Get the F*K out of my pool- and other personal development concepts

Hipsters.  I thought they were just a variety of undies until fairly recently.  Nuh.  Apparently they’re effortlessly cool urban bohemians who’re into indie music, independent thinking and progressive politics.  Actually, not that independent as it turns out.

This week I came across a clip that’s been doing the rounds from the Coachella Festival, held in the Inland Empire’s Coachella Valley, California.  Home in the past to big name acts like the Black Keys, Kanye, Florence and the Machine and the Lumineers,  as well as a whole lot of up-and-comers, it’s also a magnet for Hipsters.  And Hipsters like to know what’s going down, right? 

So when interviewers made up a whole lot of bogus band names and asked people what they were looking forward to about the acts, no one batted an eyelid.  No one cocked an eyebrow at whether 'The Obesity Epidemic' might not be the best name ever or threw out a polite “WTF?” 

Nope.  They waxed lyrical about how much they enjoyed the genre, how much energy they and had and like, you know?  How cool it was all going to be.    Check it out (here on mobile devices).  I'm pretty sure you'll laugh.

Funny.  And also highly relatable.  Because I just have this sneaking suspicion that lots of us, facing a similar scenario, might have done exactly the same thing. (Like, you know, using like... slightly more sophisticated language?)

Let's say you’re in a situation because you’re supposed to be a bit of an expert- a conference for example.  Everyone else is talking up the speaker or the topic.  Are you really going to stick your hand up and say:  “Hello?  Actually… no idea.  I’m all at sea here.”  Asked directly about something we're expected to know, wouldn't quite a lot of us make something up rather than confessing our ignorance?  

We all want to fit in.  We all want to look smart.  Maybe even to the point where we’ll openly lie to cover ourselves...

It’s funny because I imagine if I asked Brydie (who’s seven) a question about a band she’d never heard of, particularly if it had a ridiculous name, she’d nail me with one of her famous ‘are you out of your mind’ double takes and say “What the?”

That’s because at seven, children are generally fearless.  They’re the centre of the universe.  They don’t much care if they don’t fit in.  They haven’t yet learnt to fear non-conformity.    The truth is out there and it’s meant to be spoken.  Which is why a couple of years back the checkout chicks in our local supermarket knew that my undies had the word HOT on them and we tend not to ask for Brydie’s input during Children’s Talks in church. 

So when does that fearlessness get lost?  When do we replace it with a desperate desire not to stand out or risk looking dumb?  Do we ever come out the other side, able to stand on our own two feet again?

It got me thinking about a whole range of people from Fowler to Erikson, Kohlberg and M Scott Peck who’ve done a lot of work looking at the different shifts that people undergo as they move through life from being totally preoccupied with self to finding some kind of harmony with the bigger picture.  Basically development thinkers seem to follow these kind of patterns. 

1. Ego:  Occupied with self, concrete views of the world, others serve our needs.

2. Conformity/Authority: Need to conform, desire to please others, serious about authority (including faith - seeking absolutes and certainty)

3. Skeptic/Individual: Question reality and beliefs, perhaps become disillusioned about faith, internalise right and wrong & potentially become committed to causes

4. Mystic/harmony:  Find and accept a path that emphasises what we have in common, not what divides us, at peace about mystery, emphasis upon community. 

That's a really pretty sketchy summary, so if you're interested, google it!  All the thinkers suggest we float back and forth between the various stages and might be at one stage in one area of our lives and a different stage in another.  But most suggest that it’s some kind of ‘crisis’ that tends to move us from one stage to another, not just age.  Looking at the descriptions, you can no doubt think of older people who fit stage one or two and younger people who might just as easily be stage four.    And you?  Got a number beside your name yet?  (Self analysis.  Great for a quiet moment during the washing up.)

The Hipsters' desperate desire to please, in spite of wherever else they may fit on the charts, is a pretty natural part of any journey, it seems to me.  No doubt there were a few who politely told the interviewer:  “Actually I haven’t heard of “Get the F*K Out Of My Pool”, but boy, with a name like that they’re bound to get some good airplay!” 

Doesn’t make for such great vid though, does it?  But maybe it sheds a bit of light on our own personal development path.  Where are we at?  Where are we headed?  How do we get there?

(So let me guess- you put yourself between 2 and 3 and your cat at 1, right?)

Away

I’m pretty sure my favourite part is when they’re all stumbling toward one another in the glowing dark with pointy sticks at eye level, enthusiastically offering up the charred remains of their marshmallows for inspection.

“Mmmmm, perfect!” everyone’s saying with too much enthusiasm.  Clumps of soggy charcoal are landing in laps and on bare feet and there's a lot of squealing with waving of firebrands.  “This one is exactly right!”

I hate marshmallows, actually.  And every time we go camping I tentatively suggest there might be a rule about children/sticks/fire in combination with wild and/or vague arm waving.  Every time we go camping I get quietly ignored.  Which is fine, because so far no one has been disfigured for life. 

Our girls go feral when we camp.  They wade in streams and swim naked in waterholes, carry sticks, eat out of cans, head bush for a wee rather than risk “Poo Hill” with its (actually pretty decent) pit toilet. They get enthusiastic about climbing the steep side of hills, play cricket and soccer with a wild and desperate look, sing loudly and unashamedly tell embarrassing stories in the flickering light of the fire.  They smell of woodsmoke and their hair is tangled.   

They are never more beautiful.  They’re away.

At night when I fall into my sleeping bag my brain is roasted from hours spent staring into the mesmerising flames of a fire, my veins silky with alcohol, my jaw either sore from grinning or slack from simply sitting wordless.  The monkey that usually comes alive in the tree of my head about this time of night lies prone across a branch, too sun-warmed and lazy to lift a finger. And for minutes I lie curled listening to the whisper of water over rocks, birds nickering quietly in trees, the gentle sigh of a tarp.  Air is cold on my face; moonlight reaches one solitary finger into a corner.  Sleep sidles in.

I’m away.

We Aussies are big on holidays.  These days, a record number of us take them overseas- about 9 million OS hols this year alone. Aussie dollar being what it is, why wouldn’t you be winging it off into the wild blue yonder?  And resorts.  Resorts feature large on the Australian wish list for a decent getaway.  Cocktail by the pool- children in the Kid’s Club.  What’s not to like? 

It's maybe too easy to make ‘getting away’ a grand affair, that's all.  It costs money.  You have to plan well in advance- take a decent amount of time off.  Where to go?  What to see?  In the meantime, the spontaneous getaway goes begging.  Not that I’m suggesting throwing everything in the trailer and heading bush is easy either- or everyone’s cup of tea.  Sixteen loads of washing later, have we recovered from the camping trip?

But a commitment to the idea of the getaway seems like a good one.  The getaway on the back deck or the local park on a Friday night with a picnic. The one-night house swap with a friend between the city and the coast.  The unexpectedly long lunch-break by the water.  The Mindfulness App that chimes twice a day and asks you if you want to meditate… (Well no, actually, I’m in the middle of wrangling the three year old and we’re in a supermarket queue but yes… I could take three minutes to breathe a bit more deeply.)   The DWA with the Man in a B&B on the Mountain.  The one night solitary retreat (yes, solitary, as in 'on your own'.  Totally recommend.  Google a place- actually not expensive at all).

Sitting in the bed of the creek on sun-warmed stones, some discussion arose over buying the property we were camping on: to own this patch of secluded, rugged, mountain land with river frontage, full of memories to make and share out with others.

Nope.  Not for me.  Part of the appeal of ‘away’ is that it’s there, but it’s not mine to keep.  Like the ocean, it calls, but I don’t own it.   It sends me home warmed and loose in the back and seeing the world differently.  I don’t want it to become normality.

I long after it.  It’s slightly out of reach and all the more beautiful because of it.  That's away.

Away.  Where are you going next?