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This reality is broken. by *streamline69 |
At first this feels disconcerting, like there is longer solid ground under my feet. At yet, it is also the greatest liberation. I do not "need" to have a job/career, work 40+ hours a week, or produce a certain amount of stuff. In fact, most of the people I admire or emulate do not conform to this particular Protestant-Capitalist vision of living. As I work to create a reality tunnel that I enjoy and that serves me, rewiring my brain is crucial. I cannot reject these frameworks and ideas that were handed to me by my society, my education, my family, and my milieu, without replacing them with something else. For example, my semi-retirement is one way that I am creating my own reality tunnel around work. Creating a new reality for myself is fun! It is also incredibly hard to think very far outside the parameters of dominant society. One helpful technique for me has been to read books by people who have created their own unique lives outside the systems that govern most people. These accounts inspire me, open up my imagination, and remind me that life truly is whatever we create out of it. I'm so curious to see where this will all lead me next.
Cultivating this deep understanding that all reality is subjective has helped me move through significant conflict, as a mediator, as a participant, as a coach, and in my own accountability processes. Also, these days I'm more aware that not only does each person have their own reality, but each Part does as well. Because my Parts have their own realities, I can rapidly shift perspectives about a situation in my life, and feel opposing desires simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteThis understanding of my own mind as multiple, of every mind as multiple, has helped me hold all our versions of reality even that much more lightly. Not only is my reality subjective to me, but it is subjective to how I happen to see it in this one specific moment in time, not even necessarily a consistent internal reality that I have always held or will always hold.
I still read and watch media that can transport me to a novel reality tunnel, one that I yearn for, one that shows a window into a life centered in my 2 core values: Sustainability and Beauty. Most recently 2 films have been that for me. Uyra, documentary of transgender indigenous Amazonian performance artist Uyra Sodoma, and Neptune Frost, genderqueer afrofuturist brainchild of Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. Both films speak to the power of metaphor, alchemizing grief and centering ritual as tools for liberation.