Self-awareness is One Liberated Bitch

"you're a frog, shacka lacka, DON'T COME IN!"

 
Lately, I've been mildly obsessed with introspection. Not the middle school kind. You know, when you close your bedroom door, plug in your mock electric candles (because your mom doesn't trust you not to burn the house down at the grown-up age of 10), put Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" on repeat for hours and cast new-age, poorly-interpreted Wiccan curses on the various boys who could never love you... Well, actually now that you mention it, the feeling is actually pretty similar.  

What I'm talking about is really sitting down and getting this life business figured out. Books I'm reading and seminars and workshops I'm enrolled in are all pointing me to this astonishingly omnipresent idea:

 POSSIBILITY

Totally hokey, I get it.

Despite the adages, "You can do anything you set your mind to" and "the sky is the limit," that word POSSIBILITY has been ultimately absent from my life. The whole business of being born, learning some colors and numbers, going to schools where the government ensures we can pass standardized tests that tell us who we have the potential of being, so we can drop out or go to trade-school or college and keep on this predetermined track, laid out for us by society's vision of how each socioeconomic class is supposed contribute to the status quo.

...this is actually quite true.

For example: I am a white woman from middle America. Raised in a suburb of Chicago, I was expected to do well in school, babysit my neighbor's kids because girls are nurturing and responsible, get a job at a pizza place to learn American work ethic, go to liberal arts college...and then what? Now I am working as a University Administrator.

Essentially I am a gussied up version of a secretarial type that has been historically characterized in the U.S. often by the color "white" and most definitely by the gender "female." Just google image search: "administrative assistant" to see for yourself.

Where was my choice? They say the U.S. is "land of the free" and yet, there are well-trodden paths we are all just going to follow. Unless something or someone interrupts, we the zombies plod along the railway laid out for us by our predecessors.

This kitty has no self-esteem. :...(

Though it's not just the predetermined path on which we embark from birth. There's reactionary behaviors I've had my whole life that I didn't even know about. I'll procrastinate all the time because I tell myself I'm lazy. Or I'll procrastinate further on something I've BEEN procrastinating because I don't want to look like a fool or get in trouble for being lazy. See, the "being lazy" part was a fucking self-fulfilling prophesy rather than WHO I AM. What I did was I thought it, then I also made it real. I took the unreality of some dumb stuff I said to myself and made it real.

THAT's some choice, huh?

The thing I'm taking away from all this intellectual exercise on thinking (GAH!) is that thinking simultaneously means everything and does not mean anything at all. To elaborate, if you honor your thoughts, you will be the things you think because you will act on them. If you do not honor your thoughts and choose NOT to be reactionary all the time, then you will have more freedom to be whoever you want. It's hard for me to know, at this point, if that means anyone really CAN be anyone they want. This...this sounds like a B sci-fi psychological thriller just waiting to happen.

The lead character in this drama is Self-awareness. She is an unrelenting, unapologetic, but totally liberated bitch.

...self-awareness? girl, she as crazy as you! And she don't take no trains.

But, the only way to be truly free to choose my life is to figure out all this shit. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep on keepin' on the same tracks, let my inner voice dictate how I act and thus who I am.

Now that I know this, how could I possibly let it happen?