Mike, 24, smiled.<\/p>\n
“Well, to be honest, I see myself as a rock star. Or maybe a movie actor. You know, in major action movies, that kind of thing..”<\/p>\n
“Oh, I see,” I said.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this kind of quixotic sense of the future, unfettered by practicality, realism, or readiness to work for it, in a client.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’m sounding negative?<\/p>\n
Well, far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade! Actually, I truly feel that people should<\/em> be free to pursue their dreams and aspirations. Of course they should! As long as they are<\/em> actually pursuing them.<\/p>\n But as with most things, balance is needed. Greed is very easily encouraged in human beings. And I would argue that it isn’t the same as aspiration.<\/p>\n We can tell greed from aspiration, because greed doesn’t like to wait or work. Greed doesn’t encourage us to contribute or to support the best interests of others.<\/p>\n “Greed is good!” said the Wall Street<\/em> baddie Gordon Gekko<\/a>. Well, I would argue not always.<\/p>\n Greed is cunning and, if given the slightest encouragement, can sink its hooks into us and manifest in different ways. We can become greedy for money – that one’s well recognized – or attention. We can be greedy with desire to be seen as moral (or amoral), or even to be seen as not caring about money. And so it goes on. Greed hides in tiny dark corners of us, often while posturing as its opposite.<\/p>\n If greed were a clever demon, it might even have produced the current taboo against talking judgmentally about<\/em> greed. After all, taboos against criticism are a great way of ducking and dodging responsibility. “We ‘shouldn’t’ really call people greedy.” Clever, eh?<\/p>\n Anyway, I wasn’t about to suggest Mike was suffering from greed! Partly because of the taboo just mentioned, but also because he was on super alert for any<\/em> perceived slight or criticism, so therapy would have stalled right there. What rapport we had would have evaporated like mist in the Sun.<\/p>\n But certainly Mike’s desire for universal praise was causing him problems. After all, if you consider yourself to be basically a (rock) god, it can be tiresome to walk among mere mortals.<\/p>\n We all know, or at least we should know, that fame, money, and universal adulation (if such a thing were possible or even genuinely desirable) are best produced as side effects<\/em> of our endeavours rather than pursued as goals in their own right.<\/p>\n Many of us, me included, have sometimes<\/em> dreamed of fame, riches, perhaps even the words we might use during an award acceptance speech to display how simultaneously amazing yet humble we are.<\/p>\n I have, I admit, occasionally had such misty-eyed fantasies while, say, washing the dishes or waiting in line to buy cat food as just another face in the crowd. Usually the contemptuous glance from the cashier because I’m staring into empty space is enough to bring me back to myself!<\/p>\n These kinds of fantasies may not be that uncommon and may not cause too much harm in and of themselves. They may even be a comfort, a source of real aspiration, or simply idle entertainment.<\/p>\n But overwhelmingly<\/em> seeking fame purely for fame’s sake has a dark side.<\/p>\n\n I recall reading a Sufi analogy that if the Sun is aspiration for truth and our shadows are our worldly success, then when we aim for the illumination of the Sun our shadows will follow us, but will not be our primary concern.<\/p>\n If instead we try to follow our shadows, we can never truly catch them. Certainly they won’t illuminate us.<\/p>\n Yet research suggests that more and more people are focusing on trying to catch their shadows while forsaking the Sun – and it may be hurting them.<\/p>\n A 2020 report from Morning Consult shows that aspirations to be famous are on the rise: 23% of Gen Z adults say being famous is important to them, versus 15% for millennials and only 8% for Gen X.1<\/sup><\/p>\n So what’s behind this dramatic trend?<\/p>\n Well, a full exploration of this question is beyond the scope of this piece! But I was interested to see a UCLA report that laid at least part of the blame on TV.2<\/sup><\/p>\n The study, by Yalda T. Uhls and Dr Patricia Greenfield, looked at 16 values communicated in tween (age 9 to 11) TV shows from 1967 through to 2007. Participants watched the shows, and were asked to rank those values by the importance they were given.<\/p>\n Every year up to 2007, fame ranked near the bottom of the list. Yet in 2007, it skyrocketed to number 1. Other individualistic values, such as financial success and achievement, also rose in importance over the decades. Meanwhile, community feeling, which had previously tended to rank at 1 or 2, dropped right down to number 11.<\/p>\n So it appears that youth TV is increasingly reinforcing the value of fame at the expense of more community-focused pursuits – encouraging young people to chase their shadows, rather than aiming for the Sun.<\/p>\n The authors of the report suggest that the proliferation of reality TV and increased opportunities to gather ‘followers’ and post status updates on social media may be exacerbating this apparent obsession with fame.<\/p>\n Now the interesting question I think is: How has this new cultural desire to be famous for fame’s sake affected the minds of young people?<\/p>\n Younger people may be more inclined to want huge success, adulation, and riches, but not necessarily focus on the process of acquiring<\/em> these adornments. Intuition would suggest that this could be dangerous for mental health. I can, after all, more ably control what I do and how hard I work than whether other people give me approval or attention.<\/p>\n And sure enough, research published in 2015 supports this position, relating patterns in student depression to the widening divide between aspiration and expectation.<\/p>\n The paper, entitled When Aspirations Exceed Expectations: Quixotic Hope Increases Depression among Students<\/em>, found an apparent paradox in modern schooling: high-school and college students are simultaneously more<\/em> positive about the future yet more<\/em> depressed than ever.3<\/sup><\/p>\n But the researchers suggest that this may not be a paradox at all. In fact, the two states may be causally linked. And as the title of the study suggests, it’s all about the relationship between aspiration and expectation.<\/p>\n Those students who aspired<\/em> to higher grades than they actually expected<\/em> to achieve were more likely to be depressed at both the beginning and the end of the academic year.<\/p>\n Similarly, students who aspired<\/em> to attain a certain level of education – such as being able to attend college or attain their preferred degree – but didn’t actually expect<\/em> to attain these aspirations were more depressed five years later!<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, for students who didn’t care so much about their future academic attainment (or lack thereof), the expectation of not doing well didn’t<\/em> predict depression.<\/p>\n The research suggests – and I think this aligns with common sense – that when a student’s aspiration falls a long way off from their expectation, they are at greater risk of becoming depressed. This might seem obvious, but it has important ramifications.<\/p>\n A gap between aspirations and expectations isn’t, of course, the only cause of depression, but it may be a<\/em> cause. If this is true, it tells us something really important about both aspiration and expectation. That happiness, in part, comes down to the extent to which we feel life has turned out as we had previously felt it should. And there’s something else.<\/p>\n Mike had no musical ability, no friends in bands, no interest in learning to sing or act. He aspired<\/em> to being – as he seemed to feel was his due – universally recognized and adored. And yet, in his darker moments, he felt depressed and powerless. He’d flitted between jobs like a bee with a fear of commitment<\/a> to flowers.<\/p>\n When I asked why he hadn’t been able to find a job that would stick, his face darkened. “I had to take so much crap from everyone!” he told me angrily.<\/p>\n So he quit, and quit, and quit. Soon quitting became a habit. Not that he put it like that.<\/p>\n “You know, Mark, sometimes I feel I will never get my dreams. Crazy, eh?”<\/p>\n I found his phrasing curious. He talked in terms of “getting” his dreams, not fulfilling them or attaining them. The consumerist society can shape our mindsets to see everything in terms of what we ‘get’ or are ‘owed’.<\/p>\n It can be useful to discover your client’s aspirations,<\/em> how they would like<\/em> their life to be, and see how well that correlates with their true expectations.<\/p>\n If we (not just<\/em> our clients!) are not careful, daydream and fantasy will insidiously replace intention and action.<\/p>\n Bit by bit, like slowly drying concrete encasing the soul, the desire to be adored, universally recognized, and admired can come to entirely usurp our aspirational drives to do the best job we possibly can for its own sake.<\/p>\nWanting without working<\/h3>\n
Shooting for the moon without a rocket<\/h3>\n
More positive and yet more depressed<\/h3>\n
Where’s my autonomy and control?<\/h3>\n
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