This post came up listening to a podcast about personal branding, and growth of a business and one of the most important aspects of building your personal brand and business is "why". Why are you creating this? They described the "why" as such a normal question that didn't usually make people feel an urge to run away from the question "why". The first feeling I had was "well, I'm sure I can figure my business out without it, I know what I want." Sitting with the word "why" was so uncomfortable. Searching for my "why" made my skin crawl and made me want to use old unhealthy coping mechanisms to get rid of the feelings. So the blog post on "why" sat on a scrap of paper for a while until I felt like I was choking with emotion every time I saw the paper and finally had the strength to dive down this uncomfortable place and process while I write.
I thought back to my time in the religious formal education system especially through middle school and high school, and the lack of ability to ask why. The automatic response was "that is the way it is, don't question the truth" the anger that was the automatic emotional response shared with at some point got engrained, and I tried to train myself to stop asking. This goes even further back to childhood especially with religious rituals the question of why wasn't appreciated as the answers weren't necessarily known or were to be shared, rather shut down as this is what we do. I had been trained for so long to never ask the question "why",I tried very hard to follow the training although, I never did a great job at keeping my mouth shut. The reactions varied depending on what I was questioning. As soon as I write this, of course, the thought that comes to mind, is well don't blame other people for your problems or your actions. And while this is true, actions, reactions, and specific instances do create imprints on me. It's then my job to process the emotions and actions, and this, of course, takes time in order to have the emotional capacity to go back and process. But yes each person's actions and reactions have an impact on someone else and that's normal to accept within boundaries.
One story that stands in my mind specifically happened when I was in 12th grade. It was the beginning of the year and the class that was being given was called "Bayit Yehudi"-Jewish home. I'm not sure what we were meant to be learning but the first lesson the teacher started out by saying everyone needs to figure out what subject they want to learn to teach, in the teachers' seminary that was run and owned by the same people who owned my high school (drama for another time). My immediate reaction was to blurt out that I have no interest in being a teacher and there are so many different jobs out there, and not everyone is meant to be a teacher, even the rabbi they claimed was their inspiration for the school specifically wrote about individual talents and using them in many of his writings. The continuation of the outburst included pointing out many of my friends in the class and how they had so many talents and career options more suited to them, at that point the teacher had really had enough, she had already told me to go to the principal's office, now told me I was not welcome back in this class for the rest of the year. Now the first emotion I thought I felt at that moment was elation, "great I get a free period every week for the entire year, chilling on the grass outside for an extra hour a week sounds great." That emotion subsided quickly as I slammed the front door on the school building and went to sit down on the grass outside, surpassing the useless visit with the principal who would have nothing to say that I felt was worth listening to. Sitting down with my back against a tree the next feeling that washed over was one of abandonment and feeling completely alone, none of my friends had backed me up in class, they all stayed silent as I ranted. Now logically this makes sense they were and most still are part of that community and talking back would be committing community suicide. Just thinking back on this memory brings back up so many feelings of anger and being suppressed into the cookie-cutter image of how I was supposed to behave and what the next steps in my life were supposed to be. It also brought up the feeling of how they used the religious icon of a very important rabbi, especially in their circle when they wanted to force us to come to school specifically the day before a big exam to pray even when legally the students are supposed to have the day off to study at home. Yet they refused to acknowledge what that same rabbi actually said about unique individual talents, the hypocrisy made me crazy, even though it was far from the first time this happened, this one hit especially deep. Evidence to that fact as these same emotions are actually bubbling up in me right now as I write this seven years later.
There were a few people in my life who let me question why and I am forever indebted to those two for giving me the space to start re-learning to use the question of why. The crazy thing is I actually love questioning as to why things are, for a while I wanted to go into research about different things all of course based on things that I questioned, and then internally had already learned how to shut down my voice of why, almost automatically never questioning the reaction and action. So here's to learning to listen to myself say why, and follow the rabbit hole down a healthy path of self exploration.
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