By Elliot Lee

Have I been trapped in the culturescape?

The purpose of a SCAB is to reflect. I feel that it’s important for me to reflect on why I decided to take the leap of faith, and join the SCA. Looking past the school’s reputation, and of course POTENTIALLY increasing my employability, these do not really constitute to what really makes me want to be apart of this school. Take this post as you wish, you may think I’m chatting absolute shit, but I’ve had some big milestones hit me in such a short period of time over this summer. In reality I’ve had time to think of where I want to be, and the things I want to do… but without this idea of setting ‘goals’.

I’m a sucker for motivational videos and quotes, so I apologise for any clichés.

Last week was one of them nights, where you end up watching perfectly normal videos on YouTube… Then in-between you gradually click on ‘related’ videos and end up on something weird. During this time I came across a video of a man called Vishen Lakhiani. What’s interesting is that he was speaking about this idea of how goal setting is dangerous, and how to differentiate goal setting to the idea of visualisation and the law of attraction.

Now how, and why have I attached myself to this?

Well for me to make my family and friends proud, and have this sense of achievement was to go to University. Throughout the 3 years I had great guidance from my tutors in the career path that I wanted to pursue. They also provided me with the platform to what I thought was going to give me this sense of content by achieving the grades that I eventually got. However, the conclusion is not how I wished. Contentment was certainly not achieved, and I think I know why.

Lakhiani mentions how young adults set these goals and roles that are not truly coming from what we really want. He describes it as the culturescape, which is a safety net mechanism in establishing benchmarks to measure our self-worth. You can call it a series of ‘shoulds’, and what we should be doing. Disregarding how we can apply more meaning to our work, spirituality and culture. I unfortunately fell into this trap.

What I’ve been looking for is not to be part of rules and regulations, and this tit for tat educational system that follows an old school curriculum. I want to learn in new unconventional ways, generate impactful ideas, and creatively explore new ways of thinking to develop the work I want, with other great minds around me. I can’t say for sure… but maybe the SCA is my route to achieve this.

I’m going to attach two quotes below that really drove me to write this SCAB. I hope people are in the same boat, because it will be great to see how we get on for the next 12 months.

When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. That is—everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. . . . Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

                                                                                                                                                -Steve Jobs

We care so much about the health and integrity of our body that until death, we don’t notice that the body is nothing more than a box – a parcel for delivering our personality, thoughts, beliefs and intentions to this world. If there is nothing in this box that can change the world, then it doesn’t matter if it disappears. I believe that we all have potential, but it takes a lot of courage to realise it. Step out of what is deemed normality, and re-write your rules.

                                                                                                                     -Not sure, but a 10/10 quote