Practice One: Waking Up Principles of Self-Awareness

      “What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters, compared to what lies within us.” —Henry S. Haskins, “Meditations on Wall Street”

      IS IT TIME TO TWEAK THE RECIPE?

      I like to have a recipe. I can make anything with a recipe. I’m not afraid to try exotic dishes or difficult techniques, as long as they are spelled out. I could follow the instructions of an old-world Italian lady and make fabulous gnocchi, but I would beg her to write down the steps so that I could make it on my own later.

      Recipe following is how I’ve lived much of my life. “Combine 1 college education with 1 caring and successful husband. Add 3 children and stir.” This turned out well for the presentation part, but flopped in the end.

      Who knew ingredients could evolve? Who knew we’d eventually feel limited by a recipe?

      Ultimately, winging it became necessary; a random combination of internal and external mixing led to a completely different, but richer, end product.

      SHARING RECIPES

      In the beginning, my husband and I even had recipes to follow and share with our children. We had access to oodles of child-rearing books and we ate them up. We deferred to Consumer Reports for the correct stroller, crib, monitor, etc. We controlled and extolled proper procedures for all aspects of feeding, sleeping, pooping, learning, and disciplining. If by some miracle there wasn’t a book on the subject we needed, we looked to our family, friends, and neighbors to provide examples and instructions. This was all fine and dandy, until the first time we were confronted with a child who didn’t fit the textbook description. Who knew recipes could go rogue?

      “If we expect our children to always grow smoothly and steadily and happily, then…we’re going to worry a lot more than if we are comfortable with the fact that human growth is full of slides backward as well as leaps forward, and is sure to include times of withdrawal, opposition, and anger, just as it encompasses tears as well as laughter.” —Fred Rogers

      VAPID BETTY CROCKER

      Sometimes as a meticulous recipe follower, I’d forget to taste the food at the end of production. I was so sure the recipe was foolproof, I assumed the food would be delicious or as good as the last time I made it. This was a mistake. We need to periodically taste and tweak our creations.

      Ten years and three children into my marriage, this textbook homemaker was one depressed tuna casserole. I needed zing, pizzazz, brightness of flavor. I was making sloppy joes like a robot. They were consistently tasty, but I was bland. My heart was heavy. So, there I was with a house full of people counting on me to be Betty Crocker, and I couldn’t even be me—because I didn’t know what I was made of.

      WHAT AM I? MASHED POTATOES?

      What if I was just a follower or tasteless mashed potatoes? I was unsure how and if I wanted to look inward within myself. I did know that I couldn’t bear to make one more uninspired hot dish. I could not let myself become stale living at sous chef status. I was simmering away to nothing in a very un-Martha Stewart way (unless Martha snaps at her kids, feels mediocre, and cries in the shower).

      So, I timidly stepped outside my own kitchen and experienced the full flavor of someone else’s sloppy joes. I smelled the aroma of coq au vin and noted its essence. I gathered enough spicy ingredients (in my case, fitness training, guitar lessons, writing) to ensure my own depth of flavor. I made renegade chef friends: either people who had been burned and learned, or had always made up their own concoctions (or both!). They gave me the freedom to wreck a few meals. Dared me to fail or completely kick a recipe up a notch. Wham!

      WINGING IT

      It turns out that I’m capable of winging it, even if I prefer not to. I have imagination and, what’s more, I can teach others to make their own gnocchi. I’ll even write it down for them, but it’s better if they just give it a whirl themselves. It doesn’t matter if the cake doesn’t rise or the soup is salty. Trial and error is the risk-taking/transformative part, the part where our lives and hearts rise above the container. Where internal goes external, with a dash of creativity.

      As for my kids, we still confer with friends and family regarding their upbringing because it is fun, and because they often reassure us that there is no such thing as a foolproof child manual. We try to let the kids develop their own flavors. I know they need help and guidelines, but I also know they need to taste what life has to offer, beyond the laminated recipe card. I want them to know there are recipes out there, but that it’s perfectly wild and delicious to sample a lot before choosing a menu. They need permission to experiment and mess up. They need encouragement to be who they are without a recipe. They need to know what they are made of.

      I first wrote what you’ve just read above as an essay years ago when my marriage was coming to a close, but my self-awareness was blossoming. It shows the first step toward independence: waking up. If you are “making sloppy joes like a robot” or raising your children just like your neighbors raise theirs, you may be sleepwalking. You may be completely unconscious regarding who you are. I was.

      FITTING IN BUT LOSING OUT

      The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung spent the first nine years of his life as an only child. He lived primarily in his imagination, and blissfully engaged in hours of solitary play. When he started school, he found he could not remain connected with his beloved inner world. In order to fit in, he adapted to his new school companions—and in doing so, he felt that he lost an important part of himself.

      Many introverts can relate to Jung’s story. In order to fit in, we abandon the sweet sense of home found in our thoughts and feelings and move along with the current of our culture and social circles. Often this means making ourselves into something we are not, including rowdy playmates, perpetually industrious parents, and vapid Betty Crockers.

      THE COMPETITIVE MERITOCRACY

      We all (introverts and extroverts alike) let the hum and busy-ness of external life lull us into a complacent stupor. In fact, New York Times columnist David Brooks says in his book, The Road to Character, if you’ve lived in the last sixty or seventy years, you’ve been living in a competitive meritocracy. This means that you’ve lived with a lot of competition and pressure regarding individual achievement. Doing well in school, getting into the right college, finding a great job, and moving toward success have been focuses for you. Comparing yourself to others has been the primary gauge for determining whether you are “doing it right.”

      Brooks uses the term “résumé virtues” to denote the skills that we bring to the job market and those that contribute to external success. Internal virtues, such as kindness, faithfulness, bravery, and honesty, are what Brooks calls “eulogy virtues”—these are the qualities people remember us for after we’re gone. Just like the personality traits of introversion and extroversion, we all have résumé and eulogy virtues, but one is usually more pronounced than the other.

      The education system (as well as society in general) orients itself around résumé virtues. It’s a lot easier to articulate and plan career goals and skills than it is to describe and execute a plan for