Live Beside Yourself
I spent a lot of my past having an intellectual vice-grip on myself. It couldn’t necessarily be seen on the outside, but I was very cerebral about my goals, plans, and conduct. I was trying to mold myself into what I thought I should be, but it was all intellectually hyper-attentive. I got very controlling of my own emotions in the name of propriety, and to some degree, pride in self-management. Though temperance and self-regulation are necessary and admirable, this style of repressive management will kill you emotionally. It will make you dead to yourself. I was so entrenched in it that I had to swing out of that hyper-attentive order into some degree of emotional chaos to find exactly what it was I had to reign in.
It reminds me of a line from Hozier’s “Arsonist’s Lullaby”: “Don’t you ever tame your demons / But always keep ’em on a leash.” That’s essentially right. You don’t get to kill the cause of your chaos, because that cause is you. You die with your chaos, and your order, if you try to make one eradicate the other completely. You have to surrender to the balance, to the walking in the middle.
Clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson talks about when you set a goal or aspiration, the world essentially rearranges itself into 3 categories: things that aid you, things that hinder you, and a massive amount of incidentals. However, it’s possible to have the incidentals mislabeled: you place the things you must contend with in the category of things you have license to ignore. But, you don’t get to ignore the chaotic part of your being’s response to enforced order; that’s what your contending with. That’s your dragon. That’s what’s standing in front of you threatening to eat you.
Circumstances aren’t the hindrance; circumstance is the incidental. Your response is the hindrance. Facing the circumstance is hollow, like Don Quixote swinging his sword at windmills. Facing your response to the circumstance is your real battle. That’s your contention. That’s what you have to live with; what you have to live beside. You have to live, actively, beside yourself.
