Hi guys,
Summer's coming! Summer's there actually, but my brain got too slow writing this post.
So, whenever summer comes - which is about every year - there's this thing going on where some people suddenly get all crazy about appearance. Of course, because summer means GETTING HALF NAKED ALL THE TIME! ENJOYING ONE'S NAKED BODY IN THE SEA! Or, more moderately, peeling of the layers of clothing made necessary by winter. Also, all of the weight and hair that naturally came to live with you have to go now. Yes they have to leave, especially if you're a female woman of the opposite sex. Don't look at me like that, that's the natural law of warma.
But if, like me, you still didn't really understand that your periods are gonna come back every month for some years, or what to do with comments about how cute you look today, you also might get the whole peeling of thing wrong.
In the beauty salons, they will ask you if you want a peeling treatment, implying softly that "gurl, u really need to take care of them ingrown hair". This is where my reptilian and my elitist brain get crazy together and answer, in the same soft and complicit tone, "no thank you", knowing that I'm actually taking the risk of being held "a feminist", "a lesbian", "a reluctant smelly fart" (that last one is fine by me).
What the what does that have to do with the massage and stuff things? Well, it's all because of this peeling thing. Don't mistake me, as any one, I kind of enjoy a soft skin and non rebellious body hair. But such a low use of the notion of peeling instantaneously makes me want to shout and write and then forget about it and then publish it months later.
Beauty comes from within, let's state that once again in a demagogic attempt to get some audience. It's what makes it more interesting. In this whole "getting to know yourself" kind of world in which we live (psychologically), there's this idea that you have to peel yourself of to understand how you work. To see how you actually are, without trying to justify yourself. To see where your actions come from, whether you're selfish, stressed out, close-minded, possessive, anxious, but also very rich and handsome and clever and whatever you'd like, or whether.. can you be something else? To get rid of the useless. To filter through your desires, sense of identity, fears, etc. To let them be, hold them with you, with a kind, non-judgemental consciousness, and see if you still need them. To understand that you probably don't need what you thought you would, or what you are lured into thinking you would. To see that maybe you don't need to fear so much. That maybe the pain is now there to go.
So there you go. I recently read several articles about people who overcame trauma, also spoke with many of them, and actually some things struck me. First, most people who lived it pretty young had to experience depression from an early age, and get to love themselves in a much deeper way. One of them expressed it quite positively by stating that she wouldn't have been able to live her own life, a life of discovery, travel, and self-determination, hadn't she experienced sexual abuse, eviction, and the logical depression that came with it. You might think that this is quite sad, but every single person who suffers - so almost everyone - has to deal with that suffering. It's not a moral thing. Suffering, as well as joy, desire, fear, etc., are there. Not that it's so cool and makes you so much better, but unfortunately, we still inflict a lot of it to each other. I guess it's even worse - and I can speak from my own experience - when people react in fear with your suffering and moralize it, thus putting you in this "you're a broken victim and your life is destroyed" category. Even though it comes from a good intention, sometimes, it doesn't really help. Of course when people are abused and bullied and victims of prejudices, they are victims of other's behaviors. But that doesn't change the fact that these abuses happen, and that the victims have to live with it.
It's perfectly captured in the first episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where the 4 girls rescued from 15 years of captivity in a bunker, by a probably abusive cult leader, are invited to talk on TV. They are only referred to as victims, "bye victims, thanks victims", etc. Whatever happens to you, and most people are going to have something happening to them, will not sum you up.
The whole "life is destroyed thing" usually comes from a lack of empathy. It is a reaction common to the people who see this happening to someone else - someone completely different from them - seeing it from afar, without relating emotionally to it. And because they can't relate to it, they somehow see what life should be - and what shouldn't, remaining stuck in the mere moral appreciation of things. Hence, some things are terrible because they destroy lives. People are not so complex. Next?
Moral is never enough - and most of the apparent contradictions that we are facing now, with regards to climate change, inequality, wars, state-sponsored violence, prejudices, etc., come from our own ability to block the real relationship to the world we live in - and to cut ourselves from it. We remain in the mental realm - the domain of morals. Or we try to change some things with moderation and politeness, blocking the urge for radical approaches that see through the mental mud. We forget that words are just words, and that there's no such thing as an other.
And there's the healing. For those who had to live with trauma, injustice, etc., healing takes time, and some quality of balance, but in the end, those "life accidents" can be fruitful. It's the symbolism of the lotus, so dear to the buddhists. Love and true understanding grow out of suffering. There's a crack, that's how light gets in. Because this makes you truly peel the onion, and experience the discomfort and uneasiness of having to get by with uncertainty, injustice, suffering, dissociation, to live in the shadow of organisations that exclude, divide, crush. To get beyond morals, to actually apprehend things in a much deeper way, and to see how facing the world actually dissolves all certainties. How it's all been there for you to feel, how subtle and gentle the melody is - how beautiful it is, and how easily it can be broken. Because so many of us are lost in the stream of unconsciousness so characteristic of our daily lives - this buzzing, addictive mental noise that keeps us functioning as solipsistic shells, we have a hard time pausing, and accepting what is. Being there, like children. And because this seems even more impossible today, because time and space are organised to become scarce, this flow of unquestioned narratives continues to flourish - being transformed in "democratic agreements", or "freedom of consent" kind of outcomes.
TBC
Summer's coming! Summer's there actually, but my brain got too slow writing this post.
So, whenever summer comes - which is about every year - there's this thing going on where some people suddenly get all crazy about appearance. Of course, because summer means GETTING HALF NAKED ALL THE TIME! ENJOYING ONE'S NAKED BODY IN THE SEA! Or, more moderately, peeling of the layers of clothing made necessary by winter. Also, all of the weight and hair that naturally came to live with you have to go now. Yes they have to leave, especially if you're a female woman of the opposite sex. Don't look at me like that, that's the natural law of warma.
But if, like me, you still didn't really understand that your periods are gonna come back every month for some years, or what to do with comments about how cute you look today, you also might get the whole peeling of thing wrong.
In the beauty salons, they will ask you if you want a peeling treatment, implying softly that "gurl, u really need to take care of them ingrown hair". This is where my reptilian and my elitist brain get crazy together and answer, in the same soft and complicit tone, "no thank you", knowing that I'm actually taking the risk of being held "a feminist", "a lesbian", "a reluctant smelly fart" (that last one is fine by me).
What the what does that have to do with the massage and stuff things? Well, it's all because of this peeling thing. Don't mistake me, as any one, I kind of enjoy a soft skin and non rebellious body hair. But such a low use of the notion of peeling instantaneously makes me want to shout and write and then forget about it and then publish it months later.
Beauty comes from within, let's state that once again in a demagogic attempt to get some audience. It's what makes it more interesting. In this whole "getting to know yourself" kind of world in which we live (psychologically), there's this idea that you have to peel yourself of to understand how you work. To see how you actually are, without trying to justify yourself. To see where your actions come from, whether you're selfish, stressed out, close-minded, possessive, anxious, but also very rich and handsome and clever and whatever you'd like, or whether.. can you be something else? To get rid of the useless. To filter through your desires, sense of identity, fears, etc. To let them be, hold them with you, with a kind, non-judgemental consciousness, and see if you still need them. To understand that you probably don't need what you thought you would, or what you are lured into thinking you would. To see that maybe you don't need to fear so much. That maybe the pain is now there to go.
So there you go. I recently read several articles about people who overcame trauma, also spoke with many of them, and actually some things struck me. First, most people who lived it pretty young had to experience depression from an early age, and get to love themselves in a much deeper way. One of them expressed it quite positively by stating that she wouldn't have been able to live her own life, a life of discovery, travel, and self-determination, hadn't she experienced sexual abuse, eviction, and the logical depression that came with it. You might think that this is quite sad, but every single person who suffers - so almost everyone - has to deal with that suffering. It's not a moral thing. Suffering, as well as joy, desire, fear, etc., are there. Not that it's so cool and makes you so much better, but unfortunately, we still inflict a lot of it to each other. I guess it's even worse - and I can speak from my own experience - when people react in fear with your suffering and moralize it, thus putting you in this "you're a broken victim and your life is destroyed" category. Even though it comes from a good intention, sometimes, it doesn't really help. Of course when people are abused and bullied and victims of prejudices, they are victims of other's behaviors. But that doesn't change the fact that these abuses happen, and that the victims have to live with it.
It's perfectly captured in the first episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where the 4 girls rescued from 15 years of captivity in a bunker, by a probably abusive cult leader, are invited to talk on TV. They are only referred to as victims, "bye victims, thanks victims", etc. Whatever happens to you, and most people are going to have something happening to them, will not sum you up.
The whole "life is destroyed thing" usually comes from a lack of empathy. It is a reaction common to the people who see this happening to someone else - someone completely different from them - seeing it from afar, without relating emotionally to it. And because they can't relate to it, they somehow see what life should be - and what shouldn't, remaining stuck in the mere moral appreciation of things. Hence, some things are terrible because they destroy lives. People are not so complex. Next?
Moral is never enough - and most of the apparent contradictions that we are facing now, with regards to climate change, inequality, wars, state-sponsored violence, prejudices, etc., come from our own ability to block the real relationship to the world we live in - and to cut ourselves from it. We remain in the mental realm - the domain of morals. Or we try to change some things with moderation and politeness, blocking the urge for radical approaches that see through the mental mud. We forget that words are just words, and that there's no such thing as an other.
And there's the healing. For those who had to live with trauma, injustice, etc., healing takes time, and some quality of balance, but in the end, those "life accidents" can be fruitful. It's the symbolism of the lotus, so dear to the buddhists. Love and true understanding grow out of suffering. There's a crack, that's how light gets in. Because this makes you truly peel the onion, and experience the discomfort and uneasiness of having to get by with uncertainty, injustice, suffering, dissociation, to live in the shadow of organisations that exclude, divide, crush. To get beyond morals, to actually apprehend things in a much deeper way, and to see how facing the world actually dissolves all certainties. How it's all been there for you to feel, how subtle and gentle the melody is - how beautiful it is, and how easily it can be broken. Because so many of us are lost in the stream of unconsciousness so characteristic of our daily lives - this buzzing, addictive mental noise that keeps us functioning as solipsistic shells, we have a hard time pausing, and accepting what is. Being there, like children. And because this seems even more impossible today, because time and space are organised to become scarce, this flow of unquestioned narratives continues to flourish - being transformed in "democratic agreements", or "freedom of consent" kind of outcomes.
TBC
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