On Being A Second Choice (And Alternate Opinions)

I grew up in a family that always expected the most of me. This is a largely useful kind of backseat driving. It ultimately became embedded in my work ethic – how standards must always be so high for myself, how the presentations of the present are not enough when you know your future holds much higher capability. And yet, you cannot reach it without going through the preliminary mistakes and steps to get there. The classic perfectionist's Catch 22.

I remember there was one assignment I turned in in the fourth grade that was below my “normal standards”. I was a straight A student working with my best friend, a straight C student, on a project we both submitted together. It wasn't that she wasn't smart. She just didn't necessarily care for school, or find all of it entirely useful. A pretty profound insight for a fourth grader, if you ask me - but the school sure doesn't place any value on that point of view. They never reached out to her about struggling in school altogether, if anything else extraneous was going on that might inform why she doesn't want to do school work. It didn't matter why if the independent result was unsatisfactory.They did, however, reach out to my parents. They made me do the assignment over again with a 500 page college level textbook. I sat at the table, underlining and attempting to decipher words that were over my head, and finished the assignment like a good girl. I acquired approval on the basis of individual result, independent of context, history, and emotion, really. The thing my friend taught me was that whether or not you have dignity in your own point of view – if an extraneous, relatively elitist force deems it unacceptable, you will find yourself or someone in your audience affected negatively by that opinion. The generic psychological term is called “framing”. Our complex societal structure of outcome based hierarchy would never tolerate anything less.

One could say tables flipped when I got older. My friend kind of had a point, even if it wasn't the societally popular opinion. I missed a lot of class in high school because I decided that practicing my instrument on my own, taking a nap after only six hours of sleep, or having a social life was a better use of my time than a class teaching me music theory I know, or a class with a teacher who knew I would never give him the performance he wanted. I didn't study for my SAT when I knew I was committing to music school. But I couldn't fully let go of the idea of losing my spectacular grade track approval until much later – the habit of consistent approval in an area is addictive, whether or not its benefitting you.

When we don't give someone their desired result, independent of any humane context that may have affected it, we have become a second choice. Even if it is a purely capitalist, emotionally devoid, results-based kind of judgement, we still find ourselves caring about it. So it seems, it's so easy to never be enough. And then the depression, the anxiety, the weight loss, the irritability, the addiction. The selfishness, the insecurity. When you start to constantly trivialize the system, you may find yourself as a second choice many times over. Even if we have faith in our choice, it's the very existence of the term that gets under our skin. One might call this a form of gaslighting.

It began for me in high school like a tumultuous wave, precisely when I decided to truly take my future career seriously. My new music teacher in my junior year would only bolster me and my talents when it made him look good. I felt used and confused. I only had one major teacher who believed in me for better or for worse – for the music, for my own betterment as a musician at all costs. The music teachers who did not do that, who did not ask that oh-so-important why when I had such adverse reactions to the school's faulty support system (and thus, the things that they taught), figuratively communicated that the system was not fighting for my best interest. I never felt safe or stable to express myself. That manifested as an anxiety disorder. I started getting spots in my vision before I performed. I became so preoccupied with critique because it was communicated to me as a means of enforcing superiority of opinion, not to better my progress as a student. I had a fear like reaction to it, which happens to students when they don't feel supported by their teachers. So I reacted with immense physical fear, over and over again. The ironic part was the school still considered me, inwardly and outwardly, one of their star music students.

Fast forward to the adult artistic world. We don't have grades, school assessments, teachers who are allegedly well advised in visualizing our futures (or perceived lack thereof). We have polls. We have reviews. Accolades, competitions, illustrious awards, nominations, write ups. They tell us who to listen to, who's the next big thing, who's got it all. And if we don't measure up, we first ask what we personally did wrong and not what or who influences these things. Results-based judgement runs the world. The politics, the complexity of life, cruelly contracted into “made it or not”, trailblazer or not, black or white, to fail or not to fail.

Or, so I used to think. As my one teacher-mentor in high school taught me, we are more than a specific audience's desired result. It is cruel to pigeonhole artistic merit into a grading system. We are all but varied forms of opinions. And yet, my anxiety never seems to learn there's nothing to be afraid of. It has learned knee jerk reactions to fear of negative opinions in the same way we draw our hand fast away from a hot pan if we burn ourselves by accident. I am so afraid, consciously or not, of being devalued and stripped down by negative opinions – a phantom issue. It never happens. But it was certainly something I was taught, and furthermore, it is something I am ashamed of because I know it actively cripples me more than anything else in the music. More correctly, it's all outside of the music, trying to remove us from staying in.

We all find our coping methods according to varying degrees of anxiety felt throughout the human spectrum. In the movie The Social Dilemma, it is articulated well: we will simply crush ourselves under the weight of a society that defines social behavior by constantly monitoring and knowing what other people think of us at all times. It's not just the reviews, the grades, the awards, the consequences/fallbacks of capitalism. It's the way every trace of us can be made up online, reinforced, approved of, or torn completely apart, at nearly anyone's mercy in the span of mere seconds. The fear of inferiority can then follow us everywhere. It has followed me – haunted me – my whole life.

What I can know is this. Being a second choice, capitalist illusion or not, can still necessitate one of the most important life skills. You have to work harder to love yourself because, as a second choice, you will find yourself in scenarios where other will not be able to provide it for you. You build your ego because you believe in you, not because others tell you that they do. It might be the hardest thing you'll ever learn to do. But once you do learn that level of love, it is, in principle, unshakeable in any circumstance.

It is freedom.