Growing Pains: Discovering Wholeheartedness as a CollegE Student

This semester, I have been lucky to take a college course in emotional intelligence. It fulfills a general education requirement in “humanistic inquiry.” One of the questions we consider is: Can emotional intelligence be learned in a classroom? I continue to ponder upon that question, but I do believe that I have learned a great deal in how to express my emotional intelligence through this course. For our midterm, we were tasked with creating an anthology utilizing our class readings. Influenced by none other than Brené Brown, I decided to discuss wholeheartedness and college-living. I feel like this class has pulled some of my favorite work out of me; this anthology walked me through my own framework of discovering wholeheartedness, and how I continue to intentionally encounter it.

Dr. Brown’s work has been an obsession of mine this past year. I have read & listened to nearly her entire library of work, after listening to Rising Strongly last summer. After last spring, I was struggling with my identity as a college student. I went from someone who knew her gameplan for the next ten years, to someone who wasn’t even sure she’d be accepted into the new major she was hoping to pursue. Since last summer, I have lived out a few questions. I’m now a student in the Marshall School of Business. I know who I am, far deeper than I did even then— and as a friend of mine reminded me, knowing myself is the greatest defense against imposter syndrome and anxiety. I know who I want to be—and it is actively informing who I am becoming. Namely, I want to be wholehearted, thus, I am embodying wholeheartedness—something I believe we can all learn to do.

PREFACE

Dr. Brené Brown defines wholehearted living as being “about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.” Here at USC, where–according to today’s admission decision statistics–12% of applicants are accepted–elite students intend on establishing themselves further as the leaders of tomorrow, living from a sense of worthiness regardless of one’s productivity seems counterintuitive. One might just argue that the typical USC student suffers from a head working overtime and a heart feeling overlooked. Reason sits comfortably in the driver’s seat, with emotion cast aside Monday-Friday, until some liquid courage can inhibit the head enough to make it socially acceptable to feel, all the while numbing one’s biological capacity to do so. Shockingly–or not-so-shockingly– there is an epidemic of loneliness, disconnection, anxiety, and depression. 

    I find it interesting that the word Brown coins is wholeheartedness, not wholeheadedness. A fulfilled life results from cultivating a whole heart, and yet there is a disproportionate emphasis on honing the mind. The antidote to disconnection involves vulnerability, authenticity, and empathy. The connection that is so deeply craved by students is not being found in classrooms fit to feed the mind. How is a college student to stumble into wholeheartedness? He or she is to embark on a journey to feel and accept the entire spectrum of emotions that exist, instead of parsing out which emotions are convenient or productive. He or she is to welcome a life that permits slowing down as a revolutionary act of self-care. He or she is to tirelessly walk laps around the world while walking a mile in others’ shoes. He or she is to start living from the heart, and not just the mind.

In this anthology, I will examine readings focused on tapping into one’s spirit and depicting the human experience from the heart. I will examine readings about portraying emotions across the lifespan, making space for difficult emotions, recounting the transition to college, coping with anxiety, and cultivating gratitude. I believe that these readings contain guideposts for living wholeheartedly, a tenant that I am committing to live by as I progress through the rest of my college years and beyond. 

ANALYSES

Caitlin Donahue, “Letter to Myself Upon Entering College,” from Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the MeToo Movement (2019)

“Congratulations on getting into college! What a privilege. Not to say you didn’t do your part to make it here. (High school yearbooks don’t edit themselves!) Many good and many terrible things will happen to you on this well-pruned, high-fenced campus. Keep in mind that the most disturbing and bewildering moments will make you— me!—a stronger Older Caitlin…Your girlfriends will prove to be little help in maintaining your sanity in the face of such things. Be easy on these women. They live on this campus too. The embarrassment and self-doubt born on campus will never leave you. But they will form a shade in the palette you’ll go on to use as a professional writer, a heavy matte gray that contrasts with the bright, beautiful colors of your many friends, your many triumphs…I repeat, C, congratulations! These battlefield years will whittle you into a strong woman. The cuts you receive will enable you to recognize the wounds of others. You are special, you are loved, you are yours.”

Let us begin our examination of disconnection with a passage saturated with self-compassion and empathy. Here Donahue revisits her 18-year-old self and empathizes with her, reflecting on all that she has learned since before she attended college. One of Brown’s key components of wholeheartedness is what she calls shame resilience–developing a personal framework for charting towards empathy (courage, connection, and compassion) in moments when we feel shame or are tempted to outrun shame (fear, blame, and disconnection). It takes great courage for Donahue to empathize with her younger self, allowing her to relive painful components of her past.

I love the metaphor of using the gray of embarrassment and self-doubt as a contrast for the colorful colors of triumphs and meaningful friendships to come. I am both saddened and inspired by her ability to empathize with the women in her life who failed to empathize with her, or at least fell short of showing up for her in her most vulnerable moments. I felt a tug on my heartstrings considering the women in my life; how those who I imagine will most easily empathize with me turn to intermittent doses of almost-ignorable disengagement and disconnection trying to fit in on this campus. Wholeheartedness does not come without its risks, risks that manifest as Donahue would call “the cuts you receive [that] will enable you to recognize the wounds of others.”

From Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions

“You need to have community.  You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects.  You need to have meaningful work.  You need the natural world.  You need to feel you are respected.  You need a secure future.  You need connections to all these things.  You need to release shame for being mistreated. You are not suffering from a chemical imbalance in your brain.  You are suffering from a social and spiritual imbalance in how we live.  Much more than you’ve been told up to now, it’s not serotonin; it’s society.  It’s not your brain; it’s your pain….  But this pain isn’t your enemy…. It’s your ally—leading you away from a wasted life and pointing a way toward a more fulfilling one. We need to stop trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain.  Instead, we need to listen to it, and honor it. It is only when we listen to our pain that we can follow it back to its source—and only there, when we can see its true causes, can we begin to overcome it.”

    And here, we have Hari’s conclusion, after examining data, collected from studies, performed with reason and logic running the show, backing up Donahue’s knowledge from the heart: “you need to release shame for being mistreated… this pain isn’t your enemy, it’s your ally…we need to stop trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain. Instead, we need to listen to it, and honor it.” Wholeheartedness, especially in college, is not the absence of pain, ego-hurt, loss, failure, or rejection. It is, however, the intentional separation of our worthiness from our performance(s). My peers and I are suffering from a sick society, one sick with loneliness and time spent moving so fast it feels wasted, no matter how much we have slabbed onto our resumes. The cure is, in a sense the ill, or at least accepting it enough to understand it. Our pain, then, is a guiding light, not only necessary to our emotional health but to all pillars of our wellbeing. It serves as the heavy matte gray in contrast to which we can establish our colorful lives.

Wholeheartedness in college is sitting with the uncomfortable feelings of insecurity, jealousy, imposter syndrome, excitement, love, joy, and vulnerability. I include excitement, love, and joy in my classification of uncomfortable emotions, because in our highest moments, we can feel most bare; there is that intrusive thought during life’s peaks of “what goes up, most come down,” and when we are in the valley, it is a much shorter fall than when we are riding a high. When we feel intimacy and connection, furthermore, we feel both fulfilled and frightened, because we’ve let ourselves care, which means we have the potential to be hurt.

Wholeheartedness in college involves appreciating pain and sadness as essential components of life; to be wholehearted is to feel it all, for we cannot numb sadness without conversely numbing joy, even from a neuroscience perspective our body is comprised of contrasting chemical reactions. 

Sarah Wilson, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, A New Journey through Anxiety (2017)

“Sarah Wilson seeks to make peace with the Beast, learning to view anxiety as her finest teacher rather than as an enemy.  She…unravels the notion that the mental disorder is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission, and reframes it as a journey….  Could anxiety lead her and her fellow sufferers closer to what really matters?…You build habits that trigger the comfort system, instead of the threat system. Here’s an interim measure: ‘Stop and Drop.’  Stop your head and drop into your heart…the thing about anxiety, it’s all head.  So anything that gets us out of our heads is good… The most important thing? Well, yes. It’s to connect with what your anxiety is trying to tell you… Rilke, a German poet, from Letters to a Young Poet, ‘I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you will not be able to live them…..Live the questions now….you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.’”

    How, you might ask, is an eighteen-to-twenty-something-year-old to be “cool” and live wholeheartedly? First, I might quip, is that I believe it far livelier to be warm than cool. Warm feels connected, cold feels like a corpse. I have written before that I find there to be magic in the mess, that my pestilent insecurities and rampant anxiety double as my superpowers, for they have bred within me deep senses of empathy and compassion for the invisible internal dialogues swirling through the heads of my peers. As my anxiety worsened in high school, my heart sought out techniques to deal with it, as my head had not come to terms with the fact that, by conventional standards, something was wrong with it. And, if you looked at my transcripts and resume, I was simply exemplary. As I relay it to my friends now, through my journey to cultivate mindfulness, I developed this third party that likes to sit above me and observe my thoughts and feelings. Through this method, I made peace with my insecurities and anxiety, as I was able to hear out their concerns and then, respectfully, carry on living with my fierceness and fearlessness that I so love about myself. I find that it is brave to journey through life with my anxiety, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist or beating it into submission. In my methods of managing my mind, I have gotten to know my heart, because as Wilson puts it: anxiety is all head.

Coping with my anxiety has gifted me with journaling, running, praying, and crying. It has filled my life up rather than taken away from it, because, as Glennon Doyle says, “to feel deeply is to pay good attention.” The mindfulness that my anxiety has given me allows me to pay good attention, therefore prompting me to feel deeply. This, however, not only provides me with higher highs, but can also lend itself to lower lows. I, nonetheless, have found that a key principle of wholeheartedness is paying good attention, dropping into the heart, and living the questions. 

Lacy M. Johnson, “On Likability” (October 18, 2018), from Tin House

“I want to tell you this: There is a truth that lives inside you and no one can give you permission to tell it except yourself. You can tell the whole thing, the full truth — and you deserve to. You deserve to tell the story of your anger and heartbreak and regret, your foolishness and apostasy and your unquenchable thirst for revenge. You deserve to admit that sometimes you behave in ways you later regret, that sometimes you hold back when someone needs you to give, that sometimes you take more than you need. You deserve to name the harm that has been done to you by others, and you have a responsibility to name the harm you have done. What I am asking is that we make space for these stories of our failures, our ugliness, our unlikability, and greet them with love when they appear.”   

    There is a certain breed of heartbreak at the core of living outside of our truth, of alienating ourselves from our stories in which we were casted as the main character. Dr. Brown has an opinion on owning our stories, “the irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness–over our wholeheartedness–actually depends on the integration of all our experiences, including the falls.” Owning our stories requires us to be willing to experience them in the first place, open to the whole gamut of emotional responses that might be involved. The act of Caitlin Donahue owning her story, courageously recounting feeling ostracized by her fellow women peers, is particularly brave because it is revolutionary in our culture to be a woman who is openly disliked. With one of our key social norms that we are expected to uphold being likability, it is a radical act to own one’s story, in the face of others not liking it.

Greeting our unlikability with love is offering ourselves the invitation to have self-compassion like the empathy we strive to offer to others. It is like Rachel in Cisneros’s Eleven describing the various versions of herself abiding within her, and how she honors them even when she is internalizing embarrassment being projected on her by her peers. Wholeheartedness and owning our stories is incredibly important in finding connection as college students, for if we do not own our stories and live our truth, it will not matter how many “friends we have”: we will not be truly known, therefore, we will feel alone. 

Sandra Cisneros’s “Eleven” from Woman Hollering Creek (1991)

“What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything is just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are-underneath the year that makes you eleven.” 

    In this excerpt from Sandra Cisnero’s “Eleven,” she perfectly encapsulates the underwhelming feeling of waking up on one’s birthday. In this passage, Cisnero writes about the struggle of bearing all the various versions of oneself. I think this piece connects to Ryan’s “Self-Knowledge and the Liberal Education” because it involves this aspect of growing older that requires us to find coherence between all the different versions of ourselves abiding within us. Cisnero beautifully observes what is often referred to as one’s inner child when she explains that maybe sometimes we need to cry, but that’s because we are feeling three. She illustrates how in some situations, we struggle to act our age, and, therefore, respond from these younger, less developed versions of ourselves. I see the agreement between “Eleven” and “Self-Knowledge and the Liberal Education” in the areas both where these passages emphasize self-awareness, as well as how they poke holes in how our education systems have the capacity to either help teach us to trust ourselves, or not to trust ourselves.

This applies to the concept of wholeheartedness in that it is an integration of our past selves, our present selves, and our future selves. Like Donahue’s letter to her 18-year-old self, Cisneros takes us on a journey to visit the inner children and teenagers living within us. Wholeheartedness in college requires us to learn how to parent ourselves, not just our present selves, but the younger ones who seem hard to love at times or the future ones who we are so desperate to serve well. I feel that this passage also describes adolescence; in college we are becoming adults, but I doubt that I will put on my cap and gown and then, poof, feel like an adult. Our education system, with its rigor and demand, can make us feel like there is no more time to be kids, that we should be worried about our future. I argue that wholehearted living makes room for us to honor our inner child, to feed our hearts with relationships rather than simply our heads with career-readiness. For, as stated by Hari, it isn’t the money or material objects that will make for a wholehearted life; it is through owning our stories and living our truth, the truth of our heart, that we experience life fully. 

Rebecca Solnit, A Short History of Silence: A Feminist Examination of Silence and Breaking Silence in Regards to Emotions,

“Who is heard and who is not defines the status quo. Those who embody it, often at the cost of extraordinary silences with themselves, move to the center; those who embody what is not heard or what violates those who rise on silence are cast out. By redefining whose voice is valued, we redefine our society and its values.”

    The importance of owning (and living and telling) our stories extends beyond it being healthy and beneficial at a personal level. One of my favorite quotes by Audre Lorde is here line, “it is not our differences that immobilize us, but silence.” As a college woman, I find it my personal duty to live authentically and create spaces where my peers feel comfortable to do the same. I recognize, however, that I am an able-bodied white woman who, with all the empathy in the world, will not understand the struggles all too familiar to some of my peers. Here Solnit makes the point that through redefining what voices are heard, we change the very fabric onto which our society is etched. Wholeheartedness, therefore, is revolutionary; it is the key to toppling oppression. As Johnson writes in “On Likeability” there is an eerie power to be willing to be disliked; what happens if women and men of all races decide that the status quo does not serve the majority, and call for change? Here is where we encounter sacred rage as a component of wholeheartedness: we must feel the anger at our society continuing to disproportionately silent many to benefit some. We must let this anger move us to act, recognizing it as sacred and justice-seeking.

Wholeheartedness involves, furthermore, knowing our unalienable worthiness, and, therefore, not being afraid to give people who are too easily silenced and marginalized the microphone so that they can tell their stories. Wholeheartedness drives us to hear the stories of our peers, because we know how it feels to desire that our hearts be known, seen, and heard. I believe that hearing others stories will make our college campuses happier, more equitable places to be young adults, healing our hearts one story at a time. 

Father Greg Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (Preface, and chapters: “Compassion” and “Success”) (2010),

“Compassion is always, at its most authentic, about a shift from the cramped world of self-preoccupation into a more expansive place of fellowship, of true kinship.” 

    As a college student, I believe myself and my peers to be uniquely afflicted by self-preoccupation. In our lack our wholeheartedness, we chase status and conformity in order to gain the temporary comfort of “fitting in.” Father Gregory Boyle writes Tattoos on the Heart with the intention of expanding readers’ circles of compassion, enabling them to even include gang members. This line describes what compassion isn’t—self-preoccupation—and what it is—fellowship. Boyle uses the extended metaphor of ripping off the roofs of houses, showing that compassion breaks down the barriers we put up, opening the lives of both those typically included and those easily othered. Boyle’s book is one of hope and heartache. I find it beautiful how the mind might see these emotions as mutually exclusive, but the heart knows that they can and do coexist. He challenges our concepts of compassion and success, encouraging us to engage in radical kinship.

Mel Robbins posted a quote that I think about quite a lot, “frankly, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.” This is at the crux of wholeheartedness: developing so much compassion and love for ourselves, despite the chapters of our stories when we might’ve acted as the villain, that when we hear the stories of others, we are able break down our walls and sit together in kinship. Radical compassion and wholeheartedness say, “yes, you’re broken, and I am too, but we are still worthy of love, and can write new stories.” As I expand from self-preoccupation to fellowship, I can leave a legacy of ripping off roofs and making USC a kinder place. That is the story I want my life to tell; no one is writing “Business Major, Cum Laude” on my tombstone. 

Herman Melville “Bartleby, the Scrivener; A Story of Wall Street” (1855),

“What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it… For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.” 

    In my family, we have a special Christmas Tradition. Each Christmas morning, we watch It’s a Wonderful Life. It is a movie we quote to one another year round, and its lessons are practically transcribed onto my heart. The line that brings me to tears year and year again is the line George Bailey’s guardian angel Clarence writes, “Remember–no man is a failure who has friends.” This quote of Melville’s illustrates the ripping off the roof metaphor used by Boyle–that moment of lift when suddenly compassion smacks us over the head and we can see those who are suffering around us with a surge of overwhelming empathy.

To see our oneness with those around us, especially people around us who are suffering, can be deeply painful. I believe that to be a reason why some people float through USC without ever forming friendships that dip beneath the surface: friendships require work and often involve a bit of pain. When we care about other people with love that extends from wide circles of compassion, we feel their triumphs and their tribulations as our own. While this results in inevitable, occasional suffering, I also see it as necessary to a successful life. The narrator of Bartleby is successful by what many of my peers deem the most important metric: financial. He, however, is severely lonely. Wholeheartedness in college involves investing in friendships, and making sacrifices on behalf of our friends, even when they are acting difficult. Bartleby is a difficult character, but I believe all that the narrator learned through encountering Bartleby–difficultness and all–proves that a wholehearted life challenges us to treat even the difficult people in our life with compassion and love. 

“The Thai Ad That Went Viral, Empathy Series #1” (2014),

I loved this video because, while I enjoy partaking in small acts of kindness, I struggle to not wish for something in return, albeit a token of appreciation. What writing this anthology has made clear to me, though, is that holding others in empathy and treating them with dignity doubles as a powerful act of self-love and self-care. When I recognize the humanity in someone else, I am reaffirming my own worthiness and selfhood. Finding joy in simply bringing more care and love into the lives of others is a reward in and of itself.

Wholeheartedness demands us to believe in our own worthiness, without requiring us to check any boxes; acts of kindness like the ones in this video demonstrate how it looks to treat another wholeheartedly. When we live in a sphere of wholeheartedness, it becomes easier to give of ourselves to others, because we are not wasting precious emotional energy agonizing over how we can prove our enough-ness to ourselves and the world. 

Anna Deavere Smith, excerpt from Talk to Me, 

“I am continually leaving safe houses of identity. When you leave the house of what is familiar to you–your family, your race, your nation, your professional area of expertise–it is not likely that you will find another house that will welcome you with open arms. When you leave your safehouse, you will end up standing someplace in the road. I would call these places that are without houses crossroads of ambiguity. On the one hand, they are not comfortable places. On the other hand, in them one acquires the freedom to move.” 

    Uncomfortable places are where we find the freedom to move. Due to Covid, I never lived in a college dorm, but I have pictured what it might’ve been like to live in New North and what friends I might’ve made. What I am appreciative for, though, is that my grade didn’t have a universal experience where we watched as the doors that were once open every day closed as friend groups formed. At our most uncomfortable–a new beginning–we scramble to find people like ourselves and establish homeostasis once more. As terrifying as it is living in the in-between moment while “finding your people,” it is equally horrifying to settle, pick the wrong group, and then embark on the journey to make friends once more. Our hearts feel wild, beating rapidly in the moments we dare to stand someplace in the road.

Wholeheartedness requires us to let ourselves be uncomfortable, to leave our safe houses so that we are not existing in a bubble of our own creation. My heart feels one as I stand someplace in the road, because I am not other-ing anyone from myself or the group I am a part of. Our hearts feel free when we strip ourselves of the identities that we believe give our lives meaning. My goal is to continue pushing myself out of the rooms where I feel safest, so that I can let my heart experience the rush of new adventures, and open itself up to the world. Freeing myself to find myself, again and again, allows me to repeatedly whittle away the parts of myself that I inherited from playing by rules of society that I no longer wish to follow, until I am like Cisneros, a bruja spreading magic and untamedness wherever I roam free.

CONCLUSION

    This anthology is a representation of my own journey to worthiness, to wholeheartedness. It has taken you on a tour through years spent finding my own inner sense of enough-ness. The heart knows far earlier what the head struggles to comprehend: we are born enough. Our hearts know that we need connection: we are social beings hardwired by our DNA to connect with others and tell our stories. We have psychological needs to be known, loved, and accepted. In creating this anthology I was able to appreciate my own journey to wholeheartedness, and gather inspiration for future improvements that I can implement. The antidote to our epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and disconnection is not simply more connection. We are arguably more connected than ever, with our cell phones and social media and 24/7 networks of communication, anywhere in the world. My mom even has permanent access to my location, for goodness sake! We don’t need more connection, we need more heartfelt connection; USC needs individuals daring enough to live wholeheartedly.

    As I pondered while watching the Head and Heart documentary in class, I firmly believe that the heart, be it through poetry, music, or art, has wisdom light-years ahead of the mind. What is important remembering to stop and drop, to drop into those hearts of ours and re-connect with the multitude of versions of ourselves abiding within it, cheering us on and aware of our worthiness. I have gained a better understanding of the legacy I want to leave behind at USC, and how I want to spend my next two years, through considering opportunities for wholeheartedness available here, right now. My wish is that this anthology is a testament to the fulfillment produced by living and learning both through the head and, more importantly, the heart, and serves as a guide on how to begin doing so.