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The Cynical Beginnings
Posted by Tanya
on
10:17 PM
Surface level thinking is so much simpler. Whoever said ignorance is bliss had the right idea. Nothing substantial can possibly stem from surface level thinking because ingenuity requires so much more reflection and evolutionary thought. It isn’t easy feeling the pull of deep thought. Knowing, and more importantly, understanding the truth in the lies, reality from fantasy, and the most basic of concepts, right from wrong, takes a great toll on the psyche. A wounded psyche, a spirit crushed by understanding, is it really better to live with eyes wide open? This lifestyle is irreversible, once innocent minds become exposed to injustice and inequality, that mind has reached the point of no return. When this understanding combines with a feeling of hopelessness, as it often does, it really creates a false hope complex.
I go through my share of ups and downs with my false hope complex. I say it is false because somewhere in that often suppressed part of my mind that provides me with the ability to think abstractly and to form rational opinions, I am constantly reminded of the fact that my positivity is going to be short lived and will likely dissolve rather quickly. I haven’t always thought this way; I really wasn’t the cynical seven year old calling the Barbie-loving girls conformist, superficial, eating-disorder promoting disgraces to woman-kind. I just thought that privately and smiled at them at lunch.
The year before I became Homeschooled—Go Bookworms!—I was a navy blue uniform clad silent thinker. When my first grade Catholic school teacher read us the Harry Potter books, I was the student who was a book ahead of her, narrating the character’s British accents in my head. I gave the popularity contest a try too. I pretended to like the things they liked, I tried to start the trends as they often did, but it only resulted in more ridicule and less social status. But the minute those six year old bitches came to school wearing my damn Powerpuff Girl shoes, I remember thinking to myself, these conformist bitches can kiss my ass. Or whatever the G rated equivalent of that may have been.
What I find fascinating now in retrospect, is that my walk-to-a-different-beat personality really didn’t begin forming in my colorful homeschooling years; my deep thought embracing mind began developing during my creatively suffocating Catholic school years, however short they may have been. And maybe everybody begins their lives embracing their unique and developing minds, but perhaps are just subject to the oppressing forces at work in the Catholic school system in which I began, or, for many, in the public school system. Social influences, scary though they may be, serve as a guiding force in the formation of these kids lives. I was lucky enough to have been given the freedom early on in my life to expand and explore my creative interests and to escape the tight grasp of public, or rather catholic school, but many are not as fortunate as I was. Their growth may have been stunted early on and their freedoms of individuality may have gone under the scrutiny of those same six year old girls too, only for years and years to come.
These untouched, malleable minds are bravely relinquished into the hands of certified educators by parents who blindly have faith in the capabilities of these educational figures. Those educators are then faced with the challenge of—putting it bluntly—not fucking up so badly that the kids face irreparable damage. That is quite a bit of responsibility for these underpaid hard-working teachers. But I don’t want to make this book about the failures of the school systems, though I do have plenty of things to say about their inadequacies. I merely want to give a glimpse into my early formative years, because I feel that my early experiences are so important in understanding my views and perspectives on my experiences as an adult.
I go through my share of ups and downs with my false hope complex. I say it is false because somewhere in that often suppressed part of my mind that provides me with the ability to think abstractly and to form rational opinions, I am constantly reminded of the fact that my positivity is going to be short lived and will likely dissolve rather quickly. I haven’t always thought this way; I really wasn’t the cynical seven year old calling the Barbie-loving girls conformist, superficial, eating-disorder promoting disgraces to woman-kind. I just thought that privately and smiled at them at lunch.
The year before I became Homeschooled—Go Bookworms!—I was a navy blue uniform clad silent thinker. When my first grade Catholic school teacher read us the Harry Potter books, I was the student who was a book ahead of her, narrating the character’s British accents in my head. I gave the popularity contest a try too. I pretended to like the things they liked, I tried to start the trends as they often did, but it only resulted in more ridicule and less social status. But the minute those six year old bitches came to school wearing my damn Powerpuff Girl shoes, I remember thinking to myself, these conformist bitches can kiss my ass. Or whatever the G rated equivalent of that may have been.
What I find fascinating now in retrospect, is that my walk-to-a-different-beat personality really didn’t begin forming in my colorful homeschooling years; my deep thought embracing mind began developing during my creatively suffocating Catholic school years, however short they may have been. And maybe everybody begins their lives embracing their unique and developing minds, but perhaps are just subject to the oppressing forces at work in the Catholic school system in which I began, or, for many, in the public school system. Social influences, scary though they may be, serve as a guiding force in the formation of these kids lives. I was lucky enough to have been given the freedom early on in my life to expand and explore my creative interests and to escape the tight grasp of public, or rather catholic school, but many are not as fortunate as I was. Their growth may have been stunted early on and their freedoms of individuality may have gone under the scrutiny of those same six year old girls too, only for years and years to come.
These untouched, malleable minds are bravely relinquished into the hands of certified educators by parents who blindly have faith in the capabilities of these educational figures. Those educators are then faced with the challenge of—putting it bluntly—not fucking up so badly that the kids face irreparable damage. That is quite a bit of responsibility for these underpaid hard-working teachers. But I don’t want to make this book about the failures of the school systems, though I do have plenty of things to say about their inadequacies. I merely want to give a glimpse into my early formative years, because I feel that my early experiences are so important in understanding my views and perspectives on my experiences as an adult.
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