Photo Credit: eMMe
Fall and winter ferociously suck the moisture out of blooms. Similarly, a child may be stripped of an ability to access their essence, brutal and uncaring societal and parental winds peeling away the intrinsic vitality of an individual life, leaving a crusted shell of indoctrination behind.
A child learning from their environment
how they must adapt to that environment for acceptance and the ability to
survive, doesn’t have the mental capacity to wonder “is this good for me?” This kind
of perspective doesn’t come without an awareness of a particular behavior or
thinking pattern fucking something up. It is a perspective which can only
arrive when an adult at least partially understands themselves as responsible
for their own living experience. This last aspect is a necessary condition. Knowing
one’s life is one’s own has a particular exquisite awareness that doesn’t always
arise inside toxic living environments.
Human babies and children cannot care for themselves, no matter how low the limbo-age-pole goes that is held by an increasingly obtuse society. A prevailing tendency toward authoritarianism, along with generational acceptance of abusive practices, has brought a continuing thread of misperception about what is and what is not considered “mine” and “my responsibility.” Along with parental misnomers that “children are extensions of the parents” and “children should never experience adversity,” abusive practices suck most of the float out of an awareness balloon. Additionally overwhelmed by the increasing influx of cultural “too-too much," frankly, I don’t know how anyone figures their shit out. With childhood-into-adulthood states of fight, flight, or freeze, there aren’t enough collectible minutes for star gazing, let alone existential self-reflection.
Though wildly difficult, knowing the value of one's intrinsic self is an important perception to work achieve. Learning to understand oneself as part of the species called humans, as well as, if one landed in a considered and kind nest, a member of a family, and separately, identifying as an individual. The “I am” concept. I am someone who___________ instead of “I do what I am told because it is the right thing to do.” Unable to quantify without declaring a world-wide prevalence for indoctrination, I will merely suggest that many of our human ills could be reasonably linked to a lack of ability to separate an individual from the collective, while vigilently maintaining care and consideration for everyone.
I’ve outlined this human-grade issue for the following reason: I am struggling to have an ability to define my value to myself. This is likely due to the difficulty of defining value within the complexity of my version of "mind-ing." I am burdened with a collection of diverse and divisive methods for determining worth. There is the engraved and conflicting messaging of “how good I am and how bad I am” playing on repeat through the halls of my mind, and boulders strapped on my back labeled “Hard Worker,” “Don’t Be Ugly,” and “Take Responsibility.” These are a few of the reflexive approaches I learned subliminally as well as violently through childhood until well into my fifth decade. Merely thinking about my value presses the on button to those well-conditioned approaches. I’m rarely aware they’ve engaged, words tumbling out of my mouth or marching through my synapses like Pavlovic soldiers forced into formation by long-dead commanders.
If I attempt to define my worth outside of check marks on a lifetime “to do” list, I come up with and lose everything I may have dragged from the circuitous shafts twisting behind my eyeballs. This isn’t surprising. Value based on the premise that survival is and will be the only important factor, means that additional objectives threaten survival. It’s a tiger chomped on its own tail until it successfully gobbles itself whole. Survive to survive...until death do we part.
When I began writing today, I planned on answering the question “I am good at________” over and over until I had gathered the circumference of my many-minded value. Instead, I’ve written several paragraphs on why that’s impossible. If I were to ask the CIA what they’re good at, they would likely say “that’s classified” or “I’d have to kill you if I told you.” It comes to me the question “I am good at______” carries the pulse of a similar threat. Encased behind layers of unkindness, decades of indoctrination and complicit support, the snowflake of my value is not accessable. Soldiers are crusted up and stand at attention in front of a construct built through years of living-to-survive and surviving-to-live and they haven’t been granted a release from their vigilance. The husk of what came to be has hardened into place, making it difficult to find the way to an essential self. I suppose, I know am good at one thing... I am good at learning how to survive.
