Stop and Look Around

This past weekend a friend of mine from high school approached me on Facebook (because technology connects us with the world) with some concerns he had about choosing an academic direction in college. He expressed the same panicked realization that so many other students arrive upon when college time comes around. “I have no idea what I want to study…” he writes. What he really means is that he has no idea how to connect—how to connect his past experiences with his future goals to form some kind of definite interest or passion. And how could he? How could anybody at that point in their life?
People these days seem to me to be making decisions far too quickly for their own good and for the good of society, especially ones that have to do with serious issues like, I don’t know, lifelong happiness and satisfaction.
What should guide this kind of a decision is passion—a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire. Instead, people are guided by money, social mores, and ignorant preconceptions. A university was designed to be a place where one can transcend these vices by exploring new and diverse subjects, meeting new people with concordant and conflicting interests, and allowing their minds to be opened by the learning experiences around them. Instead, universities have become a place from which to obtain a degree a.s.a.p. so that money can be made in the “real world” and where to “stop and look around once in a while”(Ferris Bueller) is a loss of capital. And this mindset only worsens as one enters this long sought after "real world" only to find out that it is, at least for those who pull the 9 to 5 in an office cubical, actually more fake and contrived than any of the many preparatory worlds preceding it. This capitalist, absolutist, one-goal, one-direction-only mindset cuts one off from his or her self and the world and sooner or later disconnection always leads to dissatisfaction.
How can we hammer our thoughts into unity if our minds are so closed that we can’t get at them? The only way to connect with the world and obtain a substantial amount of unity in our lives is first by observation and then by action.
To observe properly one must employ all faculties—the five senses, left-brain, right-brain, memory of things learned and experienced. It is as if you are learning a new language, a new vocabulary, and “a new range of thoughts to which [you were] before a stranger” and then you gain “new faculties, or new exercise for our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free.” (Newman, 75) Once free, we can then use these new faculties or this new language to form "sentences" and “compositions”. To compose is “to make by putting together parts or elements…” (111) and a composition is only as good as what it frames or is framed against. By “becoming a third-person observer for reflection” (Charlotte Beal) like the great transcendentalist poets one can synthesize frame with framed, foreground with background, similarities with differences, making the connections with the environment and the self necessary for realizing and developing a passion.
Passion is then easily transferred into motivation and motivation into action and action, generated from passion, is the key characteristic of good leadership. Once individuals gain passion they can transcend themselves and help others make the connections necessary for their own “self-actualization” (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), thus taking on a greater role in society and even history. Everyone can achieve self-actualization, the highest goal in life, if only they take some time to observe, make connections, and develop passions. “Give yourself time to change.” (153)



Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
The ultimate goal in life is self-actualization.