A wise philosopher said...

 

Turning point

Once "what will people think of me" becomes much less important than  "what do I think of myself" you have reached a critical turning point. 

You are on the right track. You've turned a page.

Going back

Going back to a place you haven't been to in a long time while sporting a very different mindset can provide us with a barometer of how far we have traveled. 

Before my son and I met up yesterday to see "The Odyssey" I got off at a REM stop perfectly located in front of a mall I hadn't been to in many years. I normally don't like malls but it was brutally hot and humid and the cool air was just what the doctor ordered. 

Beginning in my early 20's this mall had served as part of a testing ground to figure out who I was. Yes, I had first ventured out of the house in my late teens but this had been one big step up and it was here I first encountered and dealt with people who didn't know I was transgender.

Come to think of it, I didn't know either for it was the 1980's and the language we use so readily today was barely formulated and still very much in its infancy.

This place provided me with the beginnings of courage to explore further outside of a comfort zone I had no clue had so much more room for expansion. 

Walking back in there now felt like nothing special. There was no build up of nerves that have long disappeared and I simply took notes of the many changes the place had undergone. 

After 20 minutes I made my way back to the REM and one stop later was perfectly timed to see my son walking in to the theater just seconds before me. 

You don't want to go home again. You want to move forward but this last minute decision on my part gave me more insight than I had expected as a looking glass into my past.

Safe

At the level of the individual most people want a reasonably prosperous life. They want the basics plus friendship, perhaps love and a sense of meaning and purpose. 

However as we begin to zoom out we start to see the first signs of trouble. Groups are formed which begin to exclude others. There are jealousies created and prejudicial behaviour begins to be seen. 

We zoom out yet again at communities, towns, cities and countries and the same pattern is repeated but at a more complex level. We see networks form which employ both the best and the worst of human nature. 

Within this framing we can see that conservatism at its core is a fear-based mindset which at every stage of history has a type of incarnation. It fears change and wants a status-quo to remain which suits the power dynamics that were working for those people albeit perhaps imperfectly. 

However, at least it felt safe for them. 

Conservatives tend towards exclusionary behaviours because social progress almost always implies a redistribution of power. Immigrants, women, visible minorities, etc are challenging a model that existed before. 

When we introduce big shifts in the social order it brings out a radical response in the most fearful people. They form a coordinated response and suddenly a barrage of pushback at every level of society is initiated. 

It is where we are now.

Far from just an adventure

The Odyssey has a clear political message warning about isolationism as the bronze age came to a close. The themes were clearly applicable to today as it warned about the folly of war (which it doesn't romanticize) for less than honorable purposes. 

This is obviously not meant to be just a simple adventure and the deliberate casting choices were perhaps also meant to rub against the fragile sensibilities of conservatives. 

The film is brilliantly executed in many ways with scenes that are genuinely captivating and enthralling. 

Bravo Mr Nolan!

It's too bad

I have come to conclude with great certainty that the only way to have a truly healthy relationship with another person is to first love oneself and have some possession of authenticity; perhaps not perfectly but as close as possible to it. 

If this does not occur we are entering wounded and possibly ready to accept less than we deserve. We will at the same time not be able to provide the best version of ourselves to another person. 

I understand that I am presenting a high bar here but I've known too many people who hobble along and toil within co-dependency where each tends to the other's wounds. 

One such example would be the control freak paired with the disorganized perennial victim. 

It's not possible to have perfection but when we choose partners early in life we let surface chemistry and what we determine to be compatibility cover up the more nuanced and subconscious reasons lying underneath which tie us to childhood; as example the wounded daughter looking for the substitute father figure. 

It's a shame that we come to self-knowlwdge later but I suspect there is no other way.

Energy

Dr Gabor Mate talks a lot about childhood trauma and how many of our issues are sourced there. The child feels abandoned, not listened to, abused physically or verbally and so on. 

The trauma leaves symptoms in adulthood which people are unable to trace to the source of the problem. 

Compensation methods are then found in adulthood to mask the trauma such as always being agreeable, burying oneself in work and performance, substance abuse, etc. 

I think he is very much correct and our goal should be to go to the source of the trauma directly and heal the wound with our adult lens. 

Of course transgender people had a very particular kind of trauma in having to suppress identity and authenticity often for decades, but everyone likely has some childhood wounds they need to address. 

When one steps off the carousel of chaos and has time to truly reflect, we realize that much work went into pleasing others and being agreeable under a system that was not only rigged but completely flawed. 

We discover that much energy went into the wrong areas instead of repairing the errors inflicted upon us. As I've discovered it's never too late, but if only this version of myself could talk to my younger self.

Authenticity versus our training

Authenticity is problematic within the structure of a society that runs on and expects conformity. 

Most of us grew up with expectation and were praised or punished by parents who themselves experienced much the same process. It becomes legacy which is passed on to successive generations until we break the chain. 

Therefore becoming fully authentic is almost impossible since it requires ignoring so much of learned behaviour. If we start to determine the point of where the real us begins and the child who received training stops, we may be hard pressed to identify it. 

This is why it can take years or decades to fully determine identity. We then have a type of "coming out" where we say "I don't care what anyone thinks anymore: but only after we tire of doing it so long. 

Authenticity can be scary because it always risks breaking rules. It is disruptive in nature but if the alternative is to live a life full of suppression and being out of touch with the self, the answer becomes more obvious.

Buttons

Dealing with an older parent can be a challenge sometimes. They have slowly become more child like and the roles have slowly reversed. 

At 90 my mother repeats herself a lot and I have given up on my pronouns and dead naming because it isn't worth it. She accepts you and loves you which is enough. 

My mother isn't educated but has plenty of life savvy to spare. Her prodding me out of shyness is what helped get me where I am and I will be forever grateful. It was my father who was the intellectual and counted on her earthy pragmatism as counter balance to his bookish ways..

Yes, they can frustrate us but that is because no one knows better how to push buttons we were certain by now were defective; the ones that prompted us to want to hide under furniture from the embarrassing behaviour they inflicted on us in public when we were kids. 

She is well surrounded with a large family who cares and is happy to return the favour for her tireless energy.

In reverse

Science doesn't work in the direction of trying to prove a hypothesis. It actually works in the direction of trying to disprove it. 

We notice a phenomena, propose a theory and go about, in a sense, trying to disprove it through experimentation. The aim is to make sure we don't infect the process with wishful thinking and bias. 

Pseudoscience works in reverse in that it proposes a theory which it then spends all its time looking for shreds of proof to bolster. 

The earth is flat and that's all there is to it. Don't bother me with evidence to the contrary.

In pseudoscience the bias is baked in and once enough data points exist to the satisfaction of the true believer, they can stop there despite the existence of gaping holes.

Social contract

What we need now is a new social contract; one which returns us to caring about each other. 

The navel gazing and chasing prosperity through consumerism failed miserably as did the oversharing the most mundane details of our daily existence on social media. 

No one should care about what you ate for breakfast or what your skin routine is. They should find out through living their own lives or look into what people who do it for a living recommend. 

I know I don't care and I say it with all due respect because we aren't all that important.

We've made ourselves less happy than when we worked physically much harder but then those times had a greater spirit of community and didn't obsess over productivity by timing bathroom breaks. 

We messed up and the clean up starts now in earnest.