It’s Not About You

[사전을 펼칩니다]

대학교 강의를 통해 접하게 된 글인데

제게는 많은 생각을 하게하고, 큰 깨달음을 준 글이었습니다.

오늘 학원에서 선생님의 말씀을 듣다가 생각나서 함께 읽어보고 싶어 올려봅니다.

감사합니다.

P.S. 강의실에서 이 글을 처음 읽게 되었을 때, 많은 학생들이 글의 내용에 대해 반기를 들었습니다.

사실 저도 마찬가지였습니다. 글이 전하고자하는 바를 제대로 이해하지 못했기 때문이 아니었나싶습니다.

그 당시 교수님께 질문을 드렸습니다.

"극단적으로 말하자면 이글은 자아에 대한 성찰을 하지 말라고 말하고 있는 것인가요?" 라고요.

교수님께서는 미소 띤 얼굴로 말씀하셨습니다.

"글 어디에도 그런 말은 없다."

다시 한 번 읽으면서도 좀처럼 이해되지 않던 글은 마지막 문장을 읽으면서 비로소 와 닿았습니다.

그리고 처음부터 다시 읽게 되었습니다.

The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

It’s Not About You

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: May 30, 2011

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on May 31, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Not About You.

읽기 불편하실까봐 링크걸어요. ^^

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html