Neat lil' Rocks

I'll reject you before you can reject me!

Two decades ago, my high school guidance counselor told me I needed to get over the urge to slam the door in others’ faces before they could slam it in mine. 

I might still reject you before you can reject me.

The counselor was specifically referring to my decision not to apply for colleges way back when, but it also applied to my high school sense that few people would ever want a Creep like me for a friend. 

Every day, I sat on the ledge outside the bathrooms eating my lunch. Better than in the stalls, but still a little smelly. 

Maybe it would be too hard on myself to say Hannibal Lector’s line about Buffalo Bill (“We begin by coveting that which we regularly see”) was what motivated me to develop a crush on the soccer player who hung out by the chemistry classroom a hundred paces in front of me. Maybe.

She and her friends were the “popular kids,” and they hated me, at least according to my melodramatic fantasy. 

My group was the stoners, burnouts, and nerds. I found some refuge amongst them and their low expectations, but they were also the same people who bought me midol and tampons as a Valentines Day present because they found me too whiny after the aforementioned crush rejected my request for a holiday date.

We’d sit on our little ledge, watching the “popular kids” and making a sport of finding reasons to feel superior to them. Their PDA was classless. Their laughter was obnoxiously loud. The school spirit suggested by the football jerseys they wore on game days was cringe worthy.

The reality is that our own lives lacked love, humor, and honestly, to some degree, camaraderie.

Our only team sport was self-righteous superiority. We knew we were better than them. We elevated our intelligence by degrading theirs. Our taste for high quality art—Pink Floyd, Fight Club, Metal Gear Solid—marked our overlooked genius.

We were Elitists.

How often does elitism work this way? How often is it simply a rejection of others before they can reject you?

A handful of neat lil rocks.

I’m still just a five-year-old boy at the creek, running up to his parents with a handful of rocks he thinks are neat. What would be different if my parents had welcomed me onto a lap and showed gentle interest, asking me what I liked about those little curiosities? 

Gentle interest, right? Neither overblown drama of mindblown bliss nor distracted dismissal. Just a pinch of simple curiosity. As if being around me was a little bit of nourishment. Like eating a crisp apple.

What might be different? How would I be able to embody the culturally valued Sage archetype instead of its Elitist shadow? If my especially keen perception of neat things about my world was warmly honored growing up, how much better would I be able to be a Sage today whose wisdom is welcome and helpful to all, rather than an Elitist who can’t help pushing people away. Alienating others even when I decidedly don’t want to.

Because they are two sides of the same archetype. 

The difference is simple. 

• The Sage is someone who has special knowledge, wisdom, or skills and who others look to for guidance. 

• The Elitist is special in a similar way, but instead of graciously sharing their gifts, they act as if those gifts make them superior.

Me personally? I read about 30 books a year. Here’s a cute lil rock: as Steven Kotler writes in The Art of the Impossible, books are years of condensed research delivered in a five to fifteen hour packet of dense data goodness. Little treasures like that one—nuggets of knowledge derived from that unusual orientation toward words—could be either something to sneeringly hoard or something to joyously share. 

I could easily be Elitist or Sage.

If I had learned I was worthy and worthwhile through my parents’ calm acceptance, would I still have spent so much time in high school thinking others were shallow fools with superficial taste? If I had not felt rejected, would I have still avoidantly acted out my shadow?

Or, even with perfect parents, would I not still feel the sting of loveless anonymity? Would the message still be received that I’m an unimportant one among masses, given I’m living in sprawling suburbs rather than the tight knit tribe that we all evolved to find belonging in?

Would the other early hominids have been endearingly impressed with my technique for knapping stone hand axes, and would I therefore have developed a capacity to regard myself as capable, wise, intelligent, and efficacious?

And then there’s the other pole: what of the culture of participation trophies that we millennials were raised within? What would be different if I had not been singled out as “Gifted and Talented” or relentlessly encouraged to think of myself as “bright but unwilling to apply myself” or pushed by novels, television and movies to think of myself as the foundling main character destined to take down the evil regime?

Would I be better able to calibrate my sensors for the appreciation of cool treasures if I wasn’t repeatedly told that my potential was limitless? 

When others aren’t interested in my neat lil rocks now, I project the horrible panic of my felt sense of inadequacy onto them. 

“It’s their fault they’re too stupid to see how cool these rocks are!” 

At other times, I aggrandize the rocks. 

“No one else sees the beauty here. These little treasures make me special!”

I can’t rely on the suburbs to suddenly become more like an intentional community. At thirty-five years old, it’s time to stop blaming my parents for everything, even taking into account that Freudian saying about therapy, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.” Therapy helps, but ultimately, there’s no way to take back the Millenial childhood rife with blue ribbons for patronizing “accomplishments” like “stinkiest socks on the soccer team.”

Society isn’t perfect. Parents aren’t perfect. But, or I guess “and,” I can still learn to love myself enough to express my elevation of neat little rocks without vilifying others who don’t see them as being as important as I do. I can love the Sage in me so that I don’t accidentally express the Elitist.

It’s alchemy.

It involves re-parenting myself via “endarkenment”—via shadow work and ritual—to believe I was born with what the Buddhists call Basic Goodness. 

This is not the kind of Goodness that makes you the demi-god savior of all mankind, the President, an olympic athlete, or an A-list celebrity. It’s not the goodness that says, “You could do anything you put your mind to! You’re amazing!” 

Believing in my own Basic Goodness looks like calmly abiding in a sense of belonging here. A sense of generally being nourishing to those around me. Neither their crack pipe nor the unnoticed ant beneath their feet.

Overcoming Elitism depends on showing myself a balanced but attentive interest. On knowing that I’m basically lovable.

This whole Creekmason project itself—the blog and podcast that cultivates a Digital Sangha dedicated to co-creating, sharing and appreciating alchemical art—is like my little shoebox of neat rocks. 

Hopefully I’ll be able to let you resonate with each rock—each sparkly idea, each hunk of my imaginative capacity—or not. I’d love to honor wherever you are in this moment and whatever lil rocks you bring to the chat yourself. Rather than an aggrandizement of some elitist who is already perfect, hopefully I’ll be able to appreciate this hobby as an act of self-doulahood, helping me transition from a tortured experience of perpetual inadequacy into the Kennough adult I am trudging toward becoming. 

Can I find the beauty in every rock I’m shown, whether I’m the one to pick it from the creek bed or not? Can I find the value in others’ ideas—find the value in what they view makes them special—even as they reject me for what I believe makes special?

Can I be gently pleased with my work without vilifying others for not liking it or aggrandizing myself for creating it?

Gonna try.