In mid-October, I took the most mature 8th graders from Chrysalis on a 5 day hike along the Lost Coast, a somewhat remote section of California coastline that has miles of hiking and camping along the beach. We didn’t hike that much because I wanted most of the kids’ time focused on unburdened mind/bodies interacting with the wild sea. The trip turned out even more magic than I anticipated. As we drove over, some of the kids were joking that maybe we would find ourselves on the Lost Coast. That got me thinking about the phrase “finding myself”. Does it imply that I somehow got lost and I was finding myself again or does it mean more like a discovery – finding oneself for the first time? Anyway, I went into the week thinking about whether the kids would “find themselves” and what that means and how does it happen and why do wild places have a reputation as good places to find oneself.
Most movies that show kids “finding themselves” in wilderness settings show danger, conflict, bravery as the path to finding oneself, becoming a man, whatever. Fending off a bear, canoeing down a white water river, rock climbing, crossing a high log bridge… But what happened with my students was very different from that. It was like this wild place gave a shot of adrenaline directly into their “true selves” (whatever that is. Maybe they don’t know at first. One could investigate whether the adrenaline shot lay in the good air or the lack of “official” rules or the open space or the constant pounding beating of the waves or…) But whatever, one receives an energy jolt to one’s core, lifting one’s true self to a higher energy state. And so who one is gets expressed more pronouncedly. One rides one’s enthusiasms more enthusiastically.
If, concurrently, your companions are going through the same thing, then a feedback loop forms, in which one’s own inner delight makes more room for other people to be themselves which makes it easier to express one’s own inner delight which makes more room for other people… And so after many days, one has a deeper, more extended experience with parts of oneself that might have lain inactive within a web of social expectations that can mold one away from one’s true nature. So in that sense, finding oneself is like rediscovering a path that has become overgrown from lack of use.
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