Counter Cultural [UPDATED]
Yesterday I was put in a position where I had to try to explain to someone why it might sometimes be a good idea to choose to do what you don’t feel like doing instead of what you do.
This is to American culture as spitting is to the wind.
We think that freedom is the freedom to follow our inclinations, and that our inclinations are a treasure map to our authenticity. Do what you feel. Go with your heart. Follow your bliss.
The result is that we dig the ruts in our brains deeper and never discover the riches off-road. We’re speeding through our own brains sealed in climate-controlled automobiles, along a self-made interstate system, from attraction to fast-food joint to filling station. What we don’t realize is that the blank spots on the map are “us,” too — parts of us our conditioned inclinations will never lead us to. Obviously we can’t discover every interest and develop every quality, so we say, perhaps too quickly, “That doesn’t speak to me,” “That doesn’t do it for me,” “That’s just not me.”
Only when we’re under compulsion — and Americans are blessed to be rarely under compulsion — do we get off our own beaten paths of reliable, repetitive pleasure (some of which are veins of creative gold, others of waste and self-destruction).
Some of the situations in which Americans can experience compulsion: prison; military service; parenthood; illness; a marriage going through a bad patch. Others? Work you hate. Work you love except when you hate it, which is whenever you start and whenever you’re stuck. Compulsion is different from risk. There are severe constraints on you when you’re climbing a rock face, but that fear and focus is often euphoric. Being under compulsion is dysphoric — at least at first. It’s the imposition of another will (sometimes your own) on your wayward wanting. Everything in you wants to bolt. Your freedom and your very identity feel threatened rather than reaffirmed and reinforced.
Sometimes staying put in those situations enriches you beyond imagining. For one thing, you discover that your identity is deeper than your preferences. For another, you discover that your preferences have been provincial. Your “weakness” for this and not that has weakened you. Your tastes have made you miss the very herb that could heal you.
This is the story of my life. The person I was trying to tell it to had already made up his mind to run rather than change. Change feels like death. It is death. But there’s an afterlife.
UPDATE: Relevant tweet: @lensweet What if we were more open to being “sent on The Way” than “set in our ways”?
Ambiance 
wj said,
June 28, 2009 at 10:21 am
“Compulsion” is perhaps too strong a word for it. Then again, perhaps I am just easily pressured by those around me.
When I was young, I found that I sometimes ended up doing something that I would have been wildly unlikely to have done on my own . . . because the girl I was dating wanted to. Similarly, since I have been married I have ended up trying some new things that would not have occurred to me. Not because the marriage was going thru a bad patch (although we have had those), but simply because my wife thought something would be interesting. And that could be anything from a new activity to a new kind of food.
As you say, sometimes the new things turn out to be things I was really glad to have discovered. Sometimes not, of course. But that’s the adventure and beauty of trying new things: you frequently don’t know how you will like them until you do.
amba12 said,
June 28, 2009 at 10:27 am
True: love is what leads us beyond our habitual selves without compulsion. Love and curiosity!
Donna B. said,
June 28, 2009 at 6:36 pm
For a long time I would not try new foods. When I was in my early 20s at a party, I thought I was getting a chunk of chicken breast wrapped in bacon, but it was liver. I began gagging before my conscious brain could figure out what happened and barely made it to the bathroom before thoroughly humiliating myself.
I became a picky eater. In the last five years, I’ve overcome that largely due my Asian son-in-law and his parents. Kimchee is excellent, but raw tuna I’ll continue to spurn. It’s not that raw tuna tastes bad; it’s that it is way too chewy.
However, I don’t think you were really talking about food.
amba12 said,
June 28, 2009 at 6:45 pm
But why not? It’s the same phenomenon, in a way. That’s why we call taste “taste.”
Jason (the commenter) said,
June 28, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Donna B. : For a long time I would not try new foods.
I’ve never had that problem because my mother was such an awful cook, and on top of that she always made the same things.
As a child I would try sneaking ingredients into the food, like oregano. Everything would be dry or almost burnt, from chicken to fish to potatoes. I remember going to the hospital and thinking how wonderful the food tasted.
So, if you want your children to think little of suffering, I would recommend making them suffer as much as legally possible.
Donna B. said,
June 28, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Amba… because of the “running away” phrase. I associate that with my son’s “running” away from responsibility and acceptance of his disabilities. His big CHANGE was in deciding (realizing?) that location didn’t make all that much difference and that his unhappiness was inside himself and that his disability (except for pain) was outside himself.
Jason (the commenter)… I suppose I spoiled my children horribly then because they keep calling and emailing for my recipes :-)
I am a good cook. I learned from my Mama, my paternal Grandmother and somewhere around 20 aunts. I do country French and Southern cuisines best, but my Mexican dishes are not to be scoffed. I was informed recently by one of my son’s friends (all now in their 30s) that my house was “grand central” because of the homemade bread and spaghetti.
However, according to my youngest daughter, my letting her teenaged checking account get overdrawn was the cruelest thing I ever did… even though I told her to balance it every time the statement came and to record all checks written, etc.
I was a cruel Mommy, but not with food. And while I paid the insurance and made sure the tires were worthy, I never bought a tank of gas for any of them. They did manage to con their father/stepfather out of those far too frequently. It was the knowledge of the conning on both sides that made those episodes OK.
We had some horrible things happen in our family, but what we choose to remember and celebrate are the good times, which were, thankfully, more frequent.
Donna B. said,
June 29, 2009 at 11:21 pm
What is The Way?
amba12 said,
June 30, 2009 at 12:45 am
Well, Len Sweet is a Christian, so draw your own conclusions.
Buddhists would mean something subtly else.
Then there’s Melinda’s and my “The Way of the Subterranean Train is Perilous . . .”