Anyway, this quarter I am taking a European intellectual history class with my favorite professor. It's different from most of the Euro classes I've taken in that we are focused more on great thinkers and the works they produced. It almost feels more like a Lit or Philosophy class. Regardless, I am really enjoying it! Last week, we were talking about John Stuart Mill, an English author and modern thinker. He spent the first 20 years of his life in an environment in which rational thought was obsessively pounded into him by his father. He had a mental break down when he was 20, and it completely changed the way he thought about life. Essentially, he realized that his happiness is derived from a mixture of both rational and emotional thinking, a combination of romantic and enlightenment principles. His cross discipline thinking was what made him unique.
Our professor posed one of Mill's thoughts and it immediately stood out to me because of my own personal experience. He said, "Will doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people truly make me happy?" It has been almost exactly a year since I felt as though I had hit rock bottom. My 2nd and 3rd years in college were incredibly challenging and I struggled with severe depression and disordered eating. I was solely focused on the needs of others and it was detrimental to my own well being. While I did derive a certain sense of gratification from being able to help others through their own difficulties, it took a massive toll. Without getting too deep into it (we'll save that for another time), I had a breakdown where I basically asked myself the same question that Mill did. After a lot of tears, sleepless nights, anxiety and a panicky phone call to my dad at 5am, I decided that I needed to take a step back. I needed to relinquish my constant need to feel in control of everything, and let others take the reigns. It's odd to think about it now because even at that point, I was constantly preaching task delegation, asking for help etc, but it was so hard for me to take my own advice!
This post got to be a little heavier than I intended, but I couldn't believe how accurately Mill's breakthrough mirrored my own. I am not perfect and I still have moments where I try to take on too much, but overall the past year has been tremendously freeing. School still proves to be one of my greatest challenges. The way in which our education system is structured often makes me feel inadequate, and I am constantly reminding myself that there are immensely valuable lessons that lie beyond the walls of the classroom. I am so grateful for the opportunity to pursue a higher education, but I think the lessons I learned from university education do not fit the mold of a classic academic. Nonetheless, they are extremely valuable to me as I have learned to trust myself and recognize that what everyone else wants for me is not always what I want for myself.
And that is your Friday Brain Dump! Can you tell that I am more than a little bit ready to be done with college in less than 5 months? :)
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