Seminal Readings Left Me with Questions
“Life is about being and becoming.” — Carl Rogers
We live in a world where the question of being and becoming is in our everyday talk. Growing up, I was always asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The default setting in me was to always look ahead and not behind or around. What I thought were reflections were actually desired projections and I spent so much time imagining all I could be. But I guess the biggest error in this was the complete disregard of my past and how my context and setting and my parentage had a big role in either propelling me forward or holding me back from reaching that dream.
However, the idea of ‘me, myself and I’ has been challenged in the past week. The first time I heard about Seminal readings, I was excited not only by the fact that it involved a lot of reading which I love but, also by the fact that it allows room for thought-provoking ideas and it is an atmosphere that houses different viewpoints. I always wanted to be in a book club, where we read and review texts but I’d never been in such a space.
Once I joined ALU, I started attending the Decoloniality readings and Seminal readings. But the length of the readings left me overwhelmed. Some of the readings, especially the ones from Plato, were not as easy to understand. While reading such texts, I did a little research online and I was able to find simplified versions and illustrations.
From the Seminal readings we have engaged with so far, I have come to understand that where we come from is very essential in shaping our characters. The decisions we make and the way in which we see the world. It might look and feel like a choice but our choices are highly determined by our past experiences either in a way to recreate or avoid something.
Also, a great lesson I learnt is that where we come from (context) is not necessarily a specific place. What we view as our past or our history was once our current context, meaning that we are products of the multiple contexts we have been in.
Context seems to be the biggest shaper of our identities.
The choices we make, the things we prioritise and where we want to go are all as a result of where we have been, who we have been with and when we have been there.
By the end of seminal readings, I realised that the process although involving other people, was mostly about me. It gave me a chance to slow down and ask questions to the point where I’m questioning my questions. I did suffer from existential crisis every now and then, but it is in those moments that I appreciated my existence the most.
I never looked at it that way, but having read ‘Mindsets’ (Carol Dweck, 2006) and ‘Outliers’ (Malcolm Gladwell, 2008), I have come to appreciate and acknowledge that the reason I put value on education is not merely my own desire to know more. It comes from someone in my family line who made it a priority and also from being surrounded by people who value the same thing. If I had grown up in a space where education was not important, I would not have seen the need to even come as far as getting a University degree.
The above mentioned readings have made me aware that decisions that are made by other people around us affect us whether or not we like it. If the parents in Bill Gate’s school had not invested in a computer, he may not have gotten to the point of envisioning Microsoft. . If Fred Swaniker had not executed the ALU vision, I would not have experienced Seminal readings and also, if Fred Swaniker had not grown up the way he did, having lived in different African countries, the ALU vision would most probably be non existent.
The question for me however is, “Are we born blank pieces of paper?” I still wonder if the impact of of our experiences in our lives and our identities is somewhat determined by a pre-existing identity we all carry. An identity that is not determined by context but rather, existence and being?
Imagine this: If two people are born in the same place to the exact same kind of parents and are exposed to the exact same experiences and opportunities, would they then at the end of their lives be the exact same person in separate bodies? Also, in Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”, what was the criteria used to pick the person who went out first? If they were all the same, thinking the same and experiencing the same for all those years, what make the first person worthy of being unchained? Is there a preexisting identity which has an effect on who we become after we are brought into this world? Is there a greater force, a God or a chemical reaction that decides identity? WHO AM I? WHY AM I?
