I thought I’d left all the “high achievement” stuff behind (mostly due to failure to keep it up and aging out of the race in general).
Lost sight of the fact that I have kids and that they are genetically and culturally descended from parents who are “high achievers.”
The result? The pressure and the combat have come roaring back, only now I’m twice as old. Now I can also see this from a different perspective as I’m trying to support others in high achievement rather than being laser-focused myself.
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I increasingly think that high achievers have to be just a little bit angry. Okay, maybe even a lot angry. A deep underlying reservoir of anger at all of the people and things that have done them wrong, at the accumulated wreckage of broken dreams and shattered expectations.
Maybe I’m projecting.
But it seems to me that underneath high achievement is a mix of revenge fantasy, a desire never to have to defer to others, a need for control whether through leverage or through subtle intimidation, a thirst to prove to your doubting self that you’re capable (a thirst, incidentally, that is never quite quenched no matter how many times you stroll across a stage), and maybe a hundred other similar things.
Note that I’m not talking about becoming proficient in something; that’s different. I’m talking about wanting the scholarship, the doctorate, the annual award, the black belt. These aren’t the practices of things themselves, they are secondary signifiers, and they involve a significant investment in competition and hurdle-jumping.
If you want to be an excellent gardener, you just garden. You wake up and you garden and you garden before you go to sleep.
But applying to win the “best gardener of 2023” award is something distinct. It’s not purely about the gardening, and if you enter to win it, you’re not purely about the gardening. Because if you were, you wouldn’t bother—all that time working on award paperwork and preparing your speech and studying the list to check requirements off and so on… isn’t gardening.
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As the parent of someone shaping up to be a high-achiever, I’m trying to remain sensitive to the fact that there’s something under the surface more than just the things being pursued. There is an emotional need being met here, and the going is rough. But the battle must be fought, even if it’s rather painful.
I can’t blame them for this, nor can I discount it. It was me once. I understand how it feels.