July 26th 2023
Last week, my daughter's school put on a performance of "School of Rock". If you haven't seen the musical or the film, I thoroughly recommend it! It is a fantastic story of a deadbeat rocker who ends up teaching children at a prestigious junior school - and the resultant culture clash between rule-bound conservatism and anarchic rock'n'roll.
As I watched it (twice, showbiz Dad that I am), I reflected that a lot of the messages of the show were really quite… well… existential! So I'm sparing you Nietzsche and Sartre this time, in favour of the wisdom of the abovementioned rocker - Dewey Finn. He realises that the hot-housed children he is teaching have all sorts of untapped talents that are being squashed by the school's relentless focus on academic success. He teaches the children to find their own voice (literally and metaphorically), to stand up for themselves, and to "stick it to the man!"
There's a lovely song, where the children explain to their parents that, for all their investment in their schooling, they are missing out on really getting to know the real them.
"You know I try, try, try to explain--
I’m not the kid you want me to be.
And yet it’s all, it’s all in vain--
You just don’t wanna see the real me."
It reminded me that the topic of childhood comes up in my coaching more often than you might expect. It's amazing how ways of thinking that get established early in life come to shape our subsequent careers: "high expectations", "she'll go far", "a duty to give something back" - phrases from school reports that may still be, at some level, directing us even now. And on top of that, we may still be getting "school reports" from our employers, who have their own values and expectations for how we should develop and grow. Maybe, like the song, we sometimes feel that we're not always "the kid you want me to be."
But as good existentialists, we don't want to let unexamined constraints limit our freedom. We are free, whether we like it or not - and have a responsibility to exercise that freedom. Existentialism challenges us to consider: What are my beliefs and values? Where do they come from? Are they authentically mine? How should I live my life to become the best version of me?
Thought experiment: imagine yourself on your last day of school, with your life ahead of you. What would you do differently, knowing what you know now? And what could that mean for what you choose to do today? Maybe there's even some way in which you need to "stick it to the man"?
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