"Who even are you?"
Take an action. Try to be useful to another human being. Find out what happens next.
Those challenges you attempt, even though you can’t guess* at the consequences.
“Your teaching style is ‘show, not tell.’” he said.
I felt a little startled, but glad.
He went on: “You wouldn’t have known what your teaching style was except by trying to do it first.”
We were discussing teaching little kids: I’d signed myself up to teach Sunday School all summer, to give our church’s regular teachers a break. Spell them for a bit. Our crew consisted of a 3-year-old who identified as “Spiderman,” (and would give no other name) a quiet, serious 4-year old girl named Ainsley, and unexpected random visitors any week of the year.
At this point, I’m a little concerned about boring people with a description of that summer’s Sunday School adventures.
I’m concerned for two reasons:
I’m a bit over-excited about my way of doing things. (which I didn’t have when I started!) Most people get that way—right?
These “descriptions of what I did” flag as self-congratulatory. Seriously, this is an article about identity, purpose, and agency. If the image above is what you think of when you think of Sunday School, feel free to scroll down to the good parts.
But if you’re game for “sticking with me,” here’s a little of what happened that summer:
When I thought about how to teach those kids each Sunday School lesson, I discovered I wanted to make something. Something physical for them. For example, I could make the crumbling, tumbling walls of Jericho! I would get a long piece of brown paper, draw / cut-out a bunch of windows on it (for all the houses that were set into the thick walls), and then wrap it into one cylinder. Then the kids could tear it apart into pieces. (All except the one part that would endure the blast—where the red cord is tied at the window.)
But notice that I only found out I wanted to make that when I imagined, “How would I do a Sunday School class on Joshua 6 for my specific group of kids?” And I wouldn’t have imagined it if I hadn’t agreed to help: There’d be no motivation to do so, after all. Because it wouldn’t be Real.
I realized out what sorts of lessons I wanted to design for the kids. Lessons that engaged the senses, put objects into their chubby little hands, maybe even “anchored a memory” with a smell. (That last one turned out to be mostly aspirational!) I wanted to give the kidlets a way to be involved, “thinking along with me” about the scriptures, so that maybe—just maybe—they would get a hint of a sense of an inkling of the drama that unfolded. I wanted to give them something.
My vision varied wildly from others’ ways of teaching the same lesson from the same portion of scripture. Sometimes this caused friction. (Correction: Often, this caused friction.) But impassioned opinions like that are not something to purely run from: If you and your colleagues get that worked up over these choices—maybe that indicates you’re working on something that matters.
But the main thing is this: Sometimes the best way of discovering “your way of doing a thing” is simply “trying to do the thing.”
See what comes of it.
Find out what happens next.
And so it is with other acts of creating, whether you’re working on a scrap of prose to tell a story, or a mobile app… building a mathematical community, or an entire school of visual art.
But also, having co-conspirators really helps.
Finding ones creative voice within collaborative community.
So often, we think that what we need for our creative efforts is an encouraging voice to tell us, “Your work is so great!” or “You tried—keep going!” Sincere praise is a good thing! Many authors, artists, and creators would testify that it kept them going through the perils of discouragement.
But I want more. I want an accomplice or two. I want to be able to look over to my right or to my left (sometimes metaphorically, because internet.) and think, “There is that guy over there, doing something awesome. How can I give up now?” Uninformed people who aren’t on the same track for the same kind of adventure as mine aren’t quite as much fun. But the ones who “get it,” who are working like crazy to bring into the world things that are similar to what I am reaching for, who know the ups and downs—these will help me, not even needing to offer advice or comments, (though they’re often the best for that!) but simply by persistently pursuing their own private vision. I really need to know they’re there, and they’re taking the next action in the face of adversity just like I am. (if only to know that I’m not crazy!)
They’re fellow-strivers, who throw themselves into active effort like the archetype of “the man in the arena”:
It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs… but who does actually strive to do the deeds… who spends himself in a worthy cause… and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…
—Theodore Roosevelt, from the speech “Citizenship in a Republic.”
Once I got a huge burst of burnout-recovery from a whole school-year’s-worth of math-coaching-burnout in the span of about 10 minutes. My spirits were greatly revived, and I owe it to an unknown high school kid who I eavesdropped on when I was supposed to be tutoring. (I actually lowered my voice and told my tutoring student, “listen to this”—so then we could both eavesdrop!) What did I hear? I heard a guy “geeking out,” excited about the geometry concepts and/or proof methods he was teaching to a younger student! His enthusiasm was infectious. I heard that, and I was like, “Ah. Yes. This is what I am here for.”
Well, at this point, I tell you a bit about the way some internet friends carved a little community of writers out of an online community I was part of. First, one friend ran a Bad Writing Contest. (Which is exactly like what it sounds like, and which I will therefore, ermmm… not cover in detail at this point in time! Yes, I participated.) Somewhat later, a second friend initiated another discussion-thread that was really useful. She prompted a group of us to create short scraps of (actually sane) writing—except we were only to write what we could come up with in about 2 minutes!
I got so much out of that. And.. here’s an example.
Behold:
I was gleeful when I wrote that snapshot of a woman who had some sort of Augmented-Reality VR thing on her which display pesky notifications as she went about her daily routine. And of course, it was partly about “technologies of the future!” (But also partly about… umm, other problems.)
So, you attempt to do something awesome. You do it alongside fellow-questers all seeking fame, fortune, and glory like you. Sometimes you only find out what you were even trying to do when you’ve begun the quest.
As far as finding it out “what you’re doing” with your writing only “after you’ve gotten going,” I like the example of Flannery O’Connor.
She said:
I have found, in short, from the reading of my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.
I like her vision. It’s quite possibly not what someone expected a Christian to want to write about, but upon further examination it’s utterly useful. (Wanting “to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell,” and all that. Except, like… through writing.)
I’ll take it. She’s in my court; she’s on my team.
Did forget to mention that some of the people whose visions I’m indebted to are not even among the quick? Yeah, that happens.
“Name your favorite dead influencer” might not make for a slick, catchy meme, but it expresses a significant piece of Reality.
We’re doing it wrong.
For a long time, we’ve been declaring to each younger generation of humanity that the way to find out “who you are” is by performing some kind of supreme, in-depth act of navel gazing.
Or—on the other hand—maybe it can be done by looking at what other people are doing, and taking a nice, eclectic combination of their ideas: “a little from here, a little from there.”
Then you can figure out who you are, right?
Sometimes the epitome of this shows up in he obsession with personal style. It’s a natural preoccupation of the young—but don’t we encourage it a little too much at times?
You stare into a young person’s eyes, and you wonder they’re just pretending they know who they are, while merely following all the social cues for the standard ways to dress and act, to the best of their ability.
Who are you? Alex would sometimes think, looking at another girl in a navy peacoat, pale face like a waning moon beneath a wool cap, ponytail lying like a dead animal over her shoulder. Who are you?
—Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo.
(Please read my disclaimer below‡ if you consider getting this book! I love it, but… it is… not as much of super-wholesome-Vikki-book as you might expect!!)
So, the girl in the story had been thinking about the familiar sameness of the, say, five different types of permissible “unique styles” that all the kids “sorted” themselves into on her campus.
There was a kind of uniform—jocks in backward baseball caps and long loose shorts they wore regardless of the chill, keys on lanyards that they swung like dandies; girls in jeans and quilted jackets; theater kids with crests of sink-dyed Kool-Aid-colored hair. Your clothes, your car, the music pumping from it, were supposed to tell people who you were. Here it was like someone had filed down all of the serial numbers, wiped away the fingerprints.
We think we’ll find “who we are” only once we “find our style.” But “our style” is just a way of relating to the outside world. It’s often a mask—though a useful one. I think it’s mostly a waste of time and a distraction. (Except when it’s not.)
I focused on clothing, because it’s, you know… relatable; everyone has to wear clothes, and lots of myths about “the clothes making the man” abound—even though we’d never be very willing to admit we think that in such bald-faced terms. (My own flaw is more likely to be “How do I sound to other people?” I’m vain about my words. Chary about letting others see an unguarded thought. That’s where I waste a great deal of time & mental effort in worry.)
I’m sure there’s other useless paths by which we ineffectively attempt to help the young and the uninitiated to “find out who they are.” (Post your ripping condemnations thereof thoughts about that in the comments?)
Back to the good path!
To review, it’s like this:
Take an action. Try something. (It can be trying to complete a personal writing project.) Find out how hard it is to really do the thing.
Find a community of people “running alongside you”—people whom you respect, and who are creating stuff much like you are. (It helps to have people who are at about “the same pace” as you are going, along with heroes who are “ahead of you,” and newbies to your practice who you’re “leading the way for.” Don’t bother the heroes too much, and maybe don’t let ALL your time taken up by the people you’re helping. You probably want to keep producing stuff of your own!)
Unavoidable third step: Fail hard, and pick yourself back up. (I feel like I didn’t talk about this one much; ahhh, the bait-and-switch! I never told you you’d need to fail.)
Then think hard about how to not-fail in that type of circumstance: trust me, you’ll be motivated!
Drat, I’m going to have to talk about failure, huh?
An evangelical-famous (as opposed to internet-famous, or pop-culture-famous, or within-the-scientific-community-famous, or any of those other famouses that are running around) pastor wrote a book about how to create (gigantic) church communities that non-Christians love to attend. One of his interesting tactics involved how he filled the pipeline with needed Sunday School teachers and Bible Study leaders! He would recruit new leaders, but not to press them to attend useless training sessions at first. Only after they’d “gotten their feet wet” would they be encouraged to get training. (And they would!)
This makes perfect sense to me: Before you have experience, you think, “How hard can this be?” and offers of training go in one ear and out the other. After you’ve tried your hand at it, and seen how hard it can indeed be… suddenly every little bit of help you can get counts! (Plus, you know what kinds of problems you encounter when running the actual class. The people and the problems and the environment are now all real to you.)
So, am I, in effect, hoping you will fail?
Yessssssss, because you should probably try something that’s so hard that you can fail! Additionally, you might fail people whose opinion matters to you! You might even fail people whom you love.
It’s frequently more fun, but I don’t think that’s the main reason I recommend it.
Unlike the alternatives—it’s actually Real.
* After teaching children’s Sunday School for 1 summer, I talked to my husband about how the narratives I’d taught, like the Abraham story—and the Biblical narratives that were constantly “playing out loud” in the back corners of my mind—had affected me:
“I think they are saying that there’s two kinds of thing that a person can do to change the world: pray, and have children. No, wait—three kinds of thing! The third is that you can take a small action in faith! Like in the story of the little slave-girl of Naaman the Syrian.” (Here’s a link to a stunning posed photograph on that subject.)
And so that was when we decided to get pregnant! In this way, I can always remember when I taught that Sunday School class—1 year before the birth of our first kid.
† One day when I wanted to teach some lesson, in order to let kids get a feel for how it was kind of “dark,” I created a makeshift tent, and littered the floor with creepy glow-in-the-dark bugs from the Dollar Store. (Dollar Store purchases featured in a lot of those lessons!) I think I agonized over whether to turn the lights off or not—would this freak out some child and cause trouble? As it turned out, the trouble came from a completely unexpected direction. An observer saw my bugs-and-sloppy-tent setup and was distressed. To her sense of propriety, the Sunday School room looked like chaos—a disorderly mess that was surely that way due to carelessness. Unaware that I was the very person who was responsible for the messy-looking setup, she vented into my listening ear about how, “This is what’s wrong with our church’s attitude about the children’s ministry! Nobody cares!” (We worked it out—but I didn’t reveal myself as the culprit until well into our conversation!)
‡ A writer who I like to read (Leah Libresco) said this of “Ninth House”:
It was darker/more violent [of a book] than I would usually pick up. (cw: at least two instances of sexual assault—treated appropriately gravely.)
Sane description: when my hubbie and I each read it, we both said, “this is close to the edge of what I’d read… both in terms of being dark/violent/sexual, but also in terms of the particular way that one depiction of the supernatural / ‘the uncanny’ plays throughout the whole novel.”
It had me mesmerized, but I’m pretty sure it’s not for everyone!
There are times when my writing slowed down / when I’d “frozen up” a bit. I just know there’s things inside me that fear:
Failing others by putting forward ideas that are unwise and having them accepted.
What others will think of me if they see the thoughts of my mind.
I’m reassured that other writers experience similar problems. Behold!
Here’s an example of #1: “Later in life, Borges regretted some of these early publications, [the contents of two broadsheet publications that he co-founded] attempting to purchase all known copies to ensure their destruction.” (Wikipedia page on Jose Luis Borges)
Here’s an example of #2:
“A friend asked me why I was spending so long on this post, and I responded something like ‘If I make it long enough, maybe nobody will read it, and then I will get credit for writing an important and well-researched [Lockdown] post, but nobody will know what's in it and so nobody will get angry at me.’ ”
—Scott Alexander