When you’re a child, the siphoning begins.
You come into the world with an abundance of qualities. But through disapproval and desire, hurt and helplessness, you learn which of your traits make life feel survivable. And so you begin crafting. Assembling a separate self. Choosing only those attributes – a cutting wit, a quiet demeanor, being the smart kid, being the joker – that help you avoid hurt.
You test every characteristic, letting clusters of them out to navigate each day. A group of children allowed to go to recess – allowed to play at life - while the others sit at their desks. Stay inside. Remain silent.
At first, who is permitted on your playground of existence is flexible. A trait watching from the window one day swapping places with one that’s outside the next. Honing the collection. Who reduces damage the most? Which bring the least distress?
And over time, the children left in the classroom stay in the classroom. While the others? They form a team called ‘Identity’.
This team now lays claim to the yard. They start acting less like children and more like comrades. Walls are erected around a playground turned fortress. Guidelines for behavior become defined. Governance is enforced through shared rules of play.
Patience always pushes the swings.
Wit must pair up with Indifference.
Responsible permanently placed aside Ambition, never Curiosity.
No one is allowed to neglect their role. Change could lead to suffering, after all. Thus, predictability is always the desired state.
As you go on living, experiences that create a departure from Identity’s routine – Patience falls asleep, Wit joins with Guilt – are perceived as a threat. Authority tightens. Rules stiffening with each incident.
Patience except when….
Another event.
Patience only when….
Inflexibility becomes the leader, maintaining order, control, and power over the threat of discomfort. They demand the walls thicken. Behavior further restricted. The group and the grounds compressed, shrink-wrapped tight. Confined against the influence outside. Constricted against variation within.
Rigidity deepens to accommodate this ever-shrinking space.
An Open Mind narrows from various moments of “except.”
Compassion shrivels by a litany of “only when.”
Courage restrained by endless demands of “apart from.”
Human Complexity sacrificed on the altar of Certainty.
Clear lines are drawn that can no longer be crossed. Ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and thoughts now doctrine. Made unbreakable. Sacrosanct.
What once was a loosely formed group of traits making life less unpleasant becomes a tyranny. Identity becomes a dictator, permitting only a narrow set of acceptable thoughts and behaviors – both for yourself and others.
Why can’t we remember there were other children in our classroom? Why do we forget there are other parts of ourselves deserted? Wasting away.
We focus only on reinforcing our enclosure – a futile attempt at keeping ourselves “safe.” Pulling tighter on our shrink-wrapped Identity until we choke. Smothered by behaviors and thoughts we “must” embody. The ones we proudly proclaim are “just who I am” all while gasping for air.
Retelling the same stories. Reliving the same behavior. More intolerant by the day of anything that would break through our stronghold.
If only we remembered.
Grabbed a blade.
Sawed through the plastic. Busted down the walls. Sought out our old classroom. Found the parts of ourselves we’d abandoned.
If only we let the entire classroom play freely, together, once again.
Remembered that our self-proclaimed Identity was always only part of us. An incomplete gathering of who we really are. And how freeing it would be to engage with life completely.
To breathe with the world, rather than suffocate ourselves avoiding it.
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