Every Chinese character has a story. Often a long, meandering story, rich in symbolism. The charcter for "female" depicts a woman kneeling in submission, and the character for "tranquility", is the female character under a house. Whoever invented these characters, they assumed that the story was a universal kind of truth. they didnt realize how subjective the story was. In some cases these stories become values frozen in time. They outline a narrative that Chinese people are culturally subserviant to, but will continue to identify less and less with.
There is something about this logic that reminds me of myself, though i cant quite put my finger on how. It has something to do with being needlessly complicated, with getting caught up in the details... with being consumed by my own subjectivity. I guess the Chinese way of thinking is just really bloody neurotic- everything means something, and the thread of meaning runs deep. You end up getting stuck in some all-encompassing history that's not even yours. Like using all these ideologically-outdated characters to narrate your reality today. Sometimes things are just coded in ways that I don't relate to, or understand.
We are saddled by our upbringing, by whichever way we were formed. If we grew up feeling negative, its easy to lean towards negativity. If at first we give too much, it's hard to learn how to be selfish later. If we were raised to be conservative, it's impossible to feel fully free.
A few years ago, I was on a personal mission to figure out the difference between habit and instinct. My argument was that there was no difference; that habits are instinctual. They are disguised as natural reactions, but in actuality, they are learned, and so can be unlearned. So, pumped by this new revelation, I took an inventory of all my habits, my long list of bad behavior and I started to unpack. I can't exactly remember what was going on in my life at the moment, but I was convinced that it was something happening collectively, to me and the people closest to me. I had an image of all of us packing up all our baggage, and jumping off a cliff. The lightest of us would fly while the pack rats would fall, like a test to see if we could change with the times.
Lately, I've been arguing against that me. I feel old, and now I'm thinking- for better or worse, this is it. This is me. I'm not trying to sound defeatist or anything, seriously, far from it. I just don't believe in giving myself shit for who i am anymore. It just... is. I'm ok with this, I'm more than ok. I like me [what up, Stuart Smalley]. This pretentiously-titled blog is referring to this strong belief I have in staying open to change; not being afraid to think or feel or do something outside of my comfort zone. But all that doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't have a home base. We are free to re-draw ourselves, but, like it or not, it will always trace back to something familiar, and it should. And that homecoming... it's a niiice.
There is something about this logic that reminds me of myself, though i cant quite put my finger on how. It has something to do with being needlessly complicated, with getting caught up in the details... with being consumed by my own subjectivity. I guess the Chinese way of thinking is just really bloody neurotic- everything means something, and the thread of meaning runs deep. You end up getting stuck in some all-encompassing history that's not even yours. Like using all these ideologically-outdated characters to narrate your reality today. Sometimes things are just coded in ways that I don't relate to, or understand.
We are saddled by our upbringing, by whichever way we were formed. If we grew up feeling negative, its easy to lean towards negativity. If at first we give too much, it's hard to learn how to be selfish later. If we were raised to be conservative, it's impossible to feel fully free.
A few years ago, I was on a personal mission to figure out the difference between habit and instinct. My argument was that there was no difference; that habits are instinctual. They are disguised as natural reactions, but in actuality, they are learned, and so can be unlearned. So, pumped by this new revelation, I took an inventory of all my habits, my long list of bad behavior and I started to unpack. I can't exactly remember what was going on in my life at the moment, but I was convinced that it was something happening collectively, to me and the people closest to me. I had an image of all of us packing up all our baggage, and jumping off a cliff. The lightest of us would fly while the pack rats would fall, like a test to see if we could change with the times.
Lately, I've been arguing against that me. I feel old, and now I'm thinking- for better or worse, this is it. This is me. I'm not trying to sound defeatist or anything, seriously, far from it. I just don't believe in giving myself shit for who i am anymore. It just... is. I'm ok with this, I'm more than ok. I like me [what up, Stuart Smalley]. This pretentiously-titled blog is referring to this strong belief I have in staying open to change; not being afraid to think or feel or do something outside of my comfort zone. But all that doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't have a home base. We are free to re-draw ourselves, but, like it or not, it will always trace back to something familiar, and it should. And that homecoming... it's a niiice.
