Welcome back, friends.
Let’s do a little exercise together, right at the start of this one.
Just you and me.
I want you to pause, self-reflect, remember, and consider the last time you felt proud or accomplished. Interpret the scale or scope how you wish. Could be a single thing from just today, or even a series of accomplishments from the last weeks, months, or perhaps the last few years.
Reflect on the feelings each moment evokes. What comes up for you?
Take a moment. Hell, I’ll even wait forever! (As is the nature of static words or thoughts upon a page of course. I’ll be trapped here for as many times as you choose to read this piece, after all. A piece of me. Here forever. Even after I die, etc. etc.)
Now, if you’ve been reading the various articles in this series, each based on a separate topic or avenue, you likely already know my opinions on some portions of this subject. Even more so if you’ve read any of my poetry that gives additional spoilers on the matter hidden in complex metaphors.
But let me give a little spoiler…
Ultimatums on individual autonomous action? I definitely view them as bad. I want each and every human being to have as much autonomy as we can give them, provided they’re not hurting anybody else with it. But even in saying that, I must immediately acknowledge – that’s my value, and not necessarily yours, right? The catch-22 here as ever is that while I can direct you towards actions or beliefs that’ll hopefully help you… I also can’t force you to do, believe, or think anything, if I want to keep your autonomy intact as much as possible.
For example, if I hadn’t been through over five years of various counselors and therapists, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how toxic I now find things such as the idea of “sin” to be, no matter how often I use and abuse the notion or idealism of such in my poetry work.
Pride? A Deadly Sin?
But why should such an innocuous thing as your recent happy achievements be considered a sin? One leveling the penalty of death, a la “deadly?” Compare what you reflected on earlier to the level of pride or accomplishment you felt in relation to it. Does the level of pride ever feel like a sin?
Fuck that. I refuse to damn you to hell based on any such crazy fucking notion!
See, I have some things to be proud of, and I’m betting you do too. From former pupils in my years as a teacher, to my own impossible odds at survival and evolution from my destined bell curve statistical death as a poor ignorant bastard. Pride and Accomplishment are often framed as negatives in many western societies. And unfortunately, that can often happen long before we even explore similar concepts such as jealousy or derision expressed towards the accomplishments of others! Society is fucking hard to figure out, ain’t it?
So let’s take this shorter episode of The Pickup Truck Diaries to dig into Accomplishment and Pride. From the emotions behind it, to the ways it can play out, both in my own lived experience and across commonalities across some professions, titles, or identities. We can get into some great questions that can spur Critical Thinking. As a queer, neurodiverse person myself, for example: “What comprises the list of queer or neurodiverse accomplishments?”
Initial answers might be “coming out!” And honestly, that’s great. Because reflecting on our lives in ways that help us grow and evolve into our truest selves SHOULD be an accomplishment!
Which is where guilt and shame come in.
Let’s pull these apart to start, shall we?
Guilt or shame are strange things. Resulting from perceptions of one’s own poor choices or failures, often separate from the actual reality playing out. I come from a family that while mostly agnostic or atheist, was riddled with fucking guilt and shame. The word “obligation” was, and still is used like a weapon. And comparing my own lived experiences to the indoctrinations of say, Christian Sin Idealisms and the attached shame and guilt that comes along? Hoo boy!
Now, anybody that’s been to therapy can probably tell you how fucking hard it is to decouple yourself and your inner world from these toxic fucking feelings. It becomes downright hellish for the people pleasers like my former self!
As where pride is sort of the opposite of this spectrum, guilt or shame acts as a bit of a brake lever in reverse towards the far end of the scale. We find ourselves pulled towards different things depending on which emotions or circumstantial feelings are pulling us along at any given moment.
I don’t know about you, but being ruled by emotion has always bothered me, which can lead to all sorts of interesting discussions on dissociation and the pitfalls, pratfalls, and podiums it provides. We don’t have time for that here. But I think part of my processing over these last few recent years has been a rededication to freedom. After learning how important my own autonomy and the autonomy of those around me is, it’s somewhat impossible to ignore those people or events that trample on that.
Because let’s look at how guilt and shame are weaponized in a variety of contexts! The media is constantly telling us what to think or believe, as are other denominations of society such as the government, various religious institutions around the globe, or even cultural norms we must abide by!
I always think about the summer I taught English to upper level folks learning it as a second or third language. Taught it alongside a fellow Slam Poet (Yes, I did Slam Poetry in my late teens…) named Mike. Great fucking guy. Lovely human being.
That class had a lot of amazing folks who had recently come to Canada from Iran. And the differing cultural and religious norms even amongst the women in the class was eye-opening. The younger woman from a more rural background (despite having an incredible academic background in which she invented awesome things and the men overseeing her stole the credit…) chose to wear a head covering. The older young mother from Tehran was elated to be free of such notions and to be freer as a woman.
How fucking hard must that be to navigate? Especially when cultural and religious expectations are almost forcing you into compliances via guilt, shame, or even the threat of violence!
Still, I cannot express the joy I felt in meeting those same folks later on and feeling like we had helped them as best we could at mastering a skill. They truly felt proud of where they had gotten in our short time together. I’d like to empower as many people in my life with knowledge and wisdom as best I can, after all.
Again, my values, not yours, perhaps!
Maybe my former life as an educator has influenced the way in which I view accomplishment, knowing innately how wide and how different the scales could be. I’ve had plenty of folks in my former profession who started off at much different places from their peers, and who made more progress in terms of overall distance than even the straight “A” students performing at higher levels!
Digging even further into this, perhaps my experiences and many different professions over the years have softened me to my own lived histories.
After all, in hindsight I have a lot to be proud of, for how far I’ve come!
Anyone who has read my poetry knows I love the concept I’ve coined of “The Redneck Pygmalion.” A way of rectifying my own experience by alluding to both the famous Greek Myth and the two plays or films that follow it, “Pygmalion” and “My Fair Lady.”
Why should a strange, disabled child from a poor logging family (pretending to be middle class) ever be proud of themselves?
I’m the first person on at least one side of the family to ever go to University? But to even begin to unpack that, we’d need to also unpack the Millennial stereotypes of being dictated to all our lives that higher education was the solution to all our problems.
Should I be proud or feel accomplished about my writing achievements? After all, I lost a decade of writing time to my own damn self sabotage and self-hatred, right? So what if I’ve written over two thousand poems towards my six thousand goal in under five years? Does anyone even care about poetry in this twenty-first century age of ours? Bradburne is the champ at six thousand for a reason, right? Shakespeare at thirty five hundred seems achievable, but is still barely over halfway. Am I grinding for my own sense of accomplishment? Or because I think that such a feat is my only possible claim to fame as a modern poet? Where does pride come in?
I do have a lot to be proud of, I digress. But I find these sorts of circular logic traps difficult, in that we are constantly expecting the worst or preparing for negativity due to the commonalities of our lives in which we were mistreated or looked down upon for one of many possible reasons. The shame and guilt can permeate us that badly.
I’d like to try and flip the script here.
What if I told you that accomplishment and pride are necessary towards a happy, healthy life? What if our common practices of demanding humility and a humble exterior were also pretty fucking toxic?
I don’t know about you, but when I pause to think about some of the things people can be proud about, many positives come to mind, from the literal “Pride” events of the queer community, to achieving different steps on the ladder of life from diplomas to degrees to marriages and the like.
For myself? I want to be proud of stupid, little things that nobody would ever know about. Such as for breaking the fucking bell curves, as only a rudimentary google search gives neurodiverse people a thirty to thirty nine year life expectancy at best! Look at me! I made it past thirty!
Don’t take this from me by suggesting I add on the “demisexual/asexual” or “queer” tags in my Boolean Search, because I’d bet that bell curve drops even lower. I’m not sure if either of us have the heart for that right now.
Things get even more complicated when you feel proud or accomplished and the reception of those around you is sometimes shitty. Often these reactions come from places of jealousy or envy, or at times a person’s own feelings of inadequacy in comparison to you as an individual. The next time it happens to you or someone you love, pause for a moment and ask yourself: “Is this really on me? Or are these their own issues of self confidence or ego playing out here?”
I can’t speak for you, but perhaps the core message here is to let you feel proud of your accomplishments. As a second exercise, let’s make a tier list, shall we? I want you to pause here and make a list of your accomplishments, starting big and going smaller for as long as you can bear to do it. Separate things into categories for bigger or smaller at your own choice and leisure. Once you have a sizable enough list, stop and consider whether you truly celebrated each one appropriately! A marriage or graduation is easy as an event in and of itself. But how did you honor your pride for the smaller or more obscure moments? Perhaps you’re recovering from addiction, or cancer! Are you coming back into health or wellness after a period of the opposite? We need to pause and use these moments to give ourselves hope and a sense of self worth, I find.
These days, I’m trying my best to call out positive things or the accomplishments of others when I see them. It doesn’t cost me much more than a few words and seconds, and it brings a positive moment into other people’s lives. It’s your choice to emulate me or not.
I have good news! For this Pickup Truck Diary, we’ll keep it short due to all the extra activities and “homework” I’ve asked you to take on already! All I want you to walk away with this time is a sense of appreciation for your victories and the victories of those around you, big or small. While humility is an expected social or cultural piece, I’d encourage you to eschew it here and there to celebrate your wins whenever possible.
After all, we need something to keep us going amongst the darkness of this modern age, eh?
Sometimes we need to create our own sunshine, after all!
I’ll see you next time folks.
Now let’s get the fuck out of here!
-McRae
