What do you do well? Are you perhaps good at conversation? Skilled at playing music? Or, perhaps, a master at the specifics of your job? Next question: How much do you enjoy or even need to be told that you do something well? The pleasure of affirmation is a seductive pull. We all want to be appreciated and to be valued.
Since class and gender barriers started to break down during the latter twentieth century, we’ve had much more freedom to pursue that which we do well. From Martin Luther King’s, “I Have a Dream” speech to the modern mantra, “You can be whatever you want to be,” we embrace the freedom to pursue our talents, regardless of our beginnings. I am good at physics and being “good.” Bowed over books and scratching out equations, I was free (in a way my female forebears were not) to knuckle down, and then reap the rewards of affirmation and climbing the professional ladder.
Good. Do well.
Assessing what is good or done well is an act of comparison—looking at multiple things, we deem this one good because it is better than another that is less good. Comparison entails ranking. And when we rank our abilities with the assumption of freedom, it’s our fault when we’re not as good at something or as acclaimed or advanced or popular as we planned. However great it feels to be recognized for what we’re good at, if we overemphasize our freedom, it’s a small step from valuing what is good to believing that whatever happens to someone they somehow merited or deserved—a meritocracy.
Read the rest of this article at GCD.