The Rabbit Hole

Written 11 August 2012

Yesterday I picked up a DVD someone gave me about 7 years ago, and started watching it again. It’s called “What the bleep?”, also known as “Down the Rabbit Hole”. Like my two favourite books (“Women Who Run With the Wolves” and “The Art of Possibility”), this DVD is something I’ll never get tired of. It’s what could be called a documentary, I suppose, although it’s far more than that – I just don’t have the right term for it, right now. All I know is, it touches my soul every time I watch it. It affects me, moves me, disturbs and challenges me. It makes me think deeply about my choices, past, present and future.

“What the bleep?” explores the field of quantum physics and basically asserts, amongst other things, that there’s a myriad of possibilities for each of us, yet we somehow choose to do the same things in the same ways over and over again, opting for the safe, known choices. It challenges us to dare to explore other possibilities, to connect with the power inside of us and to fully exploit the fact that what’s inside of us is capable of determining what’s outside of us. We’re raised to react to external stimuli and to suppress strong tendencies, urges, drives from within; this group of theorists asserts that inner power is even more powerful than what we’re confronted with in the external world. This topic, articulated both scientifically and poetically by the different contributors, fascinates me – I love listening to the scientists talk about it and seeing the kinds of experiments they’ve done to prove their theories.

I’ve come to appreciate that life/the universe seems to keep bringing me the same message, over and over again. It’s been this way for many, many years: live YOUR truth. I have gone through successive relationships and jobs, getting it right for a while, but then missing the point – knowing the theory, but not internalizing it to the extent where I can honestly say I’m a Trudy-driven being, making my way through life fully living MY truth.

Let’s take the job scene, for example: in 1982, I left college as a qualified teacher, having completed a three-year diploma course, specializing in Junior Primary (now known as Foundation Phase). I applied to four schools, was accepted by one, and in January 1983, started teaching at a small, state-aided church school in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. I taught in the same classroom for the entire 14 years that I was there, and left the school when the government offered Voluntary Severance Packages to teachers, in some hare-brained scheme to reduce the number of teachers by 6000. Even though I regarded the government’s scheme as insane, I had many personal reasons for leaving. I had started studying part-time at UWC in my second year of teaching, and by the end of 1993, had completed my English Honours degree. That, as well as factors at the school and in my personal life, had made me restless, hungry for a new beginning.

In hindsight, I can see that that was actually the beginning of an extremely significant shift for me. I had, in fact, reached saturation point with my first career choice. I definitely did not want to teach little children anymore – I’d wanted to do so since I was a child, and after 14 years of it, knew that that was the end of that chapter. In the first three years after taking the package, I studied some computer courses, got a Public Relations Certificate, had my second child, and then did a short course of study which took me into my next line of work, teaching English as a foreign language. I started in that industry (EFL) in 1999 and worked continuously until early 2006.

Then, after having to close my own language school, I went back on my promise to myself and accepted a teaching contract at a high school fraught with problems. I stayed there for 18 months. Some of the things I experienced there, a decade after leaving the government school system, shook me to my core, and I realized how much I had changed. I also realised that, when you’ve been working in the private sector, especially at management level, you think and operate very differently to people who’ve only ever worked in the government school system. I had to do a lot of soul searching and what I’d call behaviour-and-demeanour modification, to survive. In the last term of my contract, I was offered a position as assistant manager of an established EFL school, and I jumped at the opportunity to return to the industry I’d grown to love. What I learnt, when I was retrenched from that position, almost three years later, was that a ‘permanent’ job can be here today and gone tomorrow. You have to appreciate what you have when you have it, and celebrate life’s blessings when you have them; take nothing for granted.

My tumultuous journey since my retrenchment has brought me repeatedly to a set of truths about myself. I’ve also come to understand that knowing your truth and living your truth are two very different things. I can say with all honesty that I know my truth. Am I living it, though? That’s another story altogether.

One of the fascinating dynamics about us all is that we have these different voices inside our heads, telling us all kinds of things. Whose voice we choose to listen to is what ends up directing our paths. For too many of us, the voice we listen to is not our own, but rather a powerful voice, usually an authority figure from our childhood, that tells us who we are and what we should do….. from that person’s perspective. The truth is that, for people who know they’ve changed since that initial career choice, that is no longer the voice you should be listening to.

One often hears this advice given to people who are striving to realize some dream or other: “Surround yourself with people who believe in, and support, you and your dream”. It’s a completely insane, out-of-body kind of feeling to know, with every fibre of your being, who you are and what your heart desires, and then to be told by people that you’re actually someone they knew thirty years ago, someone you know you stopped being long, long ago.

It’s also interesting how families often make no room for this kind of change, this career shift phenomenon that is experienced by millions of people all over the world; any little thing can be used to justify their theory of what’s right for you. Be perceived as having failed at your new venture, and that’s all the fuel they need to say, “You should’ve stuck to…! Why don’t you just find a nice … job?”

In less than a month I turn 51. There are some voices I need to shut out of my head, once and for all, especially on certain topics. It’s about time! I need to listen to my own voice more, follow my own path, my own truth. Because only I know what makes my heart sing. I know what makes my spirit soar, and I know what puts a smile on my face that just won’t go away. I know. I’ve always known. Ever since I was a child.

So, call me idealistic, unrealistic, blah blah blah – I still know who I am. I will go as far down the rabbit hole as my instincts tell me to.

How far are you prepared to go?