https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/opinion/rejection-college-youth.html?smid=url-share

David Brooks' column (the link is posted above for those interested), published recently in the New York Times, is a sobering reflection on the dilemma of some of our youth who are insistently asked to 'put themselves out there' only to experience rejection just as insistently.  The myth of Sisyphus who was consigned eternally to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down, comes to mind; an ageless image of frustration, futility and failure.  Another mythological character comes to mind as well:  Procrustes, who subscribed to the 'one size fits all' model.  If someone was not proportioned to fit in his iron bedframe, Procrustes made 'adjustments' that were, shall we say, drastic, so the person could fit in the frame.  Whence the term 'Procrustean bed'.  The point is that it sounds as though the young in Brooks' article feel compelled to fabricate an identity to 'fit' a path that may or may not be theirs.  In the meantime, the innate resource at their disposal, i.e., the combination of lived experiences and the sense-making that goes along with them, is untapped.  In other words, the process of developing a unique sense of personal agency, that can only be found 'internally', is overlooked and replaced by something that is posed as something to be found 'externally'.  In effect, their personal authority (that is, authorship of their own lives) is incapacitated as they enter the next stage of their education or enter professional life.  I know that elite schools and internships at Goldman Sachs are rarified places (and Brooks acknowledges as much in the article).  But the imperative that 'you have to follow this path', found in the educational and career aspirations of the served and underserved alike, is detrimental and illusory.  The skill of self-discernment leads to making choices that are informed and guided by alignment, creating an array of options that only enlarges as the patterns of one's inner life emerge into awareness.  Sometimes a rejection is what it takes to break the mold and discover, in retrospect, that the story's not over.