He Was Never Told Not to Run so Fast
I used to think maybe my memory was jaded. That for a plethora of reasons I just remembered all my own subjugated dimming and missed his. Somehow in the course of rather unique and chaotic childhood I wasn't focused on hearing direction given to another. As such, over the decades of parenting couple dozen humans, I paid closer attention, and discovered rather to my horror and deepening madness??sadness ??? I am still mulling that one, that I had in fact not missed anything, rather my memories were quite accurate and rather vividly steeped in reality.
In the course of human competition, never once in the course of race, contest, meet, match, game, tournament, no matter size or age, did anyone ever tell a boy to do less, to slow down, to think of others turn at getting a trophy. To not run so fast. No teacher told a boy since running or jumping or what ever particular feat of day was easy for him, or at least not as difficult as others might find it, that they were no longer part of it, let alone take away a prize. They were praised, held up, told to try harder, given space, support and encouragement to succeed, to reach their potential. It was all "healthy".
These thoughts have been rattling in my head a month, a month since I was at an Instruct Instructors Certification training, I was feeling in good company, enjoying the time to expand and hone my skillset. Being in a space where I didn't have to check myself to show up at an acceptable low level of shine, but be a solid 70% level. Like too often in my life feeling a part of group came to a halt, after our first day of presentations over, I was pulled aside and told I was too much, intimidating others, that I was making others feel less, so could I just pull it back, not show up quite so much. Of course it was all wrapped in constructive feedback and all the positivity, of we know you have this, just let others have space to bumble and not feel comparison. That it wasn't fair to them that I was great at it. I wanted to just shout then give me the fucking certification and let me enjoy the next 12 hours of classroom instruction somewhere else. But no, we don't actually reward knowledge, we reward standards, rather shit ones.
Later in my room, I bawled. I am not crier, I only need one hand to count the times I have shed some tears in the last half decade. But fuck, it brought up every time I was silenced, dimmed, squished, pushed to fit in tiny spaces. All the masking and social skills developed to make others comfortable, all the dreams and expectations given up to make space for someone else's. A lifetime of making myself palatable to the social tongue.
- Don't actually read fully in front of people, in fact pretend you are still reading, watch everyone else's body language to match to be "done".
- Finding that acceptable level of testing scores where I am okay with my performance, and okay that others are okay with it too, "comfortable comparison".
- Do that so long it is just habit, to pick which question/s to miss so the teacher knows which sections they need to go over more for the class. Ask questions to questions that you see others struggle with, so it gets answered. To feel it is your responsibility to teach even the teacher, but all quietly. Because it is easy for you after all.
- Act like you did not want the award, recognition, reward, it is all for the greater good. Humility, meekness and humbled knees, right. You don't really deserve it because it wasn't as hard for you, so you work harder, quieter.
- Pretend ignorance, over and over for decades feign stupidity so someone else can tell you information you already know, sometimes its even your own work regurgitated and bastardized to you, occasionally accredited to some asshat who assured you it would do more good this way.
- Learn that while teachers may say "not working to full potential" is their concern, they don't actually support and feel very uncomfortable with that potential.
- It becomes easier to just let the chaos of life become the reason for that gap, instead of dealing with the awkwardness, it is easier for myself most days too. I think that is the fucking hardest realization is I have conditioned myself to accept intellectual mediocrity and pious rewards otherwise the rage would consume me, and make me mean and petty.
- That my dimmer switch needs to be around 40% for social ease, this comes with knowledge that we hold intelligence to a certain level anything above that is treated with same disdain and shit as not meeting it. We expect droppage just as much as we preach rising up.
- Realization that successful woman is the biggest oxymoron
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