Since the Medieval Age, and even before, society has dictated who you are and what you will be. They have assigned you titles and roles that you are compelled to play in every aspect of your life. A simple noun such as knight, serf, blacksmith would serve as your prison from birth till death. We try to profane in this society that we have out-stepped these “barbaric” habits and have taken on a much more aesthetic view of living life.
From all my experiences in life, we have not shifted at all in the last thousand years, but in fact fell deeper and deeper into a sense of denial. We all try to purport that we are our own individual person that is dynamic and special in our own regards. Yet today the things that should attach to our personas, are still nouns not adjectives.
An adjective is a characteristic and helps explain a noun or a person. It serves as a color, a tone when painting the vast picture of one’s self. A noun, however, is a definition. It provides a framework for the picture and in essence traps one into a stereotype, into a role that they might not be ready or capable to play in its full performance.
I feel constantly weighed down by labels in that they put an expectation in the air that every person is likely to fail to meet at some point. They also trap you into a rigid structure that you will most likely never break free from. I would rather be in an amorphous setting where I can truly showcase all the different dynamic aspects of my personality rather than constantly feeling weighed down and burdened by the ever pressing obligations that come with people’s expectations.
I am not saying I wish to shirk any responsibility, but what I am saying is that I want to showcase my personality as adjectives, not nouns or labels. I want to be known as intellectual, compassionate, selfless, dutiful, and moral. Creating a label takes the light and luster out of a being and actually lessens the qualities of that individual that the label was trying to classify. As long as society’s self-imposed prison is thrust upon us, we cannot hope to propagate a society that focuses on the creation of a higher sense of self.
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Thank you for this post Reefer, I’d been trying hard to figure out why I don’t like discussing certain aspects of my life immaterial of how positive or negative the outcomes were as I perceived them. It didn’t matter if I went above and beyond or fell short and they accompanied no sense of pride or shame, accomplishment or loss, victory or defeat. Overall I’d been neutral about things to the point where I had been convinced that none of them should matter - closed chapters, part of a de-cluttering process that had always given me a sense of detachment and peace. And I just had an epiphany the other day, this was all because I didn’t want these things to define me, mostly because they didn’t mean much to me - just a check-list of things to get me from point A to B. I do value the kind of roles that would help me make a positive difference in another’s life, and sometimes wish to be defined by these roles, though I think this too might just be a phase. Only because I know that life will keep presenting me with opportunities to accumulate good and bad karma and suffer or enjoy their consequences. So I don’t think I should let this cyclical process define me either. At the end of it all is a point with complete detachment from everything that ever was, is or ever will be; a final destination which in itself is devoid of a definition. We are all so much more than just one thing, and we are all nothing at the same time like flame of a candle that has just been blown out. Where did the flame go? No one can tell.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, though I’m not sure if it is for the same reasons, apparently I too just didn’t want to be a noun!
- stuff like that
"I'm nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson
ReplyDelete"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!"
- "was only on for a minute" =P