Personal Revolutions
As I am reviewing materials for an old intro course about mindfulness of the body that I plan to make available on Four Steps Coaching, Inc, I came across an interesting phrase that I used in the course material: personal revolution. That’s not the goal of the course, it’s hard to produce something so grand in a month. The goal of the course is to teach people how to meditate, the basics, and to get them to befriend their body and perhaps disturb their habitual patterns of thinking.
I used the phrase to describe what I see as a radical promise of a dedicated meditation practice. As I was reading the text, my first thought was: that was a bit of an exaggeration. Then I began looking back at my meditation practice and realized that it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. And then I had yet another thought (yes, I think too much): what exactly does that mean – a personal revolution?
This blog will hopefully elaborate on that. I will do my best to clarify the concept better. When I say clarify, I mean to myself and to anyone else who might care about my randomly chosen few words from a course that’s not available yet. This may as well have been a journal entry, but here it is, on my blog, for everyone to see and disagree with – I always enjoy a good disagreement.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the word „personal“ is something that’s the opposite of „public.“ A personal revolution could be a change in my private sphere, one that isn’t visible to the public. At the same time, I’m a constructivist, so my view of the self is a relational one. For me, stuff exists through relationships with other stuff.
In fact, the very dichotomy „public vs private“ is a somewhat arbitrary construct, one that seems solid because it’s also culturally supported, so it seems obvious even though there’s no inherent reality to it. I use it because it’s useful. There are some things that I don’t share with the outside world, some thoughts and fantasies that remain just mine. In the case of the latter, it’s knowing that they are just mine that gives me the pleasure. However, from a constructivist standpoint, these are not exempt from the relational paradigm. Just because something is outside of the public eye doesn’t mean that it’s not in relation to it. I revealed as much when I said that sometimes the pleasure comes from keeping something private (i.e., outside of the public domain, in opposition to it, therefore, in a relationship with it).
Think about it like this. You might have a desire or a need that you’re ashamed of. Shame is an effect of societal expectations. Feeling shame conveys the following information: it’s not desirable to be seen in this light, whatever that light may be. Then, you have people who say „screw that“ to those expectations, people we sometimes label as shameless. Are these so-called shameless people exempt from the trap of relationality? Not at all, they are just the other side of the coin. When you internalize expectations from the society, you can either bow to them and shape yourself accordingly, or you can reject them, but either way you’ve fallen into the trap – you are in a relationship with them. Shameful or shameless, you are not shaped by yourself but by external forces.
As I’m typing this, I’m thinking that it’s not fair to call relationality a trap. It’s simply the way in which things exist. In itself, it’s neither good nor bad. It’s perhaps more honest to call it a trap only when it causes suffering. From a constructivist point of view, there is no way to escape relationality, everything that exists, exists that way. So, it’s not a trap, it’s the way of the world, or as best as we constructivists can say about the fundamentals of that way of the world. Being a constructivist pretty much excludes being dogmatic.
What about the way we respond to the public sphere? I mentioned two possible responses. You can comply or resist. Obey or fight. Deny yourself or deny the culture. The trouble with this dichotomy is that causes more suffering than necessary. If you obey, then you must bury some parts of your desire as it might be deemed unacceptable (as Freud and Bauman have convincingly argued), or you can resist and fight, risking ostracism: people might not want to be around you if they feel like you don’t share some of their values or if you explicitly oppose them. As with any construct, “obey vs resist” is also just a way of responding to society, one that provides a path but also limits us. But maybe there is a way to limit ourselves differently, as – sadly – this is all the freedom that we get in this world.
The word revolution is loaded and depending on where you come from, it will likely have different implications than it does for me. What I mean by that is what we call reconstruction in constructivism. A reconstruction is a change in the meaning we ascribe to people, things or events, and this change, in effect, changes how we see the world. To state it even more radically: reconstruction changes the world. Reconstruction is not going from complacency to rebellion, it’s rejecting both and finding another path forward.
A truer path? No. Even better. A more useful path.
But when you take of the “complacency vs rebellion” glasses off and put some other pair of glasses on, you will not only have different directions to move in, but you will have a different world.
Revolution defined as reconstruction is a radically new reframing of the world. It’s not going from black to white, it’s finding a way to see things as yellow or green or purple or blue. To go back to that pretentious word: relationality. Because we are relational, whatever revolution that takes place inside will take place outside too. You will make different choices and based on those, others will perceive you as a different person.
In my defense, I did preface this blog entry as me thinking as I write, but it’s already on the path to Rambleville. Allow me to go back to the topic: personal revolution.
If we don’t want to risk ostracism – we are relational beings, so we need other people to survive – and we don’t want to go around suppressing our desires either (unless you enjoy suffering in which case – go for it!), what do we do? What is a revolutionary way to approach the private sphere? And with this in mind, a revolution needs to take place in how we relate our private selves to the rest of the world.
As a psychotherapist, I don’t like to tell people what to do and I don’t think I have the recipe for success. Furthermore, I advise you to stay away from anyone who promises the truth. Your experience is the judge of everything, providing you try things out in good faith. So, what I’m about to propose here is what I find that works for me.
My own private revolution occurred when I realized something that I already shared above: both shame and shamelessness are reflections of one and the same thing: your culture permeating your very inner core. Once this insight really started to sink in, I began consciously cultivating an attitude of indifference to culture and societal norms. It was this indifference that was my liberation.
Indifference doesn’t mean the same as being insensitive or rude, although as every other human, I can be that too sometimes. The opposite of indifference is clinging, taking something to be good or bad in itself. In all honesty, I feel like I need to work on verbalizing the opposite side of indifference a bit better. Perhaps unironically caring?
When I approach my cultural environment with an indifferent attitude, that allows me to ask some important questions about it. To give you but a few examples:
Is this expectation something that serves me?
If I say no to this, what can I say yes to?
If I say yes to this, what do I get in return?
Who deserves to have influence over me?
Do I care enough about this person to renounce a part of myself in exchange for a relationship?
How do I reframe this situation in order to transform it into something manageable?
In addition, this allowed me to develop an attitude of acceptance towards myself, a kind of equanimity. It allowed me to see how culture molds me in different ways and since indifference has no preference it sees things clearly. It allowed me to assess these molding processes in terms of usefulness for my life. Is this identity or that label something that feels comfortable to me? Can I see myself in ways that society doesn’t predefine? When I see with clarity how others see me, do I give a damn? Should I give a damn?
What is the advantage of indifference? For one, it allows me to negotiate because suddenly everything becomes possible. I don’t have to agree to everything I see or hear around me, and I don’t have to fight either, compromises are possible. Other people don’t have to be entirely happy with me. They don’t have to be happy at all. I can see their judgment clearly, but I can clearly not give a damn if that’s what suits me. When things are indifferent, my agenda gives them relevance. Or takes it away, of course. Indifference allows me to give precedence to my desire even when others don’t approve, simply because they are my desires and I decide. I can change those constructs that I internalized that obstruct my desires and set them free. But I don’t have to if I don’t want to – there’s no particular value you have to adhere to when you take the public out of the picture. The only thing that matters is what it means to me. When I cultivate an indifferent, dispassionate approach to the world around me, I can weigh my options better. Indifference produces knowledge and, to paraphrase Foucault, knowledge is for cutting not for knowing.
My personal revolution was about owning my own power, by taking it away from the outside world. Being ashamed is a waste of time and energy. Being shameless is a waste of time and energy. Following your core values and living up to them is empowering. When I switched from giving legitimacy and power to the world, to taking it back, I felt released. I am acutely aware of how I’m being judged by others because I’m not blind; I just don’t care either way. If it’s useful for me, I’ll go with it. If it isn’t – I won’t. Simple as that. My responsibility doesn’t extend to what doesn’t concern me. I don’t want to say that I’ve becoming callous or unkind. Quite the opposite. Being compassionate is my value but being compassionate sometimes means setting firm boundaries. When you surrender the power to others, they regulate your boundaries and have your power. I am kind, but kindness isn’t the same as submission. There is always a kind way to say no. Kind isn’t the same as painless.
I think this is a good place to stop with my half-baked thoughts before this becomes a book. To conclude, a personal revolution is a process of conscious emancipation from the clutches of public discourses. Instead of being shaped by them, you use them to shape yourself as best as you can, controlled only by your chosen values, for as long as you choose them as your values. And because you are indifferent to the outside and you’re able to reclaim your power, when the time comes, you’ll be able to reshape yourself in whatever way will make your life more meaningful.
I will leave you with another quote by Michel Foucault:
I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it?
What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know where it will end.
