Last week I started my experiment to write weekly about my values, following the study that it is the antidote to stereotype threat. Students’ achievements, depressed due to conscious or unconscious perceptions that they couldn’t do as well as others due to race, gender, or other factors, rose after writing about what they valued and why.
My experiment began easily enough. I enjoyed writing about love and thinking more deeply about what it is. But then, to my surprise, I faltered. I started and stopped the exercise several times. Perhaps what I think I value and what I really value, why I think I do and why I really do, are not the same. It took a while to find the way in and to find the words. That in itself is instructive.
I intended to write about solidarity today, but instead I need to write about truth. It is the second of the principles by which I live, but one that I am shyer about than solidarity, because truth seems too big a word and also one that has been used too much and too often for purposes which I detest, for domination and control over others.
So I would have to say that truth is in the seeking as much as in the telling, and it has to go hand in hand with honesty and humility. When that is the case then truth does set us free. And I value freedom, though not the sort of freedom that is bandied about with flag waving and a squadron of bomb carrying airplanes off to blast “freedom” on some other people.
Having experienced being squashed and dominated, I passionately value the freedom to be who I truly am and all that I truly am. This value is what got me into therapy and kept me there, turning once more to examine the truth when the going was tough and denial was rather attractive. To be all that we are is to truly shine forth in this human form.
However I have to ask: doesn’t that also include our flaws? Why do we strive for perfection if, as I wrote last week, we are here to experience love and diversity, not a singular, perfect, uniformity of being? If I value diversity and all that I am, then I ought also to value those qualities that I (or society) think of as negative because they are part of the package of being, just as farting is a necessary part of eating good food.
You eat, you fart and you shit. It doesn’t smell good and it needs proper disposal but it isn’t a bad thing. Anybody who can’t fart or shit knows the pain of it, and if it goes on too long, then a trip to the emergency room results.
If I look at my own thoughts, they are not in accordance with my values, for I spend a lot of time in self-recrimination, and perhaps this is why I had so much trouble continuing this experiment. I have to face a contradiction: though I am passionate about freedom to be who I am, the truth is that I don’t live by it in the way that I treat myself. Instead I have a habit of trying to mold myself into some form of perfection, always giving, always attentive, productive, fit, well-read.
Yikes–doesn’t that sound obnoxious? Don’t worry; I don’t ever get there; in reality I am far too human.
And so I come back to last week, standing in a place of love, I see my greatest flaw, a desire for perfection. And I forgive that, too.
Perfection is a problem isn’t it? I think it is one of the most potentially damaging of all our human narratives. As you point out, it immediately ostracizes us from much of our actual lives (what are called failings but actually aren’t but simply other human attributes and activities) and this is the cause of much suffering. Thank you so much for sharing this. I find it thought provoking and gently insistent of self reflection.
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This is wonderful again. Makes me think of Bahktin who wrote about the carnivalesque and its celebration of the lower body – the place of fertility. Without shit there’d be nothing to put on the fields to make the crops grow more plentifully, and it joins us in common humanity, whether we’re beggars or kings. He was writing all this as an analysis of the bawdy, ribald humour of the Renaissance period, when it was understood that people needed outlets of misbehaving and mischeviousness because that was part of being human and not to be denied. I think we’ve lost that relish for the goodness of our bad parts, if you see what I mean.
I hear you about perfection – I do exactly the same thing myself, and probably in a far more recriminatory way. I am working hard on that, as I’ve never been very good at self acceptance, and it really is time I tried (or is this another sly way to give myself a hard time???).
Mary, what a good word–ostracize. Yes that really gives me a good picture of the self(ves) in exile.
Thanks, Litlove, and I do see what you mean. That’s interesting about Bahktin. I have the same tendency, btw, to criticize myself for my self-criticism. It can be an endless cycle.
Stephen Levine writes about the tension and tightening of the heart in being angry with one’s anger and fearful of one’s fear. Instead he suggests holding it with acceptance in an open and spacious heart. I often find that hard to do in the moment. What’s possible for me is just to turn my attention to the present moment. The angry, fearful self-recrimination is always about the past or the future or both. In fact I’ve been finding it funny in the last day or so to notice how hard it is to stay present. How even in the present moment of asking myself what do I want to do now and proceeding to do it, I start thinking aha! if I always did this would I have been more productive/will I become more productive! Oh man, we humans! What d’ya do, eh?
Life is a process. We are always, always in process. And I think the nice thing about ideals is that they give purpose and energy to that process.
I always know that, when I visit your blog, I am going to find you wrestling with hard things, important things—and that wrestling is what matters first. Not the conclusions you make, but the depth of yourself that you commit to the process.
You commit every wonderful thing you have and are.
Emily, that’s an interesting way to look at it, and it makes sense to me too.
Beth–thank you. There’s a book by Arthur Waskow on that theme. Oh yes, it’s called Godwrestling.