Walk of shame,
The last few years were a walk of shame.
The burden of lack,
I carried on my back
The words could never justify,
What it is to have shame, I had.
Suppose to be somewhere
Suppose to be someone
But not even close to that
I walked the walk of shame
Humbled
Crumbled
It was not just chaos of purpose
But it was my dignity on the line.
To be crumbled in so many ways that matters,
It humbles one awake.
I walked the walk of shame,
That’s how I walked to myself…
Warning: Darkness ahead, Read at our own risk.
Don’t be pleased by me,
I want to offend you.
Don’t agree with me,
I want to rattle you.
Don’t have a want, to be near me,
I want you to be repulsed by me.
I don’t want to be with you,
I want you to wish my existence away.
Something strong we will have then,
Something ugly,
You and I will have something to think about, till the end,
And not just nodding along the way, till we go off edge.
.
During my time here, I have been observing. I am at a point where I believe in the power of popular culture.
Oxford bibliographies defines that, “Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and objects that embody the most broadly shared meanings of a social system.”
To make something “a thing”, bring it to popular culture and see it spread like a wildfire. To spread an idea, a thought, a theory, anything, popular culture is the best avenue. Popular culture has changed through years and it will keep on changing through years.
Popular culture’s habitat is that time’s mass communication medium. We are consumers and we always have been. It has gotten intense with time but being a consumer became a part of our society since we decided to be a society.
Consuming rewards us immediately and what helps us to get that reward is associated to a lowered defense state in our brain. Lowered defenses means more likely to be suggested and persuaded.
I have optimism that to make new progresses as human species, to learn and grow, to hone our intelligence, to start spread the new findings and research that can help us to do better than yesterday, popular culture can be an effective avenue.
Using popular culture to spread awareness, first thing is to understand the vocabulary used or I must say overused in the popular culture. Knowing the actual definition of these words and concepts will not only help us to use it in accordance to relevant context but also keep the credibility of those words.
Below are few words that are something to ponder upon subjectively, demonizing words is the fastest way to radicalize oneself, and I like to believe that we are much better than that.
Toxic masculinity : “a set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole.” (Oxford Dictionary)
Feminism: “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.”(Oxford languages)
Male gaze : “the perspective of a notionally typical heterosexual man considered as embodied in the audience or intended audience for films and other visual media, characterized by a tendency to objectify or sexualize women.” (Oxford Dictionary)
Female gaze : “It is a feminist theory term representing the gaze of the female spectator, character or director of an artistic work, but more than the gender it is an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. ” (Wikipedia)
Internalized male gaze : “The internal male gaze is how women have absorbed all of this subconsciously to the point where it seems like as they go about their day, they need to perform for a nonexistent male audience. I would also say that this experience is not only to attract romantic interest but to, also, just seem cool in the eyes of a man.” (https://www.hercampus.com/school/fiu/blind-your-internal-male-gaze/)
Misogyny: “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.” (Google Dictionary)
Entitlement: “belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.” (Merriam Webster)
Patriarchy: “a society in which the oldest male is the leader of the family, or a society controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage” (Cambridge Dictionary)
Privilege: “a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others” (Merriam Webster)
Do they like me?
This question has hijacked me since a long time. It has flooded my entitity and I want to accept that it is unacceptable to me.
Being taken over by the concern, whether they like me, is taking over my sanity.
I am possessed by the urge to be liked that I settle for disrespect, just so that they like me; to be more precise, that they might like me. There is no guarantee, that even if I take the attack to my self respect, the violation of my boundaries and the blatant disregard to my well being, I will fit in, I will be liked by them.
I believe that every derangement has its roots inside. This malady of ‘do they like me?’ must also have roots in me.
When I was violated for the first time, I appealed, I resisted, was it taken seriously, was it taken kindly?
I was asked not to take stand for myself, I was asked to be OK with the mistreatment that I was subjected to.
I was asked by intimidation that if I ask for better, I will receive more hostility. When you are subjected to hostility and intimidation, your survival mode kicks in. To maintain a livable environment, you give in and give up your self respect. You accept whatever is thrown at you, just to keep peace, just to survive.
It extrapolates to the point, where being liked is more important and safe than to expect what is right for you and defend yourself when your well being is under siege.
How did that turn out? Choosing ‘do they like me?’ over ‘what is right for me?’
The person in me, who is me, is filled with anger and disappointment.The person who finds energy everyday to keep up with this life, is filled with self loathing because I chose not to protect that person. I chose others liking me over standing up for me.
I became an outcast inside as much as I am outcast outside.
Till now I have cared, do they like me? Do you like me? What has that done for me?
Nothing that I am proud of, your or their approval does not satiate me. The person I care to like me is myself.
I will give respect, I can coexist. I would not hinder anyone’s journey by adding a step back and I would want to enrich their/your experience, whenever our paths meet.
However,
My first loyalty is to myself and if anyone’s existence does not respect mine then I would not have the desire to engage or any inclination to please.
I would not concern myself if I am liked by others, all we need to have is respect for one another because we are only answerable to ourselves and it’s much easier when we like ourselves.
Don’t degrade your liking for yourself, just so that others like you.
Our valuation of vanity is far more greater than the value we put on improving the act of doing and being.
When I say ‘our’, I mean you and I, noone else. This is a dialogue, an intimate conversation where I am writing this words and you are replying with the thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories emerging inside you, only you and I are accountable. It’s not something to just read and agree with, it needs an action from our (you and I) part. Feeling a sense of righteousness in agreeing with something and not recognizing how one fits in that narrative is detaching oneself from that topic, that philosophy, that concern, one is entertained but not really transformed by it.
Rather than giving you a sense of gratification by writing more about vanity and how, why, we put value on it over everything else. I will leave you to find it for yourself. If you do it, you will be transformed, if you don’t, you will be just someone who associate with an idea without challenging it, who does not apply the 1000 books one reads.
We keep on talking about problem statements like consumerism, misogyny, climate change, see it as an objective issue. It’s a subjective issue and guess what, you and I are the subject.
There is so much clutter in here,
I can’t find the thing I am looking for, It tends to go out of sight, just when I think I see it.
So many ideas, so many concepts , so many perceptions seeped in.
I didn’t even realize how much space they started to occupy in here,
It’s hard to tell now, who was I before they started.
I want to save up all that space for something beautiful, something that will enrich the world in here.
I hate this urge to rhyme.
Yet, I need (so pathetic!) to feel accepted by the world that exist outside, which now even occupies the inside.
I can throw away the clutter I see outside, which I can touch, I can conceptualize;
But how do I throw away that is in here,
So articulate, when I am trying to ignore it,
Yet so abstract when I intentionally notice it.
How I can get rid of everything unessential, I see out there,
That’s how I want to choose the choice to be the minimalist inside.
“With great clutter, comes great anxiety.”
Graceful endurance of adversities is likely sign of growth, discerning if something is an adversity is its confirmation.
I am whole, I have been whole all this time,
I just forgot to remember.
I am everyone, everyone’s name is I.
Eventually, I became more attached to the concept of I.
No painting is same as the other, no tree branches like the other, always some variation that makes one, the other.
The variation makes one unique,
The variation makes one distinct,
The reason for pride becomes the reason why one feels lonely.
The pride is because of the attachment to the uniqueness,
The loneliness is because of the attachment to the separateness.
A second I am here, and then I am not,
Harder to accept, the more I believe in the belief of I.
‘Who says, who says you are not perfect, who says you are not worth it?’
It is a beautiful and encouraging song but more importantly with an amazingly introspective lyrics.
We are talking more and more about self love now and we ought to do that but how does it look like? To manifest anything, one needs to know what it feels like, looks like, smells like, tastes like, so how does self love look like to you?
Self love can just stay a word sometimes, a very popular, classy, idealistic, 21’st century word. What it looks like as a verb, makes an actual difference in an individual’s life. Let’s leave that thought as a homework for all of us and go to the sticky center of what happens after the ‘They lived happily ever after’ part of the movie.
In the movie of your life, let’s suppose, you struggled and came to a realization that you want to choose self love and that becomes the beginning of your story but we are just at the surface of the oceanic process of self love.
‘Self love’ is usually our poster child of mental health but it is a poster child, an idealistic representation, with an underlying assumption of hope that once self love is chosen, everything becomes alright and remains that way all the time, till death do us apart. You and I know that, it is not a very accurate picture.
Let’s see self love as a project and apply the basic project management model to it.
Once I plan to choose self love, I define an action which will be part of self love project and I implement it for example, by sitting with my emotions and understanding them when I am struggling . I monitor what happens when I do that, by observing my thoughts, my feelings. I observe maladaptive thoughts arising and saying ‘You are so pathetic to feel so much’, ‘you are so sensitive (translation: you are so weak)’, ‘you are making big deal out of nothing’, ‘your emotions are not valid’!
Evaluating this, I realize that these thoughts are going to stop me from feeling my emotions, to understand why it hurts when it hurts, they are going to stop me from healing myself. What I will do then is to not deal with my struggles and repress my hurt because it is so difficult to be kind to myself when my inner environment is so hostile. When I hear those horrible thoughts, they make me feel bad about myself. As I observe that those thoughts resides in me, I assume that it is me who is saying all those cruel things and obviously then I wish not to be me. I start to dislike myself and when I cannot even like myself, how is it possible to love myself and hence the self love model collapse. It needs an improvement, a better design to troubleshoot the obstacle it just faced.
The improvement we need are those words in those lyrics,
“Who says, you are not perfect?”
When the thought comes up, ‘you are so weak’, ask it who is saying that. You will be surprised by who that voice turns out to be. It will be, all the times a person, a situation told you, made you feel weak directly or indirectly. You can check if your own values align with that thought. Is it something that you would say to your loved one? If the answer is No, then it is not your thought, it is borrowed from someone or something that brought you down once but it hit you so hard, so significantly (or by someone very significant to you), that you took it as the truth and carried it so far with you. It burdens you still, and it became a weapon that you use to punish yourself with.
Question every negative, self deprecating thought that arise, every self negating action, every self sabotaging choices we make, to conform with those borrowed voices which are not ours but are living in us like an ingrate guests.
Ask again and again, who says that?
You will get an answer in the form of images, words, voices along with a gut wrenching feeling. It won’t be you, who is the owner of those cruel thoughts, the next thing you ought do is to shut it up, tell that thought that it is not true and it is not welcome anymore.
Our body is made for survival, its instinctual. It is true for our mind as well, it is suppose to work for us and it will, once we choose to take the lead.
Not every thought is true and not every thought is you.
To every thought that brings you down and conspire you against you, ask it loud and clear, Who says that?
Little heart, red heart, purple heart, my sweetheart
Beating to the rhythm of the love, my sweetheart.
Little heart, blue heart, pink heart, my sweetheart
Skipping to the beats, you dance and sing, my sweetheart.
The butterflies flies to your beating, oh my sweetheart.
Little heart, green heart, red heart, my sweetheart
You beat beat beat and you stop, oh my sweetheart
Beat beat beat, there’s a knot in my gut, oh my sweet little sweetheart
Beat beat thump, stinging pain in my sweetheart.
Little heart, yellow heart, orange heart, my sweetheart
Beat thump, beat thump, my aching little sweetheart
Heavy thump, heavy thump, crack open sweetheart
Break break break, you aching little sweetheart
Break ache, knotting pain, my hurt little sweetheart.
Little heart, grey heart, black heart my sweetheart
You break open, crash open, sad little sweetheart.
You seek seek seek , what breaks you my sweetheart
You hurt, you ache, you mourn mourn my sweetheart
I feel you, I see you, I am with you my sweetheart
We can mend, all the pieces, you’ll be whole again my sweetheart.
Little heart, brave heart, loving heart, my sweetheart
Little heart, kind heart, loving heart, my sweetheart
Beat beat beat, brave warrior, my sweetheart.
Soultosoul_with_ivy 