“When did I give away my voice? That voice of curiosity. The capacity to question everything I was told that ‘this is the way things are’?” asks Rico Provasoli.
I am curious. When did I first get hypnotized? By the television cartoons? By the Saturday morning cowboy movies where the good guys wore white hats, the bad guys in black? By my first-grade teacher, a nun who terrified every kid in the classroom? When did I give away my voice? That voice of curiosity. The capacity to question everything I was told that “this is the way things are”?
When exactly was it when I parked my mind in the space reserved for “all good children who obey their elders?” That it would be hammered into me that it was not “correct behavior” to question those in authority. I can’t remember how many times I was expelled from school for asking that forbidden question: “Who says that’s absolutely, always irrefutably true?” In arithmetic class, well, okay. But at an exclusive men’s college, the Dean sent a letter to my parents explaining that my essays were not exactly heresy, but clearly were not in the realm of the expected form of a gentleman. And confronted at home, Dad attacking me when he’d paid for the insanely expensive cost of my education, expecting me to conform. “Dad, isn’t that what Jesus had done? Challenge the authority of the Pharisees?” Believe me, that didn’t go over well with the Italian Patriarch who lorded over the dinner table.
And then? Did I muffle my opinions in the face of too much friction? Do I remember when I made the calculus that I shouldn’t make waves? Generate and maintain a mind-set where I buried all burning questions? When did I cancel my membership card in the curiosity movement? When did I start believing all the rubbish my ego/I mind fed me? Or that people don’t really care about my opinions? But if I don’t have opinions then who am I?
When did I stop questioning where that conversation in my head originated, that irrefutable voice that knows what’s best for me? That internalization of authority? The Judge who is always right and has something to say about what I did or didn’t do to satisfy it? Psychology identifies this as The Inner Critic, the constant unkind, inner conversation which originally took root in the child to ward off any faux pas behavior. No one wants to look like an idiot in school, right? Enter the voice which monitors your every move. It no doubt begins as a friendly ally but by the teenage years it has grown to a hateful voice which can never be appeased: Why didn’t you talk to that gorgeous girl in the hall? Or You were a fool to talk to that girl in the hall!
But wait a second…. Whose voice is that?
What if we pause, examine the conversation pronouncing judgement, get a sense of its origin (Dad, Mom, Uncle, Grandfather, guys in the locker room etc.) and simply inhabit the space where your feet are?
So, if we pay attention to the no-win relationship with The Judge, is there a way out? Through re-training the focus of our internal conversation, is it possible to live with more freedom from the impossible-to-please voices? Yes and no. There is no permanent solution to the eternal beatings from this infallible critic, but it is possible, with enough mindful awareness, to identify the voice, thank it for butting in, and then re-focusing your attention on what is actually happening in this moment.
I’m walking in the park. The Fall colors are vibrant, the beauty beyond the pale of words when: “What were you thinking when you made that stupid comment in the office meeting…”
I am lost in an imaginary conversation with an authority. Oh, now I see how I get caught in the mind judgements and get back to the spacious present moment.
So, now that I discovered how I’ve been bamboozled, I have a pretty clear path out of it. Seems like a lot of effort, but hey, can you think of a better investment than peace of mind?
Featured image: istockphoto.com
Also published in Good Men Project September 17, 2023 goodmenproject.com and in Medium.
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