A Little About the Author

 

Hi there - I'm the 'Willing Misfit' who's behind the writings here on this blog, and in various books for which I'll be posting links below. My name's Derek Pearson, and I live in a tiny town in New Zealand (the tiny country to the east of Australia where the not-so-tiny Lord of the Rings trilogy was made).

What's my occupation? I'm never sure what to write in that space on the immigration cards we're asked to fill out when we travel internationally. I've passionately pursued a number of different careers mostly revolving around film and music, and at the moment name my principal occupation as 'BEING'. That's the most honest and accurate description, because my moment-to-moment focus is on being as present, and as honestly engaged with life and everything in it, as I can be. For a couple of years now, I've let my energies direct what I do every day. Because I do only what I want, the line between work and leisure has blurred to the point where I make no distinction.

When you make the choice to be the most authentic expression of self you can be, every moment is a creative pursuit. You give up the convenient framework provided by society, because it would have you follow a set of rules based on someone else's ideas, and suppress self-expression; without it, there are no guidelines to tell you how to behave, so your life is an improvisation.

Throwing all that business out the window can be scary. We've grown up with an assumption that we either adhere to the social framework, or we rebel. I do neither. I've found a healthy place alongside society, accepting and appreciating its (generally well-meaning) purpose, and relating happily to the people in it, without the need to be subject to its many rules.

The book 'The Willing Misfit' describes my journey from Social Misfit to Willing Misfit. I plan to expand on the writings in it; a version aimed at teenagers is in the planning stage right now, because I think the teen years are the time when serious social influence comes into play. I'd like to get in early and remind them that maybe they don't need to live a life someone else has designed for them!

Let me know what you think. The book and the blog are intended as a platform for on-going dialog. I'd love to hear your responses!

'THE MAN'

‘The Man' is a term used to define a powerful class of people in the upper echelons of society, who supposedly rule the world and control the life of the common man. Do you believe you're subject to this mysterious entity? If you do, you're disempowering yourself to an enormous degree, because 'The Man' is YOU.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you make all the choices that affect your life. The choices that appear to be made by others are a result of your having passed responsibility for your life over to the social collective. As you grew up, you took on the values of your society, and built a life based on a convenient social framework.

Remember: even as we complain about a lack of freedom at the hands of our social order, we're making the daily choice to buy into that very scheme. The idea of an ideal life has become twisted into a paint-by-numbers picture of what society tells us we should be and have. A nice house; a nice car; nice clothes; a lucrative job. These are the trappings of a life lived through someone else's values, and the term 'trappings' is a very appropriate one, for our need to have them traps us; requires our on-going subordination to the social order.

Because we'd rather ignore the fact that the responsibility for our dissatisfaction is our own, we need to look elsewhere. And so we've created a convenient scapegoat in the intangible entity called 'THE MAN'. The socially accepted term affords legitimacy to the concept itself, as well as a welcome sense that we're in the same boat as many others who are suffering similar 'injustices'.

So what's the alternative? What ELSE is there? Certainly, when we were growing up, there seemed to be no alternative to the social scheme we saw plotted carefully and effectively around us. We learned to think through the values of the social collective, and not for ourselves. A person who thinks for themselves is not subject to social values, and is therefore the last to define themselves as victims of the social order. They are free to carve out a life that they prefer.

The issue is very much one of learning to think for yourself, to recognise the choices you have, and to make them yourself using your own logic. Part of the journey to achieving this very probably requires the abandonment of many cherished aspects of a socially defined life. It's not easy, but it's honest. And honesty is key, because people across the globe have a view of life that's daily becoming more transparent, and it's getting harder to hide the convenient excuses we use to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves.

More on this subject, and other issues regarding thinking for yourself, in the book

'THE WILLING MISFIT' by Derek Pearson, available here for free online: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/137307

Please choose the format appropriate to your viewing device (PDF is generally best for desktop or laptop computer screens; EPUB for most ebook viewing devices including iPad and iPhone with the free iBooks program installed)

Willing Misfit Blog Launch! 12 March 2012

Hi there - today I'm launching my new blog to coincide with the online publication of my book 'The Willing Misfit; A Path to Healthy Selfhood'. (more details later).

The purpose of the blog is to invite discussion regarding what it is to think for yourself, and be yourself.