Jim Sassen was a quotable guy. While never fashioning himself as an intellectual, Dad had a keen way of speaking to the human condition with both insight and humor. Among his most enduring quotes was one that he shared with me on a number of occasions in my youth when I was getting a bit full of myself…
As you can imagine, this was pretty much of a daisy-cutter, to which I had no substantive reply. In actuality, however, the statement wasn’t seeking a reply but rather encouraging me to take a silent look at myself. Dad was able to see something in me that I was unable to see. Not a behavior or an attitude, but something less tangible. A gap.
There was in fact a gap – between who I thought I was and who I actually was. Each time I unwittingly stretched the expanse of that gap, Dad would call me back to reality. As the years passed, he needed to do so less frequently, but even as I held his hand quietly while he lay in his hospice bed I could feel his call for me to mind that gap.
Parents (hopefully!) understand that there needs to be a certain allowance for a self-awareness gap in kids. Vernacular names have come forth over generations for kids who routinely put this gap on display. Dork, putz, doofus and schmo come to mind.
As we get older and (again, hopefully!) develop a deepened sense of self-awareness, this gap narrows. When it closes altogether, people arrive at a place of greatest actualization. These are the people whom we refer to as “the real deal.” They are their authentic selves in every way.
But the pathway to closing the gap is not necessarily well traveled. Read an article on key leadership characteristics or study emotional intelligence and you’ll invariably find that self-awareness is positioned as an aspirational trait, not a presumed one. That it is commonly referenced does not mean it is commonly realized, even in those whom we’d expect to exemplify it.
Back in 2018, Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, led a team of people who investigated self-awareness in over 5000 people. Their research discovered roadblocks and myths about self-awareness and concluded that, of those who were interviewed, only 10-15% demonstrated true self-awareness.
Were it easy to arrive at such a maturational summit, more of us would be there. The journey takes most people the better part of a lifetime. Along the way, there are myriad obstacles and detours that can make the route more challenging.
The Tidepool
As our culture has shifted (drifted may be better here) toward a bias for individualism, the path to self-awareness has been distracted by an alluring but counterfeit pursuit that has no actual uphill to it – self-encampment. This is a truly devious misdirection because it conveniently supplants the development of the self with a mere focus on the self; no longer seeking the exploration of oneself but rather the perpetuation of oneself. Big difference.
It is impossible to develop into a more actualized person while being self-referential. Life becomes stuck on repeat and in continuous reinforcement of embedded internal biases. In that way, self-encampment represents a developmental tidepool, closed off from a more distributed and balanced set of references.
There is security in this tidepool, which not only encourages people into it but also keeps them held there. Life is more predictable within a smaller ecosystem, and it’s easier to be a big fish, relatively speaking. Nice little place to call your own.
But it’s not reality. Reality is composed of a richer mixture, less self-tuned. And a question that has been nagging at me is has the increase technological control in life made us think our tidepool is the ocean?
Over a cup of coffee on most mornings, I launch a news app and scroll through the feed. I do so under the auspices of having the news inform and impact me. But over time, I’ve realized that I have begun to impact the news. Each time I’ve clicked on a story, the news feed tailors future content accordingly. Over time, what becomes important tomorrow is determined by what I thought was important yesterday and today. In my mind, my clicking is a reaction to a suggested content piece, but perhaps the suggested content piece is a reaction to my clicking. Big difference.
As content moves from news to entertainment to consumer product suggestions, it becomes even more finely tailored in accordance with my previous clicks and scrolls. I imagine many of us have had ads pop up for products related to those which we’ve just purchased. But the tailoring of advertising is not the same as the tailoring of information. How I establish my consumer preferences is not the same as how I establish my reality.
It is no small existential irony that we have an ocean of information at our fingertips, yet the algorithms of its delivery may be further establishing our individual tidepools. Instead of connecting us to each other, these algorithms may be segregating us. And because we are being fed daily supplements of information tailored to our own biases, we mistake our tidepool for a broader ecosystem. What follows in course is the polarization we see in society today, with people being ever more astonished that there are others in the world who don’t share their perspectives.
The vitriol that results makes it easy to note the distance that exists between our tidepools, but that’s not the gap that Dad was referring to. The gap between who we are and who we think we are is much more disguised, but it is one for which each of us is personally accountable. It is that gap between self-awareness and self-encampment. Self-awareness is born of the ongoing pursuit of a greater truth, not the guarding our own. It understands that, in order to avoid tone-fatigue, finding one’s hum is an expansive process, not an insular one.
I welcome your thoughts on mind the gap. It is meant to suggest a throughline from self-awareness to growth and perpetuation of societal discord. It makes perfect sense to me and will be made into a feature film shortly, which will be showing in the theater of my own mind.
I can get you tickets. For cheap.
One Response
I am often naïve (self reflection 😀) to our media and its methods of delivery. This does make me stop and think more about that.
Thank you for challenging me to think differently. I appreciate you!