Call for Emotional Education
Exeter's public pronouncements about goals in addition to academic excellence sound good: "Non Sibi," "goodness," "a caring and connected community." But when it comes to truly educating "the whole student," training is haphazard at best in the areas of emotional intelligence, self-understanding, empathy and skill in emotional communication with others. True, student listeners get trained, some advisers and dorm faculty are quite skillful, some activities and some classes may contribute to one or another of these major life-skills. But all too often, for both students and adults, the pressure of work and a culture of toughness prevent them from exploring – or even feeling! – their own feelings and give them little or no time for empathy and caring for others. I fear that, increasingly, students' only yardsticks for success are grades, money and the status of college admissions. These are inadequate guides for finding a deep sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. A high GPA and income will not in themselves lead to satisfying connections with self, others and life-purpose. However, a different kind of learning can contribute to the needs of the whole self and also improve the quality of the community we create together.
A recent senior meditation got right to the heart of the issue. The senior revealed how he had spent so long smiling and saying he was "fine" because it would please others and not burden them with his problems that he began to feel that he did not know who he was beneath the mask he had adopted. Even as he highlighted the dangers of our striving and competitive culture, his remarkable ability to reflect upon the pressure to please others and his courage in being vulnerable, while somewhat unusual, were also a testament to the positive potential of our community and Harkness education. To achieve a better balance and a sense of purpose and direction that go deeper than GPA, maybe we all need to reassess what is truly important in life and how we define success.
Increasingly, in recent years, when I ask uppers to reflect on what they loved as children, and how those childhood passions connect with their current dreams and goals, a significant number of students seem mystified. The idea of having an internal sense of purpose seems foreign to many. No one has ever asked them to investigate what truly moves them. So, even though at Exeter they have access to amazing teachers and classes and activities, they are consumed by concern for grades, college acceptance and a stereotypical "success." They are not purposefully and zestfully exploring and preparing to make a unique contribution to the world, one which will deeply satisfy themselves as well.
Members of the community–both students and adults–are often dealing with major personal stresses: health challenges, depression, family crisis, death and grief. I have had students who are seriously ill apologize to me for not getting work in on time. That's insane! When I tell them their well-being is more important than any due date, any paper, any grade, or even being at Exeter, sometimes they will cry from the relief and express genuine shock at the notion of someone caring more for them as people than as academic units. Trying to appear “fine” creates a lot of internal stress–whether it’s because work comes first, or because not being fine looks like weakness and failure, or because we simply don’t know how to feel emotions without being overwhelmed by them. A deeper self-knowledge provides a compass for navigating the waves of emotion.
Exeter's culture has always seemed to me a reflection of the dominant, white, upper-class, somewhat Puritanical way of being with which I grew up. Exonians have long displayed a perverse pride in being able to drive themselves to work ALL the time, to suppress needs for sleep, play, contemplation, developing trust and friendship, or simple joy in observing nature. But today, with the constant presence of smartphones demanding outwardly-directed attention, even between classes, it seems that students have even less free attention, less time for restoration, than ever before. People say “complaining is the favorite sport of Exonians.” I wonder if the culture of complaining about work is a way of masking deeper needs. Students derive a sort of status from “competitive suffering” by comparing all-nighters and loads of papers and tests; on the other hand, all the complaining also creates a bonding sense of being “in it together.” However, students have also used to a "bonding" experience to justify hazing. Complaining about work is safe here. We have a culture that justifies and even encourages self-suppression of basic needs that are central for physical and psychological health. Ignoring one's own needs leads to an unbalanced life; ignoring the needs of others hinders the creation of a healthy community.
Even though we have a student body that appears "diverse," if we are teaching them all to be too tough with themselves, we also unintentionally sanction their being tough with others. Instead of encouraging respect and inclusion, instead of inspiring concern for inequity and injustice, instead of creating opportunities to become intrigued by what they can learn from different cultural styles, we are, in effect, "prepping" all of them for domination rather than for true leadership. Those who cannot feel their own feelings will not be able to validate the feelings of others. Those who cannot identify their own basic needs or acknowledge their own vulnerability will not understand, believe or act skillfully when confronted by the painful experiences of those who have been pushed to the margins of society, whether on a local or global scale. In order to practice "Non Sibi" intelligently, people need a healthy relation to "Sibi." The two are inseparable.
Ironically, as that senior meditation showed, if the only acceptable feelings are "fine" or possibly "stressed and sleep-deprived," the channels through which fulfillment and enjoyment flow into one's life narrow to a trickle. Blocked and unfelt emotions choke the flow of feeling. The nature of emotion is to be in motion; thus, by shutting down the so-called negative emotions, one inevitably blocks off the positive ones as well. That vicious cycle contributes to a sense of alienation from oneself, difficulty in finding a sense of purpose and the epidemic of depression among students, which seems greater every year.
I wish all students could safely explore the complexities of the mind and emotions. I wish they could experience themselves as the container, the bowl, in which many emotions co-exist. We can learn to be not slaves to our emotions but witnesses to them. Emotions can contain valuable information–there is no right or wrong or "should" about how people feel. The first trick is to be self-aware enough to recognize, not suppress, the feelings. The second trick is to name them and hold them. The third trick is to investigate what they may be revealing to you (about yourself or your relation to the world). Finally, when their purpose has been fulfilled (when feelings have been "felt" and their information gathered) they can be released, because more information and more feelings are on the way!
Emotion is a singular capacity--the ability to feel and to be aware of those feelings. The greater one's capacity for positive emotions, the greater one's capacity to feel "negative emotions." For example, when my mother died, and later, when both my cats died, I felt overwhelming grief. But as I cried and felt my heart breaking, I also realized (with an awareness born perhaps from years of meditating) that the grief I felt was directly related to (and proportional to) the love I had for them, and that I still HAD the love. The two feelings blended and became one, and both were okay; I would not have given up either one. And because I didn't try to get rid of the grief, it came and went on its own, in waves. All the while there was an underlying peace because I wasn't resisting or judging, but allowing. Although I didn't go around school crying, I did take some time off when I needed to, with the support of some understanding colleagues.
Many students create lasting friendships at Exeter. Developing the ability to acknowledge other people's feelings can contribute to a deeper, more meaningful bond. For example, when I met the man who would become my husband, I knew he was the one in part because I felt safe in revealing some of those experiences of deep vulnerability–and he reciprocated. By being able to hold each other's feelings, we deepened the bond between us and created an even larger "bowl" of awareness and empathy. On the other hand, some students find that they are worn out from trying to sympathize with other students’ emotional dramas. Empathy, however, is not about getting lost in identifying with someone else's emotions, but rather it's about witnessing and gently holding in awareness whatever their experience is. When we empathize, we see the other person as having the same human feelings and capacities as we do–we are not in his or her shoes, but we can be present with his or her experience. Then, both people can just "let it go" and choose to shift the focus of attention.
There are even specific, learnable strategies for improving our ability to handle difficult emotions constructively–rather than just ignoring, suppressing, or masking them. For example, the hardest emotion for me to deal with is anger, especially if it is directed at me. Often, those who are conditioned to be "tough" on themselves are unable to acknowledge feelings of vulnerability and discomfort and will feel and express anger or dissatisfaction instead. Fortunately, when I sense that, beneath the anger, someone feels unsafe or alone, disconnected and afraid, then I know it won’t help to get mad at him/her in return. Nor does it help to judge his/her anger or tell him/her they “shouldn’t feel” it. Resisting an unwanted feeling just holds it in place -- where it blocks positive emotions. "What you resist, persists."
After you graduate from the Academy, please seek out opportunities for your own personal growth, wherever you find yourselves. Along the way, you can share your discoveries with each other and support the development of such opportunities here on campus. Imagine what Exeter could be like if a critical mass of students and adults were actively and intentionally developing both self-awareness and imaginative empathy–especially with those who seem at first to be unlike ourselves. Over time, we (students, alumni, and employees) might come even closer to being the "caring and connected community" that Principal Hassan calls for. Exeter's charge is to develop both "goodness and knowledge," and emotional education may be the practical bridge needed to link the two.