Cursing Children
I had a curse put on me when I was young.
It wasn’t put on me by an old witch or malevolent sorcerer. It was put on me by well-meaning teachers and my friend’s parents.
The cure sounded like this: “You have so much potential!”
Obviously, this doesn’t sound much like your standard curse. And I don’t expect any of you to feel sorry for me for having this said to me. It’s clearly a far cry from turning me into a newt or cursing me to lose weight until I waste away to nothing.
The reason being told you have so much potential can feel like a curse, in hindsight, is that it can contribute to a lack of direction that we often feel.
When you sing as a child and someone tells you what a wonderful singer you are, it kind of confirms that singing as a viable direction for your life. Same with carpentry, drawing, dancing, or playing an instrument. When a specific talent is acknowledged, in us it can feel affirming.
But, when we’re told we have so much potential, we see less of a definite path than a multitude of possible paths.
Hard segue.
Have you read much about quantum physics? I read about it a lot and understand it much less. As near as I can tell, scientists used to believe the world operated in accordance with Newtonian physics. Everything was all cause and effect. If you knew the cause, you could predict the effect.
But quantum physics suggests the world may not operate the way Newtonian physics says it does. Quantum physics theorizes that on a very small scale, atoms and particles behave in ways we can’t predict.
For instance, let’s take the quantum idea of superposition. Superposition says that a quantum system can be in multiple states at the same time and we only know it’s true state when we measure it. To make it simpler, let’s replace “quantum system” with a particle, like a photon. And let’s replace “state” with location. Meaning a photon can be in any possible location at any given time — it exists everywhere and nowhere — until we measure it. The act of measuring it causes it to collapse into a definite position. When we imagine the world ruled by our old physical models it seems impossible that simply looking at a particle would cause the particle to occupy one position out of infinite possibilities, but that’s what Quantum Physics suggests to us.
What does that have to do with the curse put on me?
When we take the time to study ourselves — when we take the time to study our proclivities, tendencies, and preferences — a theme will often start to emerge. Looking at this theme can begin to suggest meaning to you — a specific reason for being. Your story.
In his book The Soul’s Code, James Hillman suggests that many of us lack a sense of destiny in our lives. Our lives are dull chronology. We are born, exist as a random selection of events, and then die. At least that’s how many of us perceive our lives. He suggests to bring purpose to our lives, we begin viewing our existence as narrative. We are born a purpose and all of the events in our lives, good and bad, aren’t a random mish-mash, but rather our fate moving us closer and closer to our purpose.
Viewing our lives as a story is kind of like measuring the position of a quantum system. The act of looking at our lives this way causes it to collapse from random potential possibilities into a definite state — a single reality.
Developing my story is how I broke the curse put on me.
If you often feel like you’re living under a similar curse, if you feel like your potential is unlimited but you lack in direction, it’s time to begin a strict regimen of examining your life It’s time to become a scientist whose area of expertise is your own life. It’s time to find the through-line, to find the clew that will lead you out of the labyrinth.
All you have to do is look.
