From Peonism to Peasanthood.

I realize one of my last posts was about not being a peon, which is pretty similar to not being a peasant. But the past several weeks I’ve been thinking even more about peasanthood (#historymajorproblems) as I’ve reflected on what I’ve learned this semester regarding life, history, and German. So I thought I’d return to my favorite topic. 

My range of emotions seems to be pretty limited compared to most people; my strongest and most common feelings are those of peasant or peon (yes, those are feelings), though I also experience fair amounts of complacent bourgeois-ness. During my time at BYU, I have had many instances of feeling like a peasant, but I have learned that I am not literally (or figuratively?) an actual peasant.

I was trying to think of a good story to illustrate this principle, but I mostly just thought about the times I’ve spent lying on the ground in my room, looking up at the ceiling and trying to contemplate life. For some reason, such pondering has always made me feel less like a peasant, or at least has helped me think that I have a chance to change my peasant condition if I keep trying—I just need to get off the floor.  #growthmindset

The thing about being a peasant is that you don’t see a lot more than what is right in front of you. You accept what life gives you, no matter how rotten it may be, and keep your head down. I started out the semester feeling quite vulnerable in such a position—thinking I’d probably lost chances for lots of important things: relationships changed, I went through a 7-month-home-from-my mission-crisis and thought I’d accomplished nothing in that time, and I felt like I’d misplaced my dreams so maybe it was better not to have them.

That was the peasant talk in my head. Maybe not the things traditional peasants worried about, but the feelings were similar. Things that make you feel less and lower. I wanted to evolve from that condition and break barriers, to do something with my life. (Here we must ask ourselves, can “peasant” be a feeling, condition, and social class?)

So I went to the city and tried to leave myself open for others to mentor me, to help me become more than a peasant (and to feel beyond peasant), to figure out what I wanted to be/do if it wasn’t peasanthood. 
And hey, even if I did feel like a peasant, I wanted to at least be a proactive one. (Here we should note that most peasants who tried to rock the boat ended up being ostracized or killed by their fellow peasants who didn’t want any trouble or by authority figures who supported the status quo, but fortunately this was not the case here).




For me, that meant I spent a lot of time talking to people who I didn’t consider to be peasants: professors, work supervisors, parents, wildly successful friends and roommates, etc. That was really valuable for me and gave me good escape mechanisms from peasanthood. 
Still in the process of applying them.

And so I continually try to remind myself that I am not constrained to being a peasant forever, that there is always room to change and grow outside my self-imposed status quo. This semester more than ever, I’ve realized how important that is to know—to know I don’t have to know everything and that I escape peasanthood by being proactive and seeking out opportunities and people who can help me change and grow.


This one truth I have learned—everyone is born a peasant and spends his/her whole life accepting that state or fighting against it.


How do you deal with peasanthood?



Peasanthood. It gets messy.

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