One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass.
How did this book start?
It started sitting in a boardroom in Collingwood with 13 other writers. At one end of the room was a shiny, wet looking yellow canvas. At the other was a neon sign that said fear eats the soul. A snake wound around it with an apple at the top. I used to be petrified of snakes. I thought it was pertinent.
I had invested in a day off to attend a writing class; something about writing, creativity and overcoming procrastination I think. It hadn’t occurred to me until that day, that perhaps my career was one of the manifestations of procrastination in my life. Until that day, I had seen my busyness there as productive. It certainly fitted well with wider notions of success. There were milestones I could point to in my work to show the world I was achieving; there’s where I crossed into a six figure salary, there’s where I got the word Director in my job title, that’s my seat at the Board table, here’s a sprinkling of awards for my work.
To be clear, I did not hate my job. I loved my job. I found it incredibly intellectually stimulating and rewarding and I never tired of working with the vast numbers of different people I got to meet. Challenging them to see and do things differently so that they could grow their business and realise their dreams. I work hard at and love my work.
But I had a gnawing feeling for most of my life that had been getting stronger and stronger.
I wanted to write. I knew that. I had been writing sporadically since I could write. And before then, so eager was I to start, that I used to try and mimic Sandra’s hand when she wrote while holding a pen (mine never quite looked the same as hers at the end though and I was at a loss as to explain why hers had meaning and mine didn’t; what was this black magic called writing?).
There was another gnawing thing I’d always wanted to do; to be vegan. Sticking that label on myself, just next to the feminist one and the marketing one and the blonde one and all the others, was a scary leap for me.
It didn’t sit at all well with my need for everyone to approve of me.
If you ever want to be immediately confronted about your life and discover whether you are ready or not to defend your choices, allow me to recommend being a 32 year old blonde marketing director, expected to hold your own in the boardroom and then declare yourself both vegan and feminist. If you really want to spice it up, throw in a few liberal, extremely left wing political views with some of your capitalist ones and then take your DD’s and your shaved armpits, hop in your Merc with your designer handbag and floor it to Vegie Bar for a raw taco.
You are, in short, not what people expect of all those different stereotypes and rather difficult to place in a well-defined box.
What I’m trying to say here is that when you decide doing the right thing, not the normal thing, is what you’re going to do; you need to be ready to defend it. Or, if that’s offensive to too many people: when you decide that you must follow a different path to the one you’ve been on and that you are no longer going to do what you should, but you are going to do what you feel in the pit of your belly, people will confront you on it.
Like you have (probably) never discovered before in your life, people will feel very free to publicly and loudly attempt to discredit everything you say. Your bosses, your staff, your family, your friends. The first couple are fairly easy to handle. The second two groups are quite a bit tougher on the skin thickness.
There’s one theory I believe describes most of what you need to know about why this happens and you can arm yourself with it to be ready for the onslaught: cognitive dissonance.
When we hear or learn something that doesn’t fit with our existing way of thinking or being, that challenges our belief system or values or place in the world, our brain doesn’t like it much. We either choose to learn more about what we’ve heard, choose to agree / disagree / partly agree with it and then alter our lives accordingly. Or, we fight against it and defend our old way of being in the world, denying, ignoring or dismissing the new information.
You can see this play out in so many ways in our society.
Tell someone that buying an ice cream for the kids on a sunny day at the beach is the same as buying veal. They’ll either learn what you are saying is true and, if they disagree with veal, they’ll stop buying dairy ice creams and get the kids an icy pole or a non-dairy frozen treat of some delicious variety or they will deny it and/or ignore it and carry on.
If you are scared of homosexuality, you might currently be defending your old beliefs by angrily protesting the right of gay people to get married, calling such a thing unnatural, immoral or just plain wrong.
If you are the Prime Minister of Turkey right now, you might be violently trying to stop civilians protesting because your ingrained belief is they should be doing what they are told. You might be labelling concerned citizens ‘extremists’ to discredit them or blaming Twitter for your woes instead of looking for a solution.
If you grew up on meat and three veg, as so many of us suburban Aussie kids did, you might really struggle to comprehend someone telling you that roast lamb is horrific, not the homely, comfort food your Mum lovingly prepared for you and that you thought it was.
Here’s the rub; this is all fine in theory. When you have your step uncle who you’ve known since you were seven years old insulting you and screaming you down on your Facebook wall for everyone else to see, it can begin to feel a bit more personal.
When you get asked “where do you get your protein?” more times than “how are you?” it starts to wear thin.
When you get called extreme for choosing a compassionate lifestyle while others eat eggs produced from the pain and suffering of free range laying hens and the crushing of all their male young at a day-or-so old, you’ll have to learn to handle it.
You will decide you need to follow this niggling feeling even though it scares the shit out of you, or you’ll slot back into life as it was. You can’t have both.
There will come a time when living compassionately is the easy path. But sorry, dear friend reading this, this is not that time. You are out there shouting that the world is round and everyone else knows it is flat and thinks you are mad. You’re daring to suggest Rosa Park doesn’t get out of her seat and you are going to get arrested for it.
Oh, and if you don’t think you’ll be out there shouting about it, I have more bad news. Because here’s the thing: once that thing that goes click in a person goes click in you and you make the connection between your ham sandwich and Babe; you have to shout.
You have to realign your life behind this choice so much it will shock you. You will need to get everyone else’s clicking bit to go click so much you will not believe it.
As I learnt that day in that snake-lit room in Collingwood, when that need arises in you, you have to do it like you have to shit. You can dance around ignoring it for a while, but you’re only delaying what must inevitably happen.
So that is how this book started. I had to write it for you.
I simply didn’t have a choice.
Twitter: @SuzanneKayJH
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