A Surprising Realization « Clarissa's Blog
Clarissa's writing yesterday got me thinking. I hadn't realized it was possible to suffer from formlessness. I may have suffered from it in my early twenties, when I craved a rite of passage to test me, teach me the lessons of adulthood and what society means and how it works. That was a period in my life when it would have been good for me to begin learning martial arts. More generally, though, she and I are polar opposites. Whereas she agonizes over formlessness, I have had to try to find ways to escape the imposition of too much form.
This is why people who come along and try to shape me for any reason earn themselves the status of my mortal enemy. I have my own internal structure and I'm capable of reaching a fever point in self-discipline. What I don't need is someone coming along and arbitrarily trying to impose some structure on something they can't see. What I need is to extract the heat, to take off some of the pressure of being fully-formed and to be allowed for moments at a time to enter formlessness.
I have nothing to fear from formlessness, unlike the fear I have of too much structure, especially when the new structures imposed are unrelated to my existing structures. To calculate multiple opposing principles and conform to all of them means the temperature rises to the point that I can no longer think. I need simplicity and clarity in order to continue to achieve my tasks.
Psychological structure has always been a part of my life to the extent that I've internalized a sense of structure fully. I never have to fear losing control or devolving into a state of formlessness, because my early childhood life had more structure in it than I've experienced since. Above all, my primary school had an extremely military structure. We marched everywhere in single file, recited our times table and greeted our teachers by standing up whenever one entered the room. We were yelled at, threatened and sometimes subjected to corporal punishment -- a ruler on the knuckles for inattentiveness. That was how I grew up, by internalizing the necessity for such discipline. Should I drink alcohol or move away from places where form is directly imposed, I still retain this form within myself.
But impose yet another layer of form on me that takes no account of my early training, and I'm in danger of losing my cool. I have a form of my own and I don't need two or three more layers of someone else's necessities imposed on top of that. A Christian cultural tendency for strangers to come along and morally shape others I find reprehensible. Let people be as they are and function according to their identities. Don't come along and try to mold or rearrange them!
Clarissa's writing yesterday got me thinking. I hadn't realized it was possible to suffer from formlessness. I may have suffered from it in my early twenties, when I craved a rite of passage to test me, teach me the lessons of adulthood and what society means and how it works. That was a period in my life when it would have been good for me to begin learning martial arts. More generally, though, she and I are polar opposites. Whereas she agonizes over formlessness, I have had to try to find ways to escape the imposition of too much form.
This is why people who come along and try to shape me for any reason earn themselves the status of my mortal enemy. I have my own internal structure and I'm capable of reaching a fever point in self-discipline. What I don't need is someone coming along and arbitrarily trying to impose some structure on something they can't see. What I need is to extract the heat, to take off some of the pressure of being fully-formed and to be allowed for moments at a time to enter formlessness.
I have nothing to fear from formlessness, unlike the fear I have of too much structure, especially when the new structures imposed are unrelated to my existing structures. To calculate multiple opposing principles and conform to all of them means the temperature rises to the point that I can no longer think. I need simplicity and clarity in order to continue to achieve my tasks.
Psychological structure has always been a part of my life to the extent that I've internalized a sense of structure fully. I never have to fear losing control or devolving into a state of formlessness, because my early childhood life had more structure in it than I've experienced since. Above all, my primary school had an extremely military structure. We marched everywhere in single file, recited our times table and greeted our teachers by standing up whenever one entered the room. We were yelled at, threatened and sometimes subjected to corporal punishment -- a ruler on the knuckles for inattentiveness. That was how I grew up, by internalizing the necessity for such discipline. Should I drink alcohol or move away from places where form is directly imposed, I still retain this form within myself.
But impose yet another layer of form on me that takes no account of my early training, and I'm in danger of losing my cool. I have a form of my own and I don't need two or three more layers of someone else's necessities imposed on top of that. A Christian cultural tendency for strangers to come along and morally shape others I find reprehensible. Let people be as they are and function according to their identities. Don't come along and try to mold or rearrange them!
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