled by this, and have struggled with how to handle it. How candid should I be? Should I try to educate people with statistics and studies, give them lists of books to read, explain my Libertarian and spiritual philosophies? Should I call them on their sideways comments and force them into a direct conversation, or should I pretend, like they do, that they’re only making jokes?

These are difficult issues, but in the end, I realized that people who engage in this behavior are not interested in hearing my reasons for why I think the way I do. When people make sarcastic or dismissive comments, they’re acting out of fear. They suspect on some level that there is a basic truth about themselves or the world that they haven’t dealt with honestly, and it troubles them. And no matter how annoying or offensive I find their behavior, it is not up to me to educate them unless they ask directly. Certainly I have the right to defend myself, and I have the right to say I don’t like how somebody’s treating me. But if I’m able to see the bigger picture and understand that this behavior is based in fear, then I don’t have to take it personally; there’s nothing to defend myself from.

We live in a culture that encourages fragile, inaccurate self-images. The less well we know ourselves, the more money we’ll spend trying to figure out who we are, or at least look like we’re trying. I’m not blaming capitalism; I’m just saying that, due to human nature and the fact that it’s easier to believe you’re thinking critically than to actually do so, the self-image market is huge. From the soda we drink to the car we drive, we’re bombarded with the message that it all says something about who we are. But it doesn’t, and such messaging can only work on people who don’t understand this. Unfortunately, that seems to be a large sector of the populace. The pursuit of an accurate self-image is an uphill battle that in many ways defies cultural norms, and one that many people simply don’t want to engage in or even consider. It’s easier on every level not to bother.

Every level but one, that is, and it is the only one that truly matters: your authenticity. If you don’t have this, then what have you got? Without it, you go through life now knowing what’s important to you, what you really want, your heart’s desire, your passion, your bliss. What would be the point?

I’m grateful I grew up in the family I did, because it instilled in me a powerful drive to know myself and seek truth. I can’t imagine living my life any other way. Nobody’s self-image is entirely accurate; it’s a perfection we must keep reaching toward even though we’ll never quite grasp it. But the reaching is so very, very critical to a satisfying life. There simply is no other way.

We will often find ourselves on both sides of the fragile self-image issue, and how we handle each situation says a lot about how true we are to ourselves. It’s much easier to keep your mouth shut about somebody else’s annoyance than it is to see the reasons for your own. If you find yourself having a big reaction to someone’s comments, look within. That’s where you’ll find the cause, and that’s where you’ll find the solution.

Many many years ago, I spent a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I was still young and wild, and it was my first trip out of the country. I went with a hard-partying girlfriend and we had a rollicking good time, the details of which I will spare you as they are not relevant to the point (and for the sake of my own embarrassment, and because I can’t remember all that many of them). One thing I will share, though, that was new and wonderful for a Midwestern girl, is that I spent as much time as I could manage on the beach. Oh, that beach was magical, with the diamond sparkling waves going on forever and the hypnotic, eternal rush of water at the golden sand. It may have been my first, very primitive, experience with meditation. I couldn’t get enough of it. I lay next to the water all day, and walked the beach at night, sometimes sober, usually not, but it didn’t matter. The ocean grabbed hold of me and it has never let go.

On my last day, before we had to leave for the airport, I went down to the beach alone, settled in a chair, and stayed for as long as I could. I wanted to remember everything I could about that beach, as vividly as I could, so I sat in the chair and soaked in as much as possible, making a conscious effort to file it all away in a prominent place in my memory. I turned my face to the sun and felt its radiant yellow warmth on my face, my arms, my bare feet. I breathed in the salty breeze lifting at my hair and blowing through my cotton shirt. I listened to the roar of the ocean ebbing to a trickle as it rushed toward me, darkening the sand over and over and over, sometimes foamy white, sometimes just fingers of wet, depending on the strength of the wave. Then I squinted off to the horizon, where the water and sky met, separated by their distinct shades and textures of blue, each magnificent in its own right, each perfect and essential and seemingly eternal in my mind. And the manic flashing waves themselves, glinting with white sparkles too bright to watch directly for more than a few seconds, seeming so vital they could fool you into thinking they were alive. I also remembered the gritty feeling of the sand, the pull of the undertow, the floating on the waves that I’d done all week, the perfectness of the days, the mystery of the nights. I sat there until I felt sure I’d be able to recall any of it at a moment’s notice for the rest of my life, and you know what? To this day—almost 20 years later—I can. While I’ve forgotten many of the activities I’d done down there, the physical sensations of that beach are still fresh like it was just yesterday. Fresh and magnificent. I can close my eyes and remember what it was like leaning back in that chair on that beach, feeling totally and magnificently and consciously present for the first time in my life.

Sure, this brings up all sorts of questions about memory, about how what I remember today is different than what I remembered five or ten years ago, which in turn are different from the actual event, because I am a different person at all these times and memory is something that happens in the present. And while I understand that and know it to be the case, this isn’t really what I’m talking about. This sort of memory is more applicable to facts and events. The memory I’m talking about is the memory of sensations and feelings. For example, maybe you had a nightmare as a child that has stayed with you. But it isn’t really the details of the dream that have stayed with you (although you may remember a few of them), it’s the terror, and that can still be as real as if you’d experienced it yesterday.

So I figured something out that day on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. I call it “meta-noticing,” but it’s probably some age-old Buddhist mindfulness technique that I think I’ve discovered but am actually just recycling. Anyway, here’s what I do when I want to remember something vividly. First, I commit to the process by putting everything else on hold and allowing myself as much time as I’ll need (not usually more than twenty minutes, but I allow myself to go as long as I want to). I get comfortable. I close my eyes, and just soak in the sounds and the smells and the feelings until they become a part of me. Then I open my eyes and scan from the horizon to the space around me until I can see it with my eyes closed. Then I change positions so I can see another part of the horizon and other space around me. Then I just stay there for as long as I want to or as long as I can and enjoy all the sensations to the best of my ability, trying to keep my mind empty of everything but the sight, sound, and smell of my surroundings.

I did this on the chilly gray shore of Lake Superior. I did it on a dock in northern Minnesota on a night so dazzling with stars you could barely find the Big Dipper. I did it on a mountaintop in the Bighorn Mountains, with snow above me and spring flowers below me. I did it at the Grand Canyon. I did it the first time I saw the Pacific Ocean, peeking over cliffs from brambles at the side of the road into a blueness so deep it looked like a painting, its roaring muted by the distance. I did it the day I graduated from college (although I was distracted by a lot, making a full-body memory less than perfect). I did it for just a few moments at my mother’s funeral, catching a quick glimpse of the true nature of everybody there, feeling a sense of oneness and compassion that I had never before or since experienced with quite so much clarity. And I’ve had numerous such experiences with my partner Jim, most so mundane you’d laugh if I shared them (and so would he, probably), but each one a golden moment of time that I will hold precious for as long as I live.

I suppose this also brings up questions about what memories are more important: facts and events, or emotions and sensations. My simple answer is that both are important, but that our minds are not well-suited to remembering facts and events very well, and that’s one reason we have language: so we can make records of them. Our mind is, however, amazingly capable of remembering feelings and sensations accurately, and this being the case, we can learn to use this memory to our advantage if we so wish.

I don’t really have an opinion about whether meta-noticing is critical to one’s happiness or sense of well-being. I’m not going to say it’s a habit that one ought to cultivate in order to find serenity or become a more whole person. I really don’t know if any of that’s true. I do, however, think it’s true that the more present we can be in each moment of our lives, the more full our lives will be, and that goes for the bad as well as the good. Remembering the bad fully makes the good that much sweeter, and remembering the good fully makes the bad that much more tolerable. Taken to its logical conclusion—you figure out what that means—the fullness of memory might make the difference between happiness and misery when memory is one of the few things we have left to bring us joy.

We all have limiting beliefs: those thoughts, motivated by fear, that hinder our growth and keep our world small. I’m not good enough, pretty enough, brave enough, smart enough. I don’t know how. I can’t do it. I could never be like that. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have those thoughts. But those thoughts are just that: thoughts. They are only as real as we allow them to be. In fact, a satisfying life could be viewed in terms of how well we can put those thoughts down and move on with our lives in spite of them. I’m not saying we can all become professional athletes or great artists, but we are all certainly capable of confronting our fears and moving past them. Also, that if we don’t do this, we stay stuck in a prison of our own making, running nowhere like hamsters on a wheel, scared to even wonder what it might be like if we ever got out of our cage.

While I’m typically all for understanding ourselves better, in the realm of limiting beliefs, I don’t think it really matters where they came from or why we have them. What matters is that we recognize them honestly, address them, and move past them as best we can. I can’t say I’m an expert at it, except by way of being a fearful person who has had to struggle with my own limiting beliefs in order to get some of the things I’ve wanted in life. But being able to look at this process from a distance has helped me understand what’s involved in it.

One of the first realizations I had about limiting beliefs was that everybody is scared. Not just me. Everybody has a meter in their head measuring other peoples’ reactions to them. Everybody wants approval. Everybody wants assurance that they fit in and measure up and are respected. Just observe people in any group setting to see what I mean, yourself included. The person who truly doesn’t care what other people think about him is rare indeed; the rest of us have to operate through a smokescreen of internal voices that, if too loud, keep us paralyzed with uncertainty. Fear holds us back from going after what we really want, whether it’s real connection, meaningful work, or a deep sense of well-being. This is because going after these things means taking the risk of not getting them, so many choose not to go after them at all; they opt out of the race to save themselves the possible heartache of losing. It’s understandable, but tragic. People who make this choice tend to stay on the surface and avoid looking too closely at it, secretly hoping they never have to deal with it.

But of course, that’s not how it works. The more we refuse to accept our fear and deal with it, the more power it has over us. You can see evidence of this everywhere. Popular culture is a shrine to repressed fear, repressed anger, repressed anxiety, and repressed sexuality. When Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them,” this is what he was talking about.

Getting sober was a major turning point in my life. Up until that time, I managed my anxiety with drugs and alcohol and unhealthy relationships (a wonderful distraction for people who don’t want to look too deeply at their inner workings). Suddenly, all of those tools were gone, and I had to develop new ones if I was going to survive. I did, and my world opened up in ways I could never have imagined. I didn’t know it was possible to feel such hope and vitality, such excitement about life and a sense of my own potential. I didn’t know because I had never experienced such things. This simple act of self-care where before there had been self-loathing was like a light dawning in my mind, showing me the way. I’m not “cured” as none of us is ever cured of our humanity, but those first feelings of my own power stayed with me. That sense of…understanding has served me well as I forge into the unknown territory that is the rest of my life: I once led a life of quiet desperation, but now I lead a life of honesty to the best of my ability. The fear hasn’t gone away, but I know what it is and why it’s there and what to do about it.

I think these are the choices we have: avoid dealing with our fears and live a life of quiet desperation, or face them—be honest with ourselves—and deal with whatever’s there to deal with. Honesty doesn’t always feel good, but I like to think of it as the pain caused by cleaning a wound, as opposed to the pain of letting a wound fester.

In my mind, there is no choice at all.

So if you want to shed your limiting beliefs, you have to be willing to look at some uncomfortable facts about yourself, take responsibility for your behavior, and stand up to the world at large. If you aren’t willing to do these things, you may as well be living in a zoo.