The Power We Give Credentials

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

My parents put me in a private school they could barely afford when I went into Middle School. I was definitely one of the poorer kids, set amongst the ‘pillers’ of society. The kids whose last names adorned the opera house and symphony, not to mention the law firms, businesses and hospitals of our town.

In my school, there were many unspoken expectations. That you would go to college, preferably on the Eastern Seaboard. A kind of gentle and ruthless herding towards professions that ‘mattered’. A lawyer, a doctor, a college professor, a scientist. It would be OK if you stopped pollution, but only if you had a Phd after your name.

Perhaps needless to say I ended up rebelling against these strictures. After exploring Eastern Religious Studies for almost 3 years, I switched to another college and my major became Agronomy with an emphasis in Vegetable Science. Not something widely broadcasted in the Alumni News of my old school!

What I am grateful to have learned in those formative years is that the credentialed families that attended my school all had lives that had the same terrors as mine. The divorces, the alcoholism, the abuse, the loneliness, the fears. Their degrees were not protective nor indicative of their being more valuable human beings.

I am talking about this now as I have noticed I still have the ghosts of credential awe. Believing in credentials becomes much harder when you move towards a yearning to connect at a deeper level. I am poking at this hierarchy embedded from a very young age- that degrees make a more interesting person-something that just isn’t true for me anymore.

I now cringe when this false glitter presents itself as I am first getting to know someone. I am bored with these discussions. I want to know the last time you felt really jealous, what you are reading, what depresses you and what lights you up and, if you have one, how your spiritual path is unfolding/has unfolded. But mainly I want to feel interested and content in your presence.

I absolutely do not want to negate the work that goes in to getting a Masters, Doctorate, PhD.

I am just noticing I am less and less enthralled by them.

I prefer to be seen without credentials and to see others in this unfettered way. Holding tightly to anything I have considered myself to be in the past is anathema to me in the Forest Dweller years.

I guess this process could be considered the practice of Neti/Neti- not this, not that. Dropping all the labels until there are none.

I am thinking of a time in my 40s when I basically jumped tracks, ending up taking care of lots of kids and staying at home after a career as a corporate business consultant. I was at a party with a group of old friends when someone asked me what I was up to. Like a rabbit frozen in front a predator, I mentally thumbed through my catalogue of acceptable replies. What eventually popped out of my mouth was “Nothing.” I felt immediately happy as this felt true. It still does!

Sunset from My Deck-photo by Heidi

I am curious about what might be present for you around this conversation. Please let me know!

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