27-29042013
 |
| lol - maybe 1-2 years old here |
“My poverty was not extreme
poverty from which one can die, but a cultural and societal poverty
of being denied the possibility to explore the world. I was alive but
in terms of society my movements were restricted.
--
I can see that growing up believing
that some things were “out of my reach” has passivated
me: I have had little to no regard for how the society
functions and how one is able to influence it. I simply believed it
to be impossible or at least very difficult and troublesome, and so I
became a limp and drowsy child (and an
adult) with little interest to do anything at all but things that
brought me instant pleasure. I learned helplessness and powerlessness
from being “tied down”.”
Today I decided to
have a look at this point when I was thinking about another that
mingled with this one. I realized that I have been clinging onto
people through relationships of dependency to mend for my
passiveness. When I have come across people that are active, moving,
dynamic, going forward, doing stuff, hard-working and self-directed I
have been attracted towards this quality and held onto these people
so that I could be motivated to be active myself in their presence.
However, I have not been supporting myself to be active and build a
foundation of self-induced activeness – I have been relying on the
presence of others to “get me going”. It is necessary that I
transform myself within these relationships so that they will no
longer be abusive (of me and the other) but will instead function as
mutual support to all participants.
So I return to
looking at my childhood and the passivating effects being somewhat
poor had on me. Right now two different perspectives open up: looking
at how my siblings have displayed passiveness/activeness, as we
shared the same environment as children and this comparison may offer
some perspective; and a paradigm of developmental psychology
according to which it is important to offer a baby/toddler plenty of
experiences of succeeding in “effortful control” (affecting one's
environment through one's actions and thus directing one's own
experience), because if this success is not experienced the child
will stop trying to influence it's environment and become passive.
When I read about
effortful control (also referred to as self-regulation and sometimes
willpower) I remember being surprised. “Is it possible for a child
that young to just give up?” And I realized I had not really
considered what the life experience of an infant really is. In a
physical space where everything is new – everything from one's own
physical body to the entire environment surrounding it – things may
get really confusing. So learning how your environment works and
realizing ways to affect it's movements is really crucial to a child,
and even such a small thing as learning that by smiling to your
caretaker he/she will smile back will have a gigantic effect on the
child building up a foundation of an active self.
So keeping this in
mind it is interesting to look at how being “restricted” or
“denied access” affects one's activeness. When I look at my (now
adult) siblings I see different survival mechanisms at play. I see
giving up, introversion and focusing on a very narrow circle of life;
I see aggressive rebellion and a “fuck you world, I didn't want
access anyway”; and I see decisive ambition to be successful and
thus avoid poverty and “falling” by any means. So where do I fall
into in this social grid?
First I think I'm
going to have to clarify what I mean by my passiveness. Ever since I
was a child I've thought of politics and everything related to the
structure and mechanisms of the society as “dull” and “boring”.
This was mainly because I didn't understand what they were about and
I was reluctant to find out because I perceived them to be things
that were “too complicated” for me to understand – I feared
failure, simply put. I was able to justify this reluctance by saying
“not everyone has to like everything; I have my own interests and
politics isn't one of them”. This reluctance then became
passiveness as I did nothing – inaction is passiveness, nothing
moving is passiveness – the fact that I did not move was the act of
passiveness, and the reluctance to face my fear of failure was what
led me there. So passiveness itself is not a quality of the mind but
a consequence in the physical reality.
My passiveness in
terms of society led me to indecisiveness about how to direct my
life, what to study, which profession to choose. I did a lot of arts
in high school and for years I applied to different art schools, not
being sure which form of art was “my thing” yet being certain
that I was “destined” to be doing arts. So I lingered in this
passive state of being where I spent years not really putting enough
effort into any form of art to be accepted into a school, worked
within a (mostly) useless trade and spent my free time on
entertainment and not much else. Arts as a profession has been an
attempt for me to influence the world through inspiring others:
serving as a whistle-blower, as someone to “wake up” others,
because all are needed to “wake up” if this world is to change –
or so I said to justify my position. What I actually wanted was for
others to come and change the world for me because I saw myself as
disqualified to do it myself.
So as I have been a
child and seen the world around me, eager to go and explore it, and
then been told not to – even when other kids, my equals and
mirrors, were allowed to – it has felt incomprehensive because the
boundaries according to which another child could have a toy and I
couldn't were invisible to me as they were contextual and cultural
agreements that do not actually exist – only their physical
consequences do. And so I found ways to adapt to my circumstances:
for example, when I was forbidden from buying the clothes I wanted to
be able to express myself, I adapted to the limitations of my social
class and figured out ways to express myself through clothing that
didn't require much money. I would still always long for the things
that I had originally wanted, and as I never got a valid reason to
why I was the one not getting what everyone else was getting, I
created a desire to someday have these expensive clothes (or to even
decide for myself what I can buy) and thus assigned them a high value
and made them “important” and “worth fighting for”.
The desire to have
what others have has been the reason I work. I learned that with
money I could upgrade my standard of living, and so I've enjoyed my
working years because I have finally been able to afford stuff
myself. I have thus been neglecting my wish to work for something
that is important to me, that I actually see to have concrete value
and substance, because I have been focusing on maintaining my living
standard. I have not really realized how much of my time and
resources it takes to work even a part-time job, and how much effort
it takes to for example study while I also work. So I have not
realized that to actually be able to work for something I have a
passion and an interest for and which I could create a career in is
not going to come without sacrifices: studying is going to take so
much time that my living standards are certain to drop.
To bring this
together: my working years have been a manifestation of passiveness
justified with money. The restrictions of the social class of the
family I was born and raised in affected how I perceived myself to be
able to influence my surroundings and direct my life. Thus I adapted
to moving myself according to the limited amount of resources
(intellect, wealth, social relations) I had within the limitations of
the “working class persona”.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe and
perceive, because my superiors told me so, that some things in this
world were “out of my reach”, “restricted” and “denied”.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all
concepts of ownership when considering the physical reality are
imaginary, as they do not exist in this physical reality even though
their consequences do.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not trust my
“gut feeling” that something was wrong with the fact that I
couldn't have what others had when I was not given a valid reason for
this.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that there in
fact is no valid reason for financial segregation where others have
more “rights” to claim the resources of the physical reality
simply because of their level of education, respectability of
profession or status of bloodline, because everyone on this planet
does not have an equal possibility to attain these “rights”
because of the place, family and conditions one was born into; things
that one has no choice over.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that
the level of one's education gives one the “right” to claim more
physical resources via money because the refinement of skill makes
one's work “more valuable” than the work of an untrained person –
not realizing that the amount of time and effort an uneducated worker
and an educated worker spend within i.e. one hour of working time is
the exact same – it is one hour less in both of their lives – and
that this reasoning is thus not valid as the physical resources of an
individual's life are used equally by both, not “more” by the
educated one.
[Here, I do not
mean to disregard the years one has spent educating oneself, which is
a big task in itself, but to state that educating oneself should be
about wanting to learn for yourself, for the sake of the passion for
learning – not so you could get more money in the future with a
heightened status. I see this a lot with kids who want to become
doctors because of the pay and position, not because they have a
passion for medicine – and even those who do it for the passion
think of the pay as a justifiable “bonus”.]
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that
some professions have the “right” for more pay because of the
“big” responsibility they have to carry – i.e. doctors,
managers, politicians, lawyers, police – not realizing that the
status of these professions of “high responsibility” has been
created so that a few could carry the responsibility that ought to be
carried by all, the responsibility to take care of this society and
make sure it functions, this then “made ok” by compensating for
their “sacrifice” with more money – for example, the direction
of the society should not be decided by politicians but by all, the
well-being of others and the prevention of illness should be a
concern of all, the functions of society should not be a mystery that
has to be decoded by lawyers but one that everyone understands –
and that to give other professions more “respect” because of the
“heavy responsibility” they carry is thus nothing but hypocrisy
and abdication of one's responsibility as a participant of the
society one lives in.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if
everyone had equal possibilities to educate themselves and explore
the things they have a passion for with no inequality of pay or
limitations set by money, we would have a world of motivated action
instead of a world of passive compliance.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to feel “tied
down” because I was restricted from exploring the world and
expressing myself within it, not realizing the reasons we were poor
because I was yet unable to comprehend and did not receive an
explanation I would have been able to understand.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to feel frustrated
whenever I heard the reason “we can't afford it”, feeling like
there was a wall between me and whatever it is that I wanted.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe and
perceive myself to be separate from the things we could not afford,
visualizing them to be “distant” as if “behind a wall”, thus
not realizing that the items (or services) I wanted are of this same
physical matter I am built from and that I am in fact one with and
equal to them and in terms of the physical reality have as much right
to explore them as anyone else, and not realizing the separation is a
social agreement based on imagined values which are in fact not real.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe and
perceive that I have “no right” to explore things I had no money
for, as if they were “reserved” for those who had money.
[Not to say I
should've gone and broken the social agreements by for example
stealing something – that would have served no purpose either,
unless the reality of things would have been explained to me as a
consequence.]
--
A memory of me
stealing candy from a store. I was perhaps 6-7 years old and I really
wanted candy but my mother would not buy me any. I grabbed a couple
of candies from the shelf and ate them really fast in secret. I felt
guilty about this for years and finally confessed to my parents
crying and ashamed during a much bigger family crisis. I had thought
of myself having committed a horrible crime by stealing a couple of
candies and my parents thought nothing of it especially compared to
the other crisis we were dealing with. This shows how I had adopted
the belief that the candy was “restricted” from those with no
money and that it was “punishable” if one took it without “the
right” (money). I actually feared that police would someday come
knocking on our door with shots from a security camera as evidence of
my crime.
--
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to imagine this “wall of
restriction” to be one that I cannot influence unless I have money
and play according to the rules of the society.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel powerless in front of
this visualized “wall” that separated me from the resources of
the world.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that these walls,
boundaries, limitations and restrictions are a natural part of the
world and that I cannot influence them, thus complying to the rules
of the society without questioning them and manifesting passiveness.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that
the only way I can influence my access to the resources of the world
is by attaining money.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to place emphasis
on getting money so that I could afford the resources of the world
and therefore to start working at a young age (9 years old), thinking
that working is important and developing a high “work morale”,
yet never realizing that my motivation for working was always money
and not self-expression.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the dogma of my
family environment which stated that “it is important to work”,
not realizing that this was motivated by fear of survival and was not
to encourage us to express ourselves through work.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to be overridden by the fear
of survival so that during my adult age most of my resources have
gone to finding work and working so that I would survive, not
realizing that living according to this fear has taken up so much
resources that I have made myself unable to explore myself and the
world and what I would actually like to do with my life.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that
the only resource I had in this game of survival and success were my
creativity and artistic skills, because they were (mostly) not
dependent on money and were thus accessible to my social class –
and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thus
believe that my creativity is my only asset and “trump card” in
life and that I should thus strive to use it and make it a profession
in which I can “shine” – never stopping to realize that I have
not really considered developing any other assets because I have
perceived them to be “out of my reach” or “too much trouble”
- and that clinging onto arts has been an act of passiveness, a “safe
choice”.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to cling onto arts as my
“only way” of “making it” within the competition to succeed
within society and life as I believed and perceived my skills in arts
to be the only resource I had.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself based on a
limited set of skills and assets, thus believing and perceiving
myself to be less than I am and to be capable of less than I actually
am.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to diminish myself by
believing myself to be limited to the skills and assets I happen to
have at a certain age because the rules of societal conduct - “the
rules of life”, the guidelines according to which one can attain a
functioning position within the system – dictate that around this
age I have to choose a profession and focus my energy on refining
myself in this profession.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I
was at the age when I “was supposed to” choose a profession I had
no idea who I was and what I was capable of and that I thus attempted
to define myself according to the little I knew of myself –
resulting with a very limited self-definition and “plan for life”.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to direct myself according to
this “plan for life” that I created at a young age based on the
little knowledge I had of myself and upon what I believed the society
and life to be (a competition).
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to live according to the
self-definition that I was good at arts/creativity and not much else,
directing myself towards the things I was “good at” and felt
comfortable with and away from the things I was “bad at” and felt
uncomfortable with – not realizing that expansion only happens
outside our comfort zones and that I was avoiding discomfort because
I feared failure, not realizing that expansion and learning often
comes with trial and error and that making mistakes is nothing to
fear.
I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to become passive in my life
because of the conditions I was born into within which I learned that
it is “my place” to “settle” for the assets I had been
“given” - not realizing that these assets were not “who I am”
but the consequence of how I had lived my life so far.
I commit myself to
direct my life from the starting point of expansion and exploration
as I now see, realize and understand that the only thing that limits
me from reaching out to all of existence and my full potential is my
own self-definition; and I commit myself to do this by taking myself
to the edge of my comfort zone and beyond. I realize that life is too
short to get stuck with and be defined by the things I have found
comfortable during the first two decades of my life.
I commit myself to
study from the starting point of learning for myself – not because
studying will reward me with a place in the university and a
possibility for a career, but because I realize that what I learn
affects who I am and how I move myself as life. Thus, I also commit
myself to always aim to apply what I study and learn to practical
reality so that I would not study for the sake of studying but for
the sake of living.
I commit myself to
build trust in myself as a self-supported and self-directed being,
and I commit myself to investigate my fears and doubts about my
ability/disability to support and direct myself.
I commit myself to
live out the realization that I am not who I have defined myself to
be by being here with and within myself in each and every breath and
allowing myself to create myself in the moment of breath, thus
opening myself up to the windows of opportunities I have passed by
before.
I commit myself to
practice the principle of taking what I need and unconditionally
giving away what I do not by not asking for more pay or other
privileges for my work based on experience, education or other status
upgrade unless I actually need it to survive.
I commit myself to
work from the starting point of carrying full responsibility for the
position I am in and the task I am assigned to do, as I see, realize
and understand that no matter the type of work I am spending just as
much time on it as everyone else does on their work and that it is my
responsibility to do my absolute best with the resources I have;
unless downright abusive, all work has it's purpose and function in
the society.
I commit myself to
no longer work for companies, employers and/or forms of business that
I find abusive, and I commit myself to rather try to find work that I
see to have constructive value, no matter how “basic” a job or
“low” a position – and I commit myself to investigate my
prejudice towards certain jobs that I resent doing even though I see
them to hold constructive value.
I commit myself to
direct myself within my life in such a way that will assist in
bringing about a world in which there is no poverty, segregation,
inequality and scarcity of necessities – where a child would be
born with limitations only from the physical reality itself and none
of those that are imaginary, arbitrary and not real.
