Rearview Mirror Syndrome

“…(Marshall McLuhan) contends that most of us are incapable of understanding the impact of new media because we are like drivers whose gaze is fixed not on where we are going but on where we came from. It is not even a matter of seeing through the windshield but darkly. We are seeing clearly enough, but we are looking in the rearview mirror.”*

The usefulness and insight of this metaphor extends well beyond new media.

It is one of the ways we get stuck on the path to a more deliberate and happier life. We see ourselves and our corner of the world through the rearview mirror.

Looking through the rearview mirror, we see or create continuity in our lives, firming up a dynamic self often in ways that do not serve us. When we keep looking backward, it is easy to get stuck in who we’ve been, what we’ve done, and what we’ve had. We start to think this is who we are, what we’re capable of and what we deserve. Period.

What about looking forward through the windshield and imagining new possibilities for ourselves and our lives, challenging ourselves to be, do or have more than we have been, done or had in the past? Even in the absence of “evidence” from our lived experience that this is possible.  Though I assure you, if you go looking for it, you’ll find some “evidence” in your past to help support the future person you’d like to be. Evidence is often found in anything that disrupts the continuity of the story of who you are. I want to be X but I’m not a risk-taker. But there was that one time…

This is what I mean by human potential. We can’t see what we’re capable of or imagine a bigger, bolder, happier (insert your dream “-er” here) life for ourselves by looking backwards.

And we limit ourselves, too, when we look to past models about how to live and mistake them for the only options. When we overlay past models onto our paths we take a personal, winding road and turning it into a superhighway. A pre-mapped venture rather than the organic, wild adventure that will occur when we’re looking through the windshield and keep moving forward, no matter how far we can see or how clear the view.

* Marshall McLuhan’s “Rearview Mirror Syndrome” metaphor as described by Neil Postman in Teaching as a Subversive Activity (also in the running for one of my favorite books of all time).

Photo is from my personal vault.

Enough.

"When we follow our intuitive sense of what's true and right for us, and do what we genuinely feel energy for, we always seem to have enough money to be, do, and have the things we truly need and want." Shakti Gawain from "Creating True Prosperity" Skakti was writing about prosperity so it makes sense that she writes about money in the quote above. When I read this quote I sometimes plug in the words "resources," "energy," "support," "courage" or "conviction" in place of the word "money," because it feels more expansive to me. Do you ever walk into something you are obligated to do, but strongly do not want to do and notice that things just seem to keep getting worse? That's how we got the expression, "When it rains it pours." In both cases, the same principle applies. So I guess the question is, what's it raining?

That's what I want.

Where do you see yourself in one-year? Five-years? Thirty years? We are encouraged to think about these things, set goals, and create strategies (we usually call them “plans”) to achieve them. For me this is an anxiety provoking activity because it directs my thinking only to professional accomplishments (the career path) and to specific personal accomplishments that are linked to things (buying a house, buying a nice car, buying a boat) or to fulfilling cultural norms (getting married, taking sweet vacations, having kids, etc).

Though thinking about where we want our career and personal lives to go can certainly be useful, I wonder why we don’t spend time reflecting on who and how we want to be in addition to what we want to have.

Especially because when we think of what we want to have or accomplish, it points directly to how we want to be, what we need and value and, the big one, how we want to feel.

What we want is directly related to the feeling we believe we will experience when we get it.

Here’s a personal example:

When I was a student, I never wanted to cease being a student. I excelled in the academic environment and was rewarded with good grades. Naturally, I decided to extend my education, attend college and then graduate school. Being a professor, I thought, would be supremely awesome because I’d get paid to hang out forever in the academic world.

There was one problem though. I hated graduate school. It was a rude awakening for me about politics in academia. It wasn’t just about learning, researching, reading, and teaching. I slogged it out for two years enduring all kinds of physical ailments (a good indicator for me that I’m out of alignment with my values) and mental anguish. It was difficult, but I finally decided to leave.

This happened four years ago and it’s taken all four of those years (and the 23 before them) for me to understand that graduate school and academia was a strategy.

It wasn’t that I wanted the PhD or the career of a professor, per say. It was that I assumed that those things would give me: a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and contribution, meaning in my life, a constant well of creativity and stimulation in ways that mattered to me, and a whole host of other things that would meet needs that I have. And when those needs were met I’d be happy.

It was difficult and devastating to make the decision to leave graduate school and walk into the great Unknown because I was so attached to that strategy as “the one” that would lead to happiness.

What’s so expansive to realize now is that there are infinite strategies that can stimulate the feelings we want to be feeling and to contribute to the needs we are trying to meet. The key is to be in touch with what we want to be feeling and then to examine many elements of our lives and ask ourselves: Are these activities bringing me more into alignment with the feelings I want to feel, or less? And then, make changes accordingly.

How do you want to feel?