My psychiatrist used to ask if I felt good about myself. Or if I felt bad about myself. Not if I simply felt good or if I simply felt bad. My reply was more or less formulated towards persuading him how absurdly worded the question was. He really tried hard to dig out from me some sort of confession or admission of self-hatred while extolling the secular virtues of self-love. He never succeeded, but rather complimented me eventually as being one of the least neurotic people he had ever dealt with. I still basically ended up telling him how full of shit he was. Which is to say the treatment was very successful.
I have a friend who insists that he must be himself. I haven't yet, but on our next visit, I just might ask him, who is your self. Or what is it? I have really wanted to tell him, and others who spout the same kind of narcissism that really, it doesn't matter what you say or do. You are always going to be yourself. There is no other person or thing that you are able or going to be. Might as well accept it. By the way, being ourselves is not a get out of jail free card for not working on ourselves or for not acquiring moral values and ethics and good and healthy life habits and social skills.
I think that a lot of people mistake themselves for some fictionalized or idealized version of themselves that they have crafted, copped, concocted, or simply tried to cobble together. Something that will show them to be better, stronger, brighter, sexier or more successful or badass than the person they were raised to be. And as far as raising children to be what or whoever, I don't think there is a parent in the world that ever gets it right.
We have this tendency of living outside of ourselves, or presuming to live outside of ourselves, in such a way as to make us permanently schizoid, chronically divided against ourselves But even this is an illusion. We are ourselves, and no one else. Our perception of having a self is misguided. We don't have a self. We are a self. We are not a collection of preferred adjectives or modifiers. We simply are. Period.
Right now I am listening on the radio to a segment about a terminal Star Wars fan who has sunk her identity into one of the fictional characters. As though she isn't enough. She has to adopt a fantasy self. And yet, this happens a lot, it is a widespread practice, and it is not pathologized. Like children pretending, I suppose, but taking it a step further. Like Halloween. Or drag.
Yes, I do get it. If we are going to physically survive in a consumerist, capitalist culture, where we have to work in very limited and limiting roles for our paycheque, we are not going to really grow as integrated selves. So, we concoct a formula of who we are, and we do our due diligence to act out that part, as kind of an infra self. This is how we sustain ourselves. Yes, I do get it.
But then there is this trend towards saying that by being ourselves that we are going to do whatever the hell we want, and too bad how others are affected or impacted. When we act and live as our own little gods at the centre of our own little universe. This is how fragmented we have become and it is ugly. And this is how we completely negate that we are also part of a collective self, called humanity, which is part of a greater collective self called the earth or the biosphere, which now is gravely imperiled because of our many selfish preferences and actions.
Anyway, please stop boring us with this nonsense about being yourself. Of course you are yourself. Maybe start to figure out that you are also part of a collective self, and perhaps that your real fulfilment as a self will be in letting go of your precious little self god for the common good. With so many people self absorbed with heads firmly impacted up their asses, I shudder to think of how we would cope in this notoriously lonely city if we were hit by a major earthquake, when we would have little option but to abandon our narcissistic little fantasies in order to pull together for the common good and our collective survival. My guess is most of the young or chronically immature smart phone addicts (most of them male) wouldn't cope, and would simply sit and text on their little phones on top of or underneath the rubble while waiting for some special someone to come and rescue them.
Jesus said that unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies it will yield much fruit. Not a popular notion in this age of self, but one we would really do well to consider and welcome into our lives, and into our own precious little selves.
No comments:
Post a Comment