Being Well-Adjusted

This morning, my mind went back to my first years of college, in 1954. I concentrated on getting good grades - while most students concentrated on their social advancement - making themselves better in the eyes of their fellow-students. To put this another way - I concentrated on my inner goals, and they concentrated on their outer goals.

And this conflict continued throughout my life - unbeknown to me. I insisted on being me - even if that meant I would be undesirable to others - especially to the young women everywhere around me.

I inherited this conflict from my family - who were ambivalent about the world around them. They were religious, and saw the world as full of sin - but they also wanted to be esteemed by that same world.

They were not aware of this conflict, which they never solved, and resulted in the failure and disappearance of their little church - the most important thing in their lives.

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Meanwhile, I ended up in the Computer Industry, in the Eighties and Nineties. Where I had the same problem - I could see how incompetent they were - just as my parents could see how sinful they were. I did not fit in - I was not well-adjusted.

I left in 2001, when things were beginning to change in the Computer World - especially in Software. Software developers were becoming more competent at building software - and better at understanding themselves also.

I am now reading Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective - that I learned about from a software site.

My world and their world seem to be merging!