8.20.2010: Overachiever

I’ve always been an overachiever. From the time I was young, I was getting A+s. I was doing extra credit then taking it home to add more. I graduated High School in the top of my class; I received honors and recognition. I was a success.

Then I started following paths where achievements were harder to define and extra credit didn’t necessarily equate to assured success. I became a Major in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. There, we rigorously studied various forms of dance, including ballet, modern, jazz, tap, indigenous Zimbabwean dance, and dance history, music theory, and kinesiology. The emphasis was on developing an awareness of our capabilities to then transform these abilities into meaningful movement. And we did a lot of high kicks.

Every person’s physicality, interest and experiences differed. There was a multiplicity of choice and no single answer. Without the clear delineation of a single desired outcome, it was much harder to determine what earned an A+. Overachieving in the way I had known was still great at times, but sometimes it meant that I was simply doing too much.

That’s the time when I started to learn to fall. Quite literally, a large chunk of my college career was dedicated to falling: finding safe routes to the floor, pouring my weight into the ground, striving to leap with risk and recover in the descent. Falling was no longer associated with failure, but rather, when done well, falling became compelling, exciting, brave, honest, satisfying.

So now where are the overachievers? That girl just fell down. I’m still standing here. Is she the winner or am I?

After college, I moved to New York City to dance professionally and an idea that continued to have an influence on me as I navigated this new scene was the idea of “not doing,” as emphasized in many somatic practices. Somatic practices are methods such as the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais which investigate the correlation between our mind and body, and how that relationship affects our functioning in everyday life. What physical habits have we developed? What asymmetries have assimilated into our regular patterns? For example, Jimmy always paints with the roller in his right hand. As he lifts the roller to the wall, he also unnecessarily and unknowingly lifts his shoulder up close to his ear.

How can we heighten our awareness of these patterns to enable our actions towards efficiency and ease? How can we “do less” to accomplish more? Would it be possible for Jimmy to paint with his left hand sometimes? Or could he briefly think to relax his shoulder first before lifting the roller?

And so it goes. The highest kicker is no longer the overachiever. Now the prize student is even more difficult to decipher. It’s not just the height of your kick – it’s now the highest kick, with the least effort and the greatest likelihood that you can keep kicking for the next thirty years.

But, wait, there’s more, because dance is an art form, after all. Maybe the highest kick isn’t even the appropriate action to illicit the desired response. Great. So it’s: ((Height – Effort) + Longevity) x Artistic Intent. Who’s made the honor roll?!

Now stick that equation into the specific context of the world of downtown Manhattan modern dance and the overachievers are those who can prove themselves to be so – or at least those who send out enough mass emails and Facebook posts to get you to their performances. In this arena, it typically becomes a confusing blend of underrated overachievers, overzealous overachievers, recovering overachievers, boastful underachievers, and somebody in holey tights and a neon-colored wig.

‘Overachiever’ starts to feel like ‘Narcissus.’ I was having a growing sense that the dance community as a whole was self-serving and indulgent. Egos fly high and earn praised when flouted unapologetically. And why not? Where else, but in art, can you put you and your biggest ideas first? What are those big velvet curtains on the proscenium meant to frame if not your every whim, desire, urge, idea, request, dream?

Its sounds like an overachiever’s paradise, but I kept finding myself shirking whenever I experienced this fanfare. Something undefined wasn’t jiving, and I needed a break.

So Peace Corps. My chance to get back on the honor roll. My opportunity to overachieve with selflessness and humility. I would put the needs of others first and reflect on the importance of providing communities with their most basic necessities. I had the expectation that the experience would be a difficult one, but in the end, we’d all end up a bit stronger and wiser. I’d be able to go home and put the humanity back into art.

Then I arrived in Ait Ouffi. Running water, electricity, Tom and Jerry showing daily, and a green valley with fields of vegetables and grains. What did they need of me? While the Peace Corps role of tree-planter and fuel-saving-stove-builder perpetuates, we know that’s not the case. Morocco is doing alright in many ways and the areas that we should hope to wield influence are in the realm of cultivating community leaders, inspiring an etiquette of teamwork, and instilling an aptitude for creativity and innovation that strengthens tradition, accountability and community.

Progress in these areas occurs incrementally. What could I expect to engrain in this community during my two year service? Naturally, I expected to work hand-in-hand with my counterpart and the women of the weaving association to set up a plan for a great project, follow-through with it, satisfy a need, then debrief on it so other communities could follow suit. All the while we’d add embellishments and pieces of flair to give it an extra sheen. As an admitted overachiever, I know that I set high expectations. Why not? But huh? I cannot make deep-seated change. I’m not that in control, no matter how much I plan and research and scheme. We can together, but I can’t alone. It’s part of how the whole intricate scheme works.So now the overachiever isn’t defined by how far she leaps, but how far she can motivate her community to leap. But wait. These leaps can’t be measured in length. Deep habitual change comes after a whole lot of awareness, and begins even before any conscious action is taken. That’s the idea of those somatic practices. Not only will the smallest shifts be our greatest accomplishments, those are the only shifts that will have a bearing on any true change.

Okay, I believe in the small steps. I also believe in taking huge leaping risks. So how do I know? When do I push with my greatest effort and when do I sit back and allow change to take place because of my lack of interference? How often do I remind, insist, and organize action to happen? How often do I make myself available, show interest in contributing, but remain in a state of “not doing” until initiation ignites from my community partners?

Could Peace Corps give a multiple choice exam at COS that would be graded to determine our effectiveness as volunteers? Think about it, Mr. Lillie. I think it would clear up a lot of ambiguity for many of us.

There’s one aspect of Peace Corps in which I have fairly clearly overachieved, and that, my friends, is integration. Having accepted engagement to an HCN (aka Moroccan person) and moved in with his family (It’s true.), I’d say I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. I’m learning quite intimately the complexities of “role” in our household of thirteen people and I’m navigating how I fit into this context. In being myself, I have responsibilities, interests, and skill-sets that differ from the accepted roles defined according to gender and marital status held within our household. That can be both great, and really tough.

Certain topics now carry more weight than they did before, such as my interest in converting to Islam, particularly when being asked by my mother-in-law-to-be, and I’ve started to think of my role in this community beyond my COS date. I’m making a commitment to remain connected to this village for a lifetime, Inchallah, and for the lifetimes of our children, Inchallah. Sarah Young, Blue Ribbon for Integration.

How did that happen? That, I don’t know. It had something to do with trusting despite being vulnerable to the consequences of all the unknowns; and falling confidently because we’re well suited for each other and excited about investing in this together.

The result has been something I hadn’t expected: Rather than steering clear of self indulgence, I’ve renewed my commitment to selfishness with all the gumption an overachiever can muster, but, fingers-crossed, with a new twist.

Selfishness will still mean setting my own happiness as a priority and being absorbed in what interests me. I’m desirous of putting my focus foremost on those relationships that most closely surround me – both spatially and emotionally - and to develop meaningful projects that speak to them. This may scale down my original big intentions, but it allows me to be influential in a more attainable way – and gives potential for my influences to be woven into already existing patterns. This means that as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I am not America’s ambassador to Ait Ouffi in any boasting way. I am a friend, a suggester of new ideas, a picnic companion, a favor doer, a skirt-wearing bicycle rider and a fiancé.

It all feels so dreadfully humbling when I had intended to move mountains. That overachieving spirit relentlessly insists that there’s still time to build that new road (and find those husbands the girls have been requesting). But if I quiet that obnoxious voice, I almost hear another.

[But before I do, there’s one last jab from the overachiever, “Oh, you’re sounding so mature. Guess you’re getting OLD! Say goodbye to popsicles and a wrinkle-free complexion.”]

If I let it emerge, there is another voice: It’s the one that suggests to me that the greatest painting will never hang in a museum; the greatest performance will never even see a stage. The greatest accomplishments may not ever be labeled as Great, and that’s not only okay, it’s refreshing to think that brilliance surrounds us. It can earn quiet recognition, and live within its small circle of influence without a single ribbon or plaque. Or it can rise to great fame, inspiring millions. That’d be really great, too. But regardless of how large it swells, I like the thought that brilliance could be so daily.

If we can see greatness without looking for trophies, we can see shortfalls without seeing failure.

Our shortfalls, our underachievements, seems to help us along as much as our praise-deserving strengths. I recognize that others can relate to my weaknesses as readily as they can to my strengths, perhaps even more so because for many of us, our weaknesses tend to be what we grade most severely. For this reason, I can’t give my abilities a higher value than my disabilities. Our weaknesses give us humility, which in turn can offer us the patience to encourage even the most bashful (or annoying) achievers to make attempts without abandon. If we’ve made a habit of trying to erase the hang-ups or shortfalls in others, then we’ve forgotten how hard it is for us to make incremental changes within ourselves.

All of this hasn’t really helped me to know if I’ve made the grade here in Ait Ouffi. I never got my report card during MSM. GPA doesn’t seem to be a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) in any of the Peace Corps Materials. I still have a lot of questions about whether or not I’ve contributed to the well-being of this community. I also would like to know if I’ve packed away any bit of wisdom over the past two years that will help me to decipher with greater clarity and purpose that downtown Manhattan dance scene that I cannot wait to love and loathe once again. I haven’t completely found resolve in living generously and lavishly in my own selfishness, and I still get urges to do a really, really, really good job.

Fortunately, I’m sure Peace Corps must give us some sort of “Certificate of Completion” at COS. That’ll help. Maybe if they don’t, somebody in VAC could suggest it. Our names could be written kinda big, with a gold border and all sorts of people’s signatures on it. Y’know, overachievers like us, we’d like to have something like that to stick on the fridge.