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Based on the writing prompt, “If we had had THESE classes in high school, young adulthood would have been much easier.”
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“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.” ––Ralph Waldo Emerson in Self-Reliance
If the value of self-worth and the ability to trust in yourself were taught in high school, young adulthood would be a smoother transition, for sure. I don’t know about you, but high school wasn’t the best experience for me. I made most efforts not to go and eventually was able to be placed on a work-study schedule so I only had to attend in the mornings for my senior year. It was a dull experience. As a high school student, I saw no vision for my future and didn’t have an idea as to what would come of it. I am extremely relieved that I held onto strong passions through it all and made it out quite happily. Looking back now, I believe that courses on self-worth and self-reliance would have been helpful.
It wasn’t until college that I found the ability to trust in my decisions and discover the independence to enroll in the courses that I desired. The interesting thing is this ability to trust in our ideas can be done anywhere, it doesn’t only have to be in college. If I were told in high school that I could make a living by believing in myself and offer value to others, my young adulthood would have started out much differently. I wouldn’t have been as concerned with finding part-time work as an employee that didn’t coincide with my ultimate passion in life. Instead, I would understand that, yes, we need community—but we also need to value ourselves.
In school and out, people are taught to rely on assistance, systems, and obey the rules. We are taught to listen to authority and not commonly instructed to trust our inner guidance. If high schools offered mandatory courses in self-worth, how would our society function? If we learned the psychology and philosophy of self-value, where would we all be at this point? I think we’d be in a very different place and having different conversations.
In his Self-Reliance, Emerson states:
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
How many times have you had a brilliant idea and didn’t jump on it or say it—only because it was yours? Not believing in your idea has to do with the value of self-worth. It’s also a form of self-confidence and certainty. When we are brought up to believe in our self-worth and have the initiative and comprehension to act upon it, we hold the ability to transform lives. Understanding that one can change the world in a positive sense—what better way to begin your adulthood? Starting off without this basic life presumption—self-worth—is remiss. Learning how to only play by the rules—and not challenge the standard assumption of authority doesn’t ordinarily create self-reliant individuals.
In addition to self-valuing, there are many more courses I’d put into a high school curriculum: meditation, confidence, care, philosophy, mindfulness, integrity, self-discipline, creative thinking, entrepreneurship, and many more.
I’ll close on one last note from Emerson:
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
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