This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
I would like to thank all the persistent people who kept asking why I was not posting anymore and those who sent feedback. I truly appreciate that. The reason I have no posted in so long is simply because of the elusive nature of time: it was the end of the semester and I found myself busy with a violin master class and exams; since being home for the summer I have been busier still, moving to a new country, a new house and renovating it. I'm settled in now and I promise to post as frequently as I can, given my other obligations.
I want to apologise for my grammar, spelling etc etc ...mistakes. I have a bad habit of not re-reading any piece of work upon completion. I have never done it for any academic essays or any other work. But I know you deserve better, so I re-read this chapter and corrected (hastily) what mistakes I could spot. The next chapters will be even neater as I have given in to the idea of getting someone to edit for me.
And please donate to nifty. It's truly wonderful and extraordinary.
Mx
Chapter 6
I spent that night contemplating life and reviewing Dabrowski's personal development model.
Kazimierz Dabrowski was a brilliant man. He was a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist. His works constituted a framework that laid out the stages of personality development for gifted individuals. I was certainly not gifted – I had never taken an official' IQ test but I was certain that my intelligence was normal'. The concept of IQ had flaws. It seeks to calculate a ratio of mental age to chronological age, which is then multiplied by 100. So, if your brain is older' and more capable than what is normally' expected of that chronological age, your IQ is greater than 100. What is expected of children's mental development varies from culture to culture. It uses only the logical component of intelligence, which is only one of eight intelligences if you subscribe to Gardner's Theory of Multiple intelligences.
Dabrowski postulated that gifted individuals went through a series of disintegrations – I would say mostly existential. These gifted individuals possessed an acute perception of what Bertrand Russell called `the ugly facts of life'. The hopeless plight of the human was predicated, to an extent, on inherent isolation. No one could share a mind with another – within the walls of that grey matter, one's consciousness was completely isolated. There was no way around this. Then we had freedom. Freedom to choose. Total freedom, defined as the absence of any edifices, any structures that influenced our choices, was not practical; the world is full of concepts: naming, tagging, categorizing, explaining processes, rules, standards of morality and so on. We were born free of these, but were drowned in them as we grew up. Some people remained unaware of this problem – if indeed it was a problem. There was, therefore, an unattainable ideal of freedom but one could also consciously choose to break free of the socio-centric thinking that society encouraged. (I could not remember who had said that a rich man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he chooses to conform, but they were certainly right)
If one knew of that ideal of freedom and one knew that breaking free of all the structures would leave one without any conceptual ground to mentally stand on, where then would one find the balance? How could one strive for freedom without annihilating the ground on which they stood? Even the great Socrates with all his brilliance and Socratic Method of thought had to leave some ground on which to stand: he was a firm and unquestioning believer of the gods and is reported to have sacrificed at the altar; and he was a firm believer in the concept of democracy, and justice even though he became a victim of the latter. How could a teenager make sense of all this?
Into that complex picture the uncaring and unfeeling universe we inhabit was thrown– the absurdity of it. Death, meaninglessness. Just as Siddh?rtha Gautama had learned that he too would grow old, sicken and die, he was terrified and thrown into the depths of despair and darkness engulfed him for a while. How could a young person make sense of this? They too would fall into an existential depression and this disintegration could be positive if one transcended the experience and reintegrated into a higher level of personality development. But the confusion, as Dabrowski noted, inner conflict and sadness were necessary because "without passing through very difficult experiences and even something like psychoneurosis and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher and higher levels." There could be instances where the disintegration would negative and one would not reintegrate which might result in suicide.
There was a crucial factor needed for developmental potential – overexcitability which could manifest itself in the psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional. Dynamisms also played a central role in disintegration and reintegration.
Dabrowski defined five stages of development; the higher the stage the more complex and higher order is one's personality.
I wondered where I fit on this model; whether my disintegration would be positive or negative. And whether it would all be worth in the end.
After the usual morning battle of getting up, positivity won. For once in a long time I paid close attention to what I wanted to wear. It would be a good day, I hoped. I needed a good day. I desperately needed a good day. I called Jana to check if she was going to meet Justin and that indeed was her intention. I silently thanked the deity whose existence I heavily doubted. I chose something simple: navy chinos, light blue button up shirt, brown belt and brown suede dress shoes. I felt overdressed. Dressing up was always an opportunity to be showy and pretentious: something I hated and could not bear.
I met Jana for breakfast and we sat in the lounge instead of the main dining hall.
"You look good!" she exclaimed.
"Don't be ridiculous. I don't look good in anything," I responded.
"We should go shopping sometime," she suggested.
"What ails you this morning Jana? Your choice of small talk is most unusual: telling me I look good and suggesting we go shopping. Do we not usually talk about how the Asians resisted Christianity while some Asian countries opened up to Islam despite the fact that some Christian churches did move to the east in the early Middle Ages and just vanished?"
"Well Armel, I am a young woman about to meet a football star, do you really think talking about Asian religions is the best sort of prelude?"
"Overture would have been more suitable, actually."
"I don't care!" she shouted. She was not getting aggressive but she was getting impatient with my lack of appreciation of how flustered she was to be meeting a football player. Her raised voice had roused the curiosity of the people sitting nearby.
"The guy sitting directly behind you is staring," she said in an attempt to divert my attention from how nervous she seemed.
"Staring at what?" I asked, not understanding the significance of the incomplete piece of information she had just articulated.
"You!"
"Well, he'll have a most glorious moment admiring the back of my head!" I did not believe her and did not even bother to turn my head
"Turn around." And so I did – very slowly. Jana was right a guy was staring in our direction. I caught his eye and quickly looked away even though he was the one staring. I could not maintain eye contact very well. I felt exposed. When I got really depressed my eyes got an empty-stare quality, so I avoided looking at my old friends in high school because they could tell something was not right. They never knew about my breakdown at first. As I was missing weeks of classes at a time, they noticed something was amiss. Only one of those I considered friends came to my room to check on me. Only one... I always remembered her. I wished I stayed in touch with her. I would look into that.
I was suddenly overcome by feelings of betrayal and neglect. What good friends I had back then. They never cared.
"I think he was staring at you Jana. Why would he be staring at me?" I said with a matter-of-fact tone.
"I don't know... It could be because you are cute, have a well-proportioned body, are very slim with broad shoulders which gives you that classic V shape and you are dressed particularly well today." I was rendered catatonic by her response. I did not know what to say. I did not believe a word she said. Everything was wrong with me; my body and bad skin were the visible proof to me. I could never be attractive and that was a fact, an axiom.
"There is something really wrong with you today: first it was your small talk and now your vision. Why don't we finish breakfast and head over to the social space to meet your recent unattainable crush!"
"I'm going get a cup of green tea," Jana said while standing up. "Do you want anything?"
"No thank you. I have enough water." She left and I pulled out my phone to check any messages from Tom. We had not spoken since that night. I did not have any new messages from Tom, but I had one from a number I did not recognize. As I was about to open it, there was some shuffling and a gentle cough toward my right side and I looked up to see the guy who had been `staring'.
"Oh sorry, I was on my phone and didn't see you approach," I said.
"Hello," he said.
"Good morning."
"My name is Bryce. I heard you playing in the music room several days ago and you sounded great."
"Uhm...well... thank you?" It came out more as a question than a statement.
"I play the cello and I'm part of a string quartet here on campus but we wanted to add a clarinet to perform Mozart's Clarinet Quintet."
"Oh the Quintet in A major is great! A major was a special key for Mozart's masterpieces – including his 23rd Piano Concerto which he called his best work. Interestingly, I read somewhere that it is the only piece where he wrote in the key of F# minor. Oh sorry I'm rambling. I'm not sure that I can play the part though – I am out of practice," I said sincerely.
"Well, I think you can! You were playing something quite complicated when I heard you. Tell you what, I can mail you the score if you give me your mailbox number. You can look at it and then decide if you are up for it."
"That is an acceptable plan of action. My mailbox number is 1123," I said and he typed it on his phone. "There was no need to write that down; it's the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence – very easy to remember."
"Great! Thank you! I didn't get your name by the way," he said.
"Armel."
"Nice to meet you Armel," he said smiling. He winked and he was gone.
Just then Jana returned with her green tea.
"What just happened?" I asked her.
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind, let's just finish our food."
After some exertion of force, we managed to push through the crowd into the social space. On the stage were two chairs next to each other. Justin was sitting on one and a young lady was sitting on the other – I assumed it was his girlfriend. I found out later that it was his wife. Poor Jana's dream of marrying a football star was crushed.
"Thank you all for turning out in great numbers," said Justin. "I already met some of you over breakfast," he added. After a hailstorm of pleasantries, he explained that this was a Q&A session. And so the fun began.
One boy, quite young, stood up and asked how he should convince his mother that he wanted to play professional football. Justin told him that if he showed utmost dedication and determination, his mother could be swayed.
"What do you miss most about the college," asked a girl sitting right on the front row. She looked flustered and I imagined she wanted to scratch Justin's wife. Alas! Obsessed fans were very dangerous indeed.
"What I miss most is John – the football coach. I wouldn't be playing pro if it weren't for him,"
A round of such questions went on for some time and I was disappointed that no one wanted to get more into the psyche of an athlete. Being somewhat angry I raised my hand to ask a question. I had to hold it up for several minutes before he nodded at me.
My response was classical: I pointed at myself in an obvious attempt to ask if he meant me. When he nodded again, I looked behind me to see if there was someone else in close proximity that he could have been communicating with. It turned out that he was talking to me.
"Uhm...well, I have a few questions which I will ask if that's acceptable," I said very hesitantly.
"Go ahead!" he said with a huge grin on his face. Oh how adorable he was!
"I want to know how you motivate yourself, keep focused (on and off the pitch) and how you deal with unfavourable outcomes during your games?"
After a brief pause he responded, "I am lucky that I know football is what I love and I happen to get a load of money for it, but my motivation is based on the love of the game and hoping to push myself as much as possible – physically. Motivation was harder in my early years when everyone I knew thought that football was just a phase. I had to fight very hard to keep myself focused on my dream and to motivate myself to put in the hours of training. I'm stubborn and have a very strong will – anyone can develop the latter because it is important when you become tired or face some barriers. The way I deal with unfavourable outcomes is by accepting, before the game, that one team will go home triumphant and the other will go home with long faces – even tears sometimes – and that I could be in either team. During the game, I always exert myself and give as much as I possibly can and if we lose, I keep that in mind... and the fact that there is always a `next time' with football. I hope that answers your questions"
I was moved by his response. I archived his response in my memory as: believe in yourself, especially when no one else does; motivation and discipline should come, primarily, from an internal source.
It made a lot of sense. Of course it did: Hermann von Helmholtz, Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, Lenin, Hitler, Margaret Thatcher, and many other iconic figures had possessed an intrinsic and admirable conviction and a will of steel'. Maybe that is where my problem lay. For too long I had sought to please with my academic work – I enjoyed and loved it – but it was for my mother and her memory. When I got my IGCSEs and had achieved a set of A*s I waited for the moment of applause; waited for my mother to ruffle my hair and say well done'. But she was not there. I remembered that I looked at my grades with an emptiness and hollowness that I had not foreseen. That was one of the pushes into my breakdown. The reality of my mother's death never sunk in – she was my primary motivation (an external source). And now that she was gone and everything had collapsed I could not get myself up again. I loved learning – but it was sporadic and inconsistent now. That drive I had was gone.
It was time to search for a drive from within me. I had to believe in myself and my abilities. I had to pursue, in a principled and ethical manner, that which brought me satisfaction. I had to motivate myself and develop a strong will. I felt elated and hopeful until the realization that I could not do it. I could not do anything anymore. I could not do this. I certainly could not do it alone. But I was alone – hopelessly so. Alone.
In searching for an answer, I knew what I had to do. It would be a start and a step in the direction I wanted; I was ready for psychotherapy. While I had a psychologist and had seen very many, I had no sense of direction. It was `out of the black hole' to... where? And so I stayed in that horrible and comforting abyss without the necessary escape speed to overcome the gravitational pull. But I knew where I wanted to go now.
It still did not change the notion that the universe had no order, no meaning, no sense of fairness, and no empathy. But many had survived within that reality – aware of that reality – and not only survived but made extraordinary achievements.
My genetic line was just as capable.
I was as capable.