In 2015, ERICK JOSEPH filmed
CHARLES EISENSTEIN in a short
interview for a younger audience. Charles wrote a short essay to accompany
the film, which we have reproduced here.
Dear Self,
Your secret, lonely knowledge is true. Despite all you have been told,
the world that has been offered to you as normal is anything but normal.
It is a pale semblance of the intimacy, connection, authenticity,
community, joy and grief that lie just beneath the surface of society’s
habits and routines.
Do not believe the cynical voice, masquerading as the realistic voice
that says that nothing much can change. That voice will call your dreams
by many names: naïve, unrealistic, immature, and irresponsible. Trust your
knowledge that the world can be different, can be better. You needn’t sell
out and live a life complicit in maintaining the status quo.
You have a magnificent contribution to make to the more beautiful world
your heart knows is possible. It may not make you famous, but you have an
important gift, an indispensable gift, and it demands you to apply it to
something you care about. Unless you do, you will feel like you aren’t
really living your life. You will live the life someone pays you to live,
caring about things you are paid to care about. You can make a different
choice.
When you follow your passion and come fully alive, your choices will feel
threatening to anyone who abides in the dominant story of normal. You will
be reminding them of the path they didn’t follow, and awaken in them the
suppressed yearning to devote their gifts to something beautiful. Rather
than face that grief, they may suppress it – and suppress you as
well.
You carry a deep yearning to contribute to the healing of the world and
fulfillment of its possibilities. This is your deepest desire, and if you
abandon it you will feel like a ghost inhabiting the mere shell of a life.
Instead, trust that desire and follow it toward whatever service it calls
you to, however small and insignificant it might seem.
The most reliable guide to choice is to follow whatever makes you feel
happy and excited to get out of bed in the morning. Life is not supposed
to be a grim slog of discipline and sacrifice. You practiced for such a
life in school, tearing yourself out of bed for days of tedium, bribed
with trivial rewards called grades, intimidated by artificial
consequences, proceeding through a curriculum designed by faraway
authorities, asking permission to use the toilet. It is time to undo those
habits. Let your compass instead be joy, love, and whatever makes you feel
alive.
Powerful forces will attempt to make you conform to society’s normality.
These will take the form of social pressure, parental pressure, and very
likely, economic pressure. When you encounter them, please understand that
they are giving you the opportunity to define yourself. When push comes to
shove, who are you?
At a certain moment it will become necessary for you to go on a journey.
It isn’t to escape forever. It is to find yourself outside of whomever
your conditioning trained you to be. You must put yourself in a situation
where you don’t know who you are anymore. This is called an initiation.
Who you were becomes inoperative; then, who you will be can emerge.
The old maps do not apply in these times of transition. Even if you try
to follow them, even if you accept their bribes and heed their threats,
there is no guarantee you’ll reap the promised rewards. The university
graduates washing dishes and the PhD’s driving taxis attest to this. We
are entering new territory. Trust your guidance. It is okay to make
mistakes, because in uncharted territory even the wrong path is part of
finding the right path.
On this path, you are sure to get lost. But you are held, watched, and
guided by a vast organic intelligence. It will become visible when things
fall apart – as surely they must, in the transition between worlds. You
will stumble, only to find overlooked treasure beneath your feet. You’ll
despair of finding the answer – and then the answer will find you.
Breakdown clears the space for synchronicity, for help unimagined and
unearned.
None of this advice can be sustainably implemented by a heroic effort on
your part. You need help. Seek out other people who reinforce your
perception that a more beautiful world is possible, and that life’s first
priority is not security, but rather to give of your gifts, to play, to
love and be loved, to learn, to explore. When those people (your tribe)
are in crisis, you can hold them in the knowing of what you know. And they
can do the same for you. No one can do this alone.
Reprinted with permission from
https://charleseisenstein.org/short-reflection-essays/letter-to-my-younger-self/
Article by
CHARLES EISENSTEIN
Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL
