TRANSCRIPT
I was recently talking with a friend about how throughout the course of my life, I have rarely had any role models. People who I really look up to and think, “This is a model for who I want to be. This is a model for how I want to live my life.” And as I was talking about it with my friend, it just popped out of me that often, actually, I have been my own best role model.
And what do I mean by that? Meaning there are parts of me that are healthier than other parts of me. There are parts of me that are more mature, more self-actualized, more grown up. When I make these videos, often I really try to get centered into the healthiest sides of me, the least traumatized sides of me, the most mature sides of me, to be able to share my message, to have perspective.
And then when I come back and I edit these videos, I watch myself. I watch what I say, and often I can take parts of what I’ve said from these videos and apply them to less healthy parts of myself. Parts of myself that are still struggling, are confused, are stuck, stuck in my past, maybe dissociated, still not in touch with my feelings, with my memories of what happened to me. Basically, in effect, these videos can be a kind of role model for me.
And when I think about my life in general, my life history, the things that I’ve done, the things that I’ve thought about, moments where I was strong, moments when I stood up and spoke out, spoke for good, moments where I made good decisions, especially many, many, many moments where I made good decisions such that the whole course of my life changed. This becomes the art of my life, and this art becomes the model for how I want to continue living my life.
This has been going on now for decades in my life. The things that I’ve learned, the good lessons that I’ve learned, the strengths that I’ve gained inside of myself, that becomes the role model. That becomes the map for how I live in my future. And that’s why my life, more and more and more, has turned in a healthier direction.
This wasn’t how I was raised. I actually was raised with a lot of models for how I was supposed to behave and live and be, but those were mostly negative role models. I think primarily of my parents, my first two role models of my life. They taught me so many screwed up ways to be. They taught me about disrespect, about self-disrespect. They taught me about boundary violations. They taught me about fighting with each other and not being honest. They taught me about being cunning, being manipulative, being opaque, being hidden. They taught me about harming other people. They taught me about lying. They taught me about getting ahead in the world, being fake, being duplicitous. They taught me about not admitting your faults. They taught me a lot about substance abuse, about hiding your feelings. They taught me about protecting their own parents, such that I was supposed to protect my parents. They taught me about not being honest about one’s history. These were a lot of the modeling lessons I got in my childhood.
And then I went to school, and I saw my teachers. My teachers reflected many of these same qualities, such that as I grew up, I became very, very confused. One wonders, I wonder, how did I make it out of this world? How did I figure out what was healthy and what wasn’t? How did I discern reality such that I started figuring things out?
Well, one thing is I read a lot of books. I learned a lot of screwed up things in the books that I read. I read a lot of age inappropriate stuff, some of this given to me by my parents, my mother especially, giving me books with a lot of sexual content that had a lot of really bad role modeling. A lot of the movies that I watched, rated R movies, perverse movies from when I was way too young to be watching this stuff. A lot of bad modeling about being a man, about being an adult, about being a tough guy, being sexual. This is even sometimes before I went into puberty. A lot of really inappropriate stuff.
But somehow, in a lot of the books I read, even in some of the movies I watched, even some of the television I watched, there were some good role models. There were people who were ethical, who were respectful, who had boundaries, who practiced discretion, who were more mature. And somehow that resonated with something deep inside of me such that as I grew older, I started being able to listen to that voice of truth inside of myself, that little ding bell of truth in me that I began to identify as a model. This is who I want to be.
As myself develops, as I have the chance to make the decision between good, bad, and otherwise, I can listen to this part of me that models what is healthy behavior, what is truth, what is love, what is caring, what is compassionate, what is kind, what is respectful. And the more I’ve grown, the more I’ve become practiced at becoming this person, the more I have become a model for what I want to continue developing into in my future.