It Helps To Know Where You Started
I always believed it was the things you don’t choose that makes you who you are. Your city. Your neighborhood. Your family.
People here take pride in these things. Like it was something they’d accomplished.
The bodies around their souls. The cities wrapped around those.
Opening narration by Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) in Gone Baby Gone (Miramax)
. . . . .
In an attempt to understand malconformity, it is quite necessary to consider where people start.
Your city. Your neighborhood. Your family. I agree that these things do make you who you are.
They shape your development as a person by influencing your education, religious beliefs, political beliefs and social behavior.
And yet, when we think about what we believe or why we believe it, I think many of us fail to consider these incredibly powerful influences.
We fail to consider just how random the development of our beliefs are. Rather, we too often simply accept them to be true.
. . . . .
As adults, it’s easy for us to question others. It’s not so easy to question ourselves.
I would argue that this is one of the most critical mistakes each of us makes on a consistent basis.
However, one of the challenges our society has is that this very mistake is built into our own cultural institutions.
At a young age, we learn to listen to our parents. This is a wonderful thing when our 3-year-old hands are about to touch a campfire. We learn that they are protecting us. Caring for us. Teaching us right from wrong.
This continues as we enter school. In kindergarten, our teachers help us learn how to use a scissors or how to share.
By the time we have finished middle school, not only have we started to learn about basic sciences, but, as in my case, we have learned the most important principles of our faith and accepted the responsibility to carry that forward into adulthood.
In high school, perhaps through sports or theater, we have learned from our coaches to accept our individual roles in order to help the team be successful.
At this point, it is hard to argue that these are perfectly reasonable and, indeed, valuable lessons to learn to help us be successful later in life.
But I would say the process is lacking in instruction when it comes to determining exactly when, it is not only okay, but necessary, to question others or, more importantly, ourselves.
. . . . .
Our cities. Our neighborhoods. Our families.
They are so busy teaching us the ‘right’ way to do things or the ‘right’ way to think or behave, that by the time we become adults, we simply believe that what we have learned and been taught is, in fact, ‘right’.
As Kenzie continues his opening narration, he adds:
When your job is to find people who are missing, it helps to know where they started.
The same applies for malconformity.
