It is shocking to me how insidious barriers are. Ever since childhood, I have had reason to pride myself on my universal thinking, but I find that even I have to struggle against the baobabs that are biases. (Remember the Little Prince, digging up those trees every day, so they wouldn't cause his planet to explode?)
I have been suffering from a certain degree of separateness, which I will now explain is part of the reason why I never write where I live on this blog. Though to be fair, I have been afraid of reactionary comments, because I do not live in a popular place. But I am beginning to feel that I will not exercise all of my inborn tools as a human being if I continue to hide behind a shroud of ambiguity.
Tagore writes: "The growth of greatness for an individual only becomes real by establishing wide relationships with a large number of other individuals." We become who we are by opening ourselves up to being partially molded by others.
I have been thinking a lot about this as I prepare to write my dissertation. Until recently, I was struggling so hard to gain a grasp on my subject, that I was reluctant to accept the gaping chasm between the views of my subject and the contemporary world. Ordinarily, I would not deny the present its place, but in this one, ... I uncovered some biases I had. I had shut myself off from some more contemporary schools of thought for a few years because it was easier not to have that interference. Like a horse wearing blinders. But to quote Tagore again, "Man shows his mental feebleness when he loses his faith in life because it is difficult to govern" and is only willing to take responsibility for the dead, who are happy to lie still under tombstones of his own making.
True interaction can mean lack of control, and therefore mistakes. But Tagore encourages us that with the right motives, we cannot - essentially - go wrong.
This point was driven home because in the past few days I've been considering the way the scientist I am studying never criticised all he could have of his age, but focused on cultivating that which was constructive.
To borrow wisdom I learned watching Tyler Perry's Medea's Family (the televised play, not movie), we hold ourselves back when we pass judgement or are angry at someone. We give those 'subjects' power over us: they have the power to change our mood, the power to make us want to avoid them. We need to accept and forgive them in order to get our power back.
I knew this before, but sometimes it seems I continue to learn the same thing, but in different contexts, from different angles. I have written this post in order not to forget again, and to have this to come back to when I need it.
Elements: fabric: pugly pixel; embroidery: minitoko.
"I feel proud that I have been born in this great age. I know that it must take time before we can adjust our minds to a condition which is not only new, but almost exactly the opposite of the old. Let us not imagine the death struggle of the doomed to be a sign of life. Let us announce to the world that the light of the morning has come, not for entrenching ourselves behind barriers, but for meeting in mutual understanding and trust on the common field of co-operation; never for nourishing a spirit of rejection, but for that glad acceptance which constantly carries in itself the giving out of the best we have."
- Rabindranath Tagore, "The Way to Unity". All Tagore quotes in this post are from that work.
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