Sociologists assure that this is the main trend of recent times. We want to be not just successful, but absolutely happy – professionally and emotionally. What is it? Trying to justify your existence? And what prevents us from finding our place? Psychoanalysts argue.
“Your place in this world” is a very vague concept. It includes everything at once: place of residence, profession, social status and emotional background. This is a place where you can do your job, improve yourself, realize your talents and be happy. Where you can become «part of the world.»
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung called this phenomenon synchrony: when the world seems to reciprocate you, showing different signs of approval. When you find this place, everything around is in the best shape. You meet the right people, find money for a new project, fall in love mutually.
Finding your place is a noble but tedious task.
Why has it become so relevant right now? Sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufman believes that this is the price of our liberation: “Over the past decade, the great ideologies that inspired and guided us have exhausted themselves. We were left without generational guidelines, lost many values. Society has found itself in a desert in which man has to do nothing more, nothing less than «inventing himself.»
This phenomenon especially affects those who are 25-35 years old. Family psychologist Françoise Sand calls this period «the age of the labyrinth»: «These young people are torn between family and work, the search for a safe haven and professional success.» What prevents us from finding our place in the world?
labeling syndrome
Many people think that finding a place means achieving a certain status. But being only a good mother, a promising employee, or a great friend is a dead end.
Psychologist Carl Rogers reminds us: “The goal of personality evolution is to be yourself in any situation, not to play a role.” Therefore, in order to find your place in the world, you need to get rid of stereotypes and far-fetched images, strive to be yourself, and not the ideal embodiment of some invented picture.
Caliph’s syndrome for an hour
Productivity, career growth, competition, comparison with others are all factors of self-deception. They make us believe that the meaning of life is the achievement of the mythical first step. We fight for the championship first in the family, then at school, then at the institute and at work. We try to climb the hierarchical ladder. But where does this path lead?
“Trapped,” says social psychologist Vincent Gauljac. Envy and competition destroy our desires. We go to the imposed goals — to become a better employee, to get a promotion — and gradually replace our own desires and aspirations with them.
Like the vizier Iznogood from the popular comics of René Gochini and Jean Tabari, we are constantly running somewhere, fighting, weaving intrigues, indulging our vanity, mobilizing resources, implementing project after project. All just for the sake of becoming caliph for an hour
However, in order to find our place, it is more correct to take a more restrained position, to do what is really close and interesting to us, to concentrate on the development and realization of our unique talents.
Zeliga syndrome
In Woody Allen’s film of the same name, an ordinary person Leonard Zelig discovers in himself a unique ability to physically and spiritually transform into anyone, to perfectly copy the behavior of others. Behind the comical content and the narrative, which is extremely unusual for a feature film, lies a serious problem — opportunism, the desire to blend in with the crowd.
In order to get the favor of colleagues or not to upset the family, we also often become chameleons, adjusting to the desires and expectations of others. But all this only prevents you from finding your place in the world.
Accept your uniqueness
“At the age of 45, she resigned as a top manager of an international corporation and became an artist”, “They divorced her husband after 10 years of marriage, and he left for Nepal” … Such stories are often puzzling. How can people leave a high post, a family, a promising job?
But what if they suddenly found the courage to become themselves, heard their desires, stopped adapting to the numerous “it’s customary” and “it’s necessary”?
To find your place in the world, you need to stop trying to fit into the standards, follow the internal guidelines, allow yourself to be yourself. It’s much harder than burying yourself in a life you don’t like. But it is necessary!
The German philosopher Richard Precht wrote the book «Who am I and how much of me, if I exist at all?», which became a bestseller. The phrase that became the title was once said by a friend of the writer. It perfectly conveys that painful feeling when we seem to be doing everything right, but something is wrong. If you know the feeling or have asked yourself a similar question, then it’s time to act.