Cultural plays are a fascinating thing; most of us never even realize that we are part of a subconscious lineage of acting out the whims of our predecessors. Which is exactly what a cultural play is: when the unwritten script, be it behavior, expectations, or even the roles people perform, is enacted without conscious awareness.
You see, this week, I embarked on a new path that immediately produced clear schemas. In psychology, a schema is a mental shortcut that helps our brains organize and interpret vast amounts of information quickly. Think of it as a pre-filed folder in your mind that says things like “Halloween,” and within it, you have pumpkins, black cats, and ghosts, or “School,” and your mind goes to yellow rain boots, construction paper hands, and Elmer’s glue, etc.
These schemas are the building blocks of the cultural play. They are the unwritten scripts that tell us what a ‘student’ or ‘mother’, etc., looks like, how a ‘career’ should progress, and what ‘success’ must entail. When we follow these scripts, again, as I said above, we are acting out the whims of our predecessors, performing a role that was written long before we arrived.
I sit here with a deep intrinsic drive to study the human mind, diving as deep as I can into the psyche, and I find myself circling back to the question: “But what will you do with it?” and I realize that this is not just any question, it is actually a ‘schema check.’ It is a line from the old cultural play that assumes:
- Education is a Transaction: You put in ‘learning’ to get out a ‘job title.’
- Curiosity is Secondary: The ‘drive’ to know is less important than the ‘utility’ of the knowledge.
- The Goal is the Destination: If you can’t define the ‘end’ (the career), the ‘beginning’ (the research) is viewed with skepticism.
As I navigate this new path, I am learning that the exhaustion I feel at times isn’t just from the weight of the work, but from the friction of moving against these inherited gears. We are taught to justify our curiosity by its eventual output, but perhaps the most profound research happens when we stop performing for the ghosts of our predecessors.
If you stripped away the ‘utility’ of everything you are currently pursuing, what would remain of your drive? Would you still have the courage or passion to follow it?
Original article: https://medium.com/@anntomology/passion-vs-the-play-breaking-free-from-inherited-expectations-217f0b2e7508?source=rss-dd9d16b8d22f——2