i’ve been realizing how caught up i’ve been in status games.
i realize how much i’ve chased things for prestige without sight of what i might be curious about and what i enjoy doing outside the context of it granting validation from others. the college i go to, the work i do, the way i gain measurable trust in others had been so tied to credentials.
when extracting the prestige from my identity, i’m really not sure who i am or what I want. outside the context of what i have done, i have no idea how to distinguish supporting my curiosities versus my ego.
i realize i found trouble in even starting normal conversations with others without feeling a need to retreat to traditionally 'safe' questions like "what college do you go to" or "what do you do?" i would find it especially hard to talk to older people because i would not know how to dive deeper and get someone to share something new rather than spit out information that they've probably repeated over and over with every introduction.
for what i lacked in curiosity, i made up with self-proclaimed 'passions'. for what i failed to ask in questions, i make up with going back to past accomplishments.
even claiming to 'not care about status' by leaving university for other interests is a form of status. even writing about 'not caring about status' is a status, because it's a form of expressing being better than others for being aware of this.
so what should my relationship be to status? i've become so used to caring about how i come off that i've forgotten what it's like to not care about it. i wonder if only outside the environment of others caring about status will i become more clear minded as what actually matters. but maybe none of it matters, and maybe it's time to be more okay with that.
ah i loved this so much! especially your point about "not caring about status being another form of status."
i truly think there's no way to "escape" the status game. it's built into the dna of who we are as humans. but i do think we can learn to mitigate its side effects.
status seems strongly tied to ego, and while ego has its place, it often gets in the way of things. so i've recently tried integrating a sort of litmus test for my actions:
i ask myself, "am i doing X because it's genuinely helpful/value-giving/productive? or is it because i want to feel good about myself?"
99% of the time, if i'm doing something just to feel good about myself, it's anti-(helpful/value-giving/productive).