THE CIRCLE OF DESTINY

Throughout the centuries human beings have struggled to understand the abstract intricacies of their brief existence in this world. The mystery of life and death seduces us to open our minds and ponder the vast possibilities. Each of us has a personal process of self-discovery that we must experience first hand in order to fully comprehend our purpose. We strive to make sense of our love and our suffering. Vigorously we challenge the boundaries we encounter, questioning the very authority that created them.

Some say we have a destiny to fulfill; a greater purpose at work shaping and training us to become better people. Destiny does not mean that our every choice has been carefully pre-scripted for us to express, it means that we have a responsibility to the consciousness we possess. We focus our energy on the relationships we have with other human beings. Our relationships become the primary training ground. We hope that something will happen that will cause all of the lessons we have accumulated to fall into place and everything we know will suddenly make sense.

In Friere’s essay The Banking Concept of Education we were asked to consider the foundations of education and learning. I came to understand that humanity has been enslaved by a misguided and oppressive system of education that deprives students of creativity, reduces their potential for personal transformation, and leaves them feeling depreciated and unfulfilled. These concepts have prevented us from realizing our innate potential, and have robbed us of our free will. We have become docile, “well-behaved” citizens that more closely resemble sheep; we can be easily controlled and manipulated (Friere 221).

Friere went on to describe an alternate method of education wherein students and the teachers are equals; he calls it the problem-posing concept. Instead of considering students as mere “receptacles to be filled,” problem-posing education considers students as “conscious beings” and teachers as knowledge facilitators (Friere 218). Within this system, students are transformed by the “emergence of consciousness” (Friere 219). This "emergence" causes a “critical intervention in reality” that affirms our innate potential (Friere 219).

I learned that the essence of true knowledge is a combination of memorized information filtered through the eye of personal experience; a storehouse of endless bounty freely imparted to cognitive minds. Each and every one of us must take response-ability. What is true for us is what coalesces as a result of the decisions we make based on the available data and experience at any particular moment in time. Friere wants us to consider ourselves as beings in progress, able to reevaluate and restructure our reality at will.

Ultimately, an honest and thorough self-evaluation is paramount to beginning the process of self-discovery. Only the truth will set us free. Friere says that “in problem-posing education, men develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Friere 220). Therefore, we must align ourselves with individuals committed to problem-posing education if we are to “more wisely build a future” (Friere 221).

What is our future? What sort of world would we create? What is preventing us from beginning our process of self-discovery, recreating the reality within which we exist? As examples of these concepts in action, providing us a deeper look into the dynamics at work in restructuring our reality, and assisting us in identifying the road blocks to success we were offered the work of two authors: Richard Rodriguez’s Achievement of Desire, and Joyce Carol Oates’s Theft.

Rodriguez’s essay was drawn from his personal experience. We learned of his cultural heritage and the impact that his desire to achieve academically had on his ability to interact with his family and his peers. Rodriguez wanted us to understand that in many ways his experience was common to all students regardless of culture. We got to see how being enslaved to his education created a “Grand Canyon“ between him self and his family.

Rodriguez had been swept-up by a voracious appetite for knowledge. Although he knew that his family loved and cared for him he allowed himself embarrassment of them. Rodriguez perceived his parent’s reality as inferior to the new reality he indulged through his education. He experienced an identity crisis, transferring his loyalty from his family to his peers in order to assimilate comfortably into his academic life. Rodriguez experienced a conflict in authority. Rodriguez describes himself in this situation as a “scholarship boy,” a term he drew from The Uses of Literacy written by Richard Hoggart. Rodriguez’s immediate solution to this crisis was to “develop tact” (Rodriguez 572). He created alternate realities within which to interface with both. He created masks.

The American Heritage dictionary defines the word mask as a covering worn on the face to conceal one’s identity. Rodriguez’s identity was lost between his family and his education. He was a being in progress. He created masks to exist within his family and as a student. A mask is intended to conceal, protect, and disguise. Wearing a mask became his way of dealing with those authorities until he became a “critical thinker” (Rodriguez 582). Rodriguez’s “critical intervention in reality” began when he heard the words “Your parents must be very proud of you” (Rodriguez 573). These comments demanded an honest self-evaluation from Rodriguez.

People began to say that to me about the time I was in the sixth grade. To answer affirmatively, I’d smile. Shyly I’d smile, never betraying my sense of the irony: I was not proud of my mother and father. I was embarrassed by their lack of education. It was not that I ever thought they were stupid, though stupidly I took for granted their enormous native intelligence. Simply, what mattered to me was that they were not like my teachers.

Tightening the irony into a knot was the knowledge that my parents were always behind me. They made success possible. They evened the path. They sent their children to parochial schools because the nuns “teach better.” They paid a tuition they couldn’t afford. They spoke English to us.

It was many years before he acquired the language skills to express what had transpired and what he had become. His essay Achievement of Desire was his honest and thorough self-evaluation wherein he shed all of his masks. Rodriguez tells us that “if, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact” (Rodriguez 585).

Joyce Carol Oates, on the other hand, created a fictional story to frame her experience called Theft, a story of two women, Marya and Imogene, who become friends for a short period of time after Marya decides to return a purse Imogene has left behind. Marya is portrayed as a casual thief who enjoyed taking physical items from others. “ There was a moment when an item passed over from belonging to another person to belonging to Marya; that moment interested her greatly” (Oates 475). Many times in the story we are told of Marya’s obsession with stealing. “Presumably she wanted to transgress; even to be punished; she wanted to be sinful” (Oates 476). The items she took were like trophies or souvenirs. “Marya snatched it up as if it were a prize” (Oates477).

Marya was attending college on scholarship. Having distanced herself from her family of origin she came to reside at an impressive small Victorian mansion called Maynard House where she lived with several other girls attending the same college on scholarship. “Marya prized her aloneness, her monastic isolation at the top of the house, tucked away in the corner” (Oates 473). “Nothing was worthwhile, really worthwhile, except studying; getting high grades; and her own reading, her own work” (Oates 483). “She was the only girl in the house with a straight-A average…” (Oates 483). Using the same criteria as Rodriguez, we could say that Marya was also a “scholarship girl” obsessed with the same voracious appetite to succeed academically, willing to sacrifice family and friends to accomplish her goals.

Marya, too, created masks to interface with the many converging realities demanding her allegiance. Although she cared for her family and was committed to her education, she longed for excitement. Being a casual thief was exciting to Marya. “Odd, Marya thought uneasily, that no one has ever caught me. When I haven’t seemed to care. When I haven’t seemed to have tried” (Oates 476). Stealing became somewhat of an addiction. She compulsively gave herself to this activity. “She found herself gazing at certain individuals, and at their belongings, day after day, week after week. What began as simple curiosity gradually shaded into intense interest” (Oates 476). She was so successful stealing because she was so successful in wearing masks. How else could she feed an addiction and maintain such high academic standards.

What interests me most about the way this story unfolds is that we learn about Imogene in a series of flashbacks. The story actually begins with Marya being the victim of a burglary. Events in her life had come full circle. She had become a victim of her own demise. The same behavior she enjoyed now became the source of intense pain. We are told that Marya’s friendship with Imogene developed out of a choice she made not to posses someone else’s belonging: Imogene’s purse. Marya made a choice to change her typical behavior, her addiction, but for what reason?

One afternoon Imogene left behind a little hand-woven purse that must have slipped out of her leather bag. Marya snatched it up as if it were a prize. She followed after Imogene—followed her out of the building—that tall blonde girl in the camel’s hair coat—striding along, laughing, in a high-spirited conversation with her friends. Marya approached her and handed her the purse, saying only, “You dropped this,” in a neutral voice; she turned away without waiting for Imogene’s startled thanks.

Afterward she felt both elated and unaccountably fatigued. As if she had experienced some powerful drain on her energy. As if, having returned Imogene’s little purse to her, she now regretted having done so; and wondered if she had been a fool.

Marya’s friendship with Imogene Skillman began, as it was to end, with a puzzling abruptness (Oates 477).

Why did Marya return Imogen's purse?

Marya returned Imogen's purse because it wasn't enough; she wanted something more than just her belongings—something intangible

Imogene Skillman was a theater arts major; she belonged to one of the sororities on Masefield Avenue; Marya had even been able to discover that she was from Laurel Park, Long Island, and that she was engaged to a law student who had graduated from Port Oriskany several years ago. After she became acquainted with Imogene she would have been deeply humiliated if Imogene had known how much Marya knew of her beforehand. Not only her background, and her interest in acting, but that big leather bag, those boots, the silver ring, the ceramic earrings… (Oates 476)

Marya could have been true to her nature, easily contenting herself with the little purse. However, as all addictions do progress—get worse, Marya wanted to steal some excitement from Imogene’s life—popularity—mask. However once Marya got what she wanted, it was too hot for her to handle. Marya couldn't play with the big boys because she didn't have a genuine place from which to respond. Her entire personality was pieced together from all of the souvenirs and trophies she had collected throughout her life—her education. Marya had not yet embraced the truth in her life. She had not become entirely ready to shed her masks until that day. Marya’s relationship with Imogene told in flashbacks is the story of Marya’s “critical intervention in reality” (Friere 219) leading up to the burglary that begins the story, and Marya’s decision: “I will never steal again” (Oates 475). It was Marya’s destiny to learn this lesson first-hand. It is our destiny as readers to learn the circular nature of true knowledge. That is why Joyce Carol Oates chose to frame her story in this way.

All of us where masks on a daily basis. We have our student mask that we put on when we come to Lane. We have our professional mask that we put on when we go to work. We have our family mask when we are at home. I am not saying that wearing a mask is a bad thing, unless we fail to acknowledge that it is there. Denying our masks is what prevents us from taking the first step to restoring our humanity. We must be willing to end our denial. Sometimes just being willing to be willing is enough to get started. Wearing a mask gives us a false sense of security. When we deny our mask we actually own our mask. We forget it is there, we begin to live the illusion. As the illusion increases, we increase the amount of pain we will latter experience. Our rational mind is suspended in favor of a distraction. What do we want to be distracted from? Our fear! Many of us are frightened deep down inside because we are bombarded with negative realities on a daily basis. We become addicted to the excitement of wearing masks to conceal our fear. Nurturing, caring, forgiving, believing, building, and more are forgotten attitudes because we are constantly being reminded to watch out—be afraid!

This is why I am so vehement on this concept of an inventory process. Why not take a thorough look into our lives without judgment? Why not accept ourselves exactly where we are right now? How else can we build a future? If we build our lives on denial, we will surely fail. Until we have fully taken a good look into our lives, we merely masquerade as people. We spend our lives reflecting the qualities and behavior we admire in others. Often we reflect not only what we like, but what we also detest. The nature of addiction is to hide in things that hurt us. We are thieves only because we believe we are. If we truly are children of the Earth, we deserve to have all that is good. Why should we have to feel like we are stealing just to get love, or poor imitations? We settle for a "trade" instead. We make deals. And if we are still left with the emptiness we started out with then we steal again. This eventually becomes a vicious cycle.

I tried to imagine what the world would be like if all mankind were restored in all its divinity, everyone getting what they needed, instead of taking what they wanted. Everyone would be loved and nurtured. Violence would not exist. Famine would not exist. Death would slowly cease to exist until we re-evolved back into our created state of being, magnificent eternal creative beings who control time and space, who inhabit the universe with unlimited creative expression, forever and ever. This is how I envision the future of humanity.

Whatever our dream of the perfect world may be, it can never be accomplished until we believe it to be real. We must fundamentally change our point of view. Daily reaffirmation and constant visualization must commit us to it. We need to speak and care about it all the time. Eventually, the physical reality will catch up with the conceptual reality. The human mind is an extremely powerful tool. We need to give ourselves permission to use it to it's full potential.

There is a fine line between taking something and receiving something. No law can define it. We are the only ones who decide whether something is taken or received. The difference lies in the intentions of the heart. What are your true intentions? What is your true identity?

A critical intervention in reality is what begins the process through which we shed masks, embrace truth, and acquire true knowledge. The emergence of consciousness that results is the eventual integration of our life experience and education leading to a full restoration of our created divinity. The same divinity we wore masks to conceal. The same divinity that becomes the light of understanding that navigates our soul. We develop the personal power that comes from a positive identification of our reality, where thought precedes the action. We believe that we are before we become. This entire process is the circle of destiny.