I took the test in first grade. Listen to this song I wrote about 20 years ago. There were two reasons a student was pulled out of class back then. It was either for Special Ed or Gifted and Talented (GT). That's where it starts. That's how it starts. Your only chance is if you have some kind of head start, which I did:
- At six months, I was speaking words.
- At nine months, I was walking
- At ten months, I was speaking in sentences.
- At two years old, I was reading flash cards
- At three years old years old, I was reading.
These are facts about me, according to my mother. Now, according to the Package Plan, this is supposedly above average. You might even say that predictions could already be made based on this information. That is precisely why I provided this information, not to brag, but to emphasize the importance of my 'head start' and how it made me aware of the Package Plan.
But what is the Package Plan? As I said, it is a theory I came up with to explain normalization, which is a thing, according to the internet. At some point, everyone seems to apply this concept to children. Infancy is a sort of grace period. You have about three years, tops. For whatever reason, I was up to a whole lot in those years. OK, my mother had a whole lot to do with it. Still, by the time school started and socialization began, I feel like I already had something to say about it. Was this an advantage? It depends. Are you asking me now? Let's just say my feelings are mixed and complex, hence my having this theory and the need to write about.
Who came up with the Package Plan? I did, silly. If it were an actual thing, it may sound like something we are born with. Therefore, it could be God, Satan, or any other force that seems to be involved or interested with our time on this planet. It could be nature or nurture. I think it is a sort of option that people choose, on a mass level, in order to avoid the sheer terror of going it on their own. Believe me, I have been able to relate for some time now, hence the complexity and theory. Perhaps when I was younger, I sneered at what I thought was conformity or trend-following or whatever a sorta punk was calling it that month.
So what are the features of this plan? For one, it seems to me as if someone wrote a script but few people have actually read it. I did. It sucks. But I thought that by reading it, I would understand the plan a little better, life would be easier and I would get along with people better. I couldn't have been more wrong. Is this plan the same as conformity? It turns out that the answer to that is 'No', at least not here in America. We all know that capitalism is capable of absorbing counterculture and selling it back to that same counterculture, right? This also applies to disaffection, disabilities, etc. There has to be room for everyone.
So how does one find themselves not covered by the plan? What happens upon realizing this? See, I had that head start. Somehow, I was aware of where I was supposed to fit in the plan. There was talk of my being a doctor, lawyer or doctor-lawyer pretty early on. Wealth awaited, as did women. OK, it was actually girls, schoolmates actually, whose parents would say things like that to my parents. I kid you not, it was like imaginary matchmaking or a fantasy league for arranged marriage. I know, it sounds gross, but they meant well.
Somehow, I was aware of this. I wasn't supposed to be. I was supposed to be running around in circles, falling down, or babbling gibberish, whatever is expected of children. All I knew is that something special dwelt inside my noggin and I was curious what it could do. At some point, I learned how to enter and exit the package plan at will. Actually, that kind of skill came later. At the very least, I felt I could explore space outside this plan, while simultaneously relying on my parents, my whiteness and other advantages so that I would not be suspected or missed. It was what would be the beginning of a life where I would always have one foot in, and one foot out. Yes, I was under the illusion that I could please two masters, so to speak. To me, conform or die was a pretty unreasonable choice. I didn't care for it. Sure enough, as I got older, I watched as plenty of my peers showed dissatisfaction with conformity and there would always be a spot reserved for them in what I would come to call the Package Plan.
How could life seems so accommodating? I knew that was not life's way. Check out this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, probably my favorite:
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Eventually, I would even return to college for a degree in English, so that I could teach it. You might say I doubled down on reading, as well as writing, with dreams of a career in education. Instead, I became a fighter, teaching character education derived from thirteen years of martial arts to young people who were ready to hear what I had to say about this so-called plan. You might say they weren't fond of it or the place their families were assigned in it. What else was there, though? They had to be fighters, as well, fighting a fight I knew nothing about. We fought different fights, for sure, but I had tools to offer them. I had a surplus of tools. That head start had really piled up, to the point where I felt I could use all that I had learned of the Package Plan and infiltrate its institutions in order to train kids who had already been defeated but didn't know it yet. This was the ultimate test for a guy who still thought he could be two people. One was still resisting, while the other was in over his head.
Soon, I would realize that this Package Plan was in fact, just a theory, and that living the way I was living was untenable. At that time, however, I felt that I had something to offer these young fighters. After all, they were fighting authority long after most had just settled in to whatever role that the Package Plan had to offer. When you have little to lose, you kind of hold on to that bullshit detector that children have. You sort of outsmart yourself. These kids knew they were screwed but boy did they have a smell for bullshit. These were my kind of people and I knew that I could pass on some of the Eastern thought I had absorbed from my martial arts training and offer them a middle way.
"In Mahayana Buddhism, the Middle Way refers to the insight into śūnyatā "emptiness" that transcends the extremes of existence and non-existence, the two truths doctrine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_WaySomehow, I attempted to re-direct their fight and trade in all their opponents for the only one that truly exists: life. You might say life or you might say 'opposing forces'. Let's just say I don't see the difference. That is why I had to form this theory, at some point, that this society offered some sort of 'plan' that existed in the collective unconscious. Americans, as it turns out, can be convinced that they are all on the road less traveled. In my opinion, Robert Frost left a whole lot of shit out. He did, however, hint that you could tell which road was which by signs of how much traffic that each had clearly seen. Could it be that everyone took the other road for a reason? Was there a reason that they felt safer going that way? Perhaps a plan had been suggested on some level of consciousness. Neither of my degrees were in sociology. The first was in Communication. There would be no career in that for me, but it did forever alter my perception of what was really going between people, both inter-personally and on on a mass level.
What else do I have to say about this Package Plan? There will probably end up being a follow-up to this post. What's that? You can't believe I have more to say? You better believe I do. I have been observing you all for forty years now. It has only been about five or six years since I began to consolidate my energy and start becoming a whole person. It took a few more years to realize this task would require another person, a partner if you will. See this earlier post, Commitment.
More importantly, how did I even make it this far? Was I truly able to keep one foot in, with one foot out, and survive on my own? Absolutely not. There are those who not only know the plan well, but are able to teach, love and support someone who may not seem to be covered by said plan. I had both parents, my grandmother, my martial arts instructor and eventually my partner in life. Because of them, I still have my own plan. I also have no illusion that there really is a plan. Even if there was one, my theory never claimed to cover all people. My perception of normalcy could only apply to the society and culture I have been privy to. There is far too much world out there for a kid from Jersey to cover with all the theories in the world.
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