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Fixing My Brain

The song Fixing My Brain by Brad Sucks has a great chorus within it.

I’m thinking about fixing my brain
but I’m afraid I won’t feel the same.

When I heard it for the first time, it immediately reminded me of my own personal struggles in maintaining my beliefs and identity as a person. You see every day we are bombarded by so many external influences and distractions, something that Doris Lessing wrote about in her book entitled Prisons We Choose To Live Inside. It is these external influences that tempt and taunt us into believing we should take certain directions in our lives, when in fact we are often being lead astray like sailors drawn to a sirens call.

It is these temptations and taunts that will lead you into believing that there is something “wrong” with you and in purchasing something or pursuing a path, your life will be whole and perfect again. In reality, there is nothing wrong with you and you don’t need “fixing”. Instead it is these external influences and environments created around you that are actually the problem. The Tribes Learning Communities approach to schooling, that I discovered a while back, realized this same very thing.

My deep conviction after a lifetime of work in education, youth development and systems change is that rather than focusing on “fixing kids” we need to fix the environments that impact their lives every day. Six or more hours in school each day in a strong and caring community culture are enough to help children discover a love of learning, self and social responsibility for their lives.

Therefore don’t feel like you need fixing to fit into an environment. Because if you do, you might not like who you are afterwards. Instead seek environments that naturally accept you for who you are, letting your uniqueness flourish within it.