Following the latest article, I’ve decided to include a song to accompany this little piece.
Thank you, you are an endless fountain of inspiration.
-swan
I have never met anyone who hasn’t cried on their birthday (maybe except my lovely boyfriend). It seems to be an innate ritual for those who carry something—specifically, a sensitivity to transformation—or perhaps a resistance to change. The terrible feeling of being powerless in the face of your existence comes to the forefront when the veil of control is thin. When you stop moving in tandem with time—your body feels this imbalance and begins to secrete guilt.
Upon talking to a good friend who has always freely accepted the concept of change, I encountered other things. To them, time had never been something to be fought against but instead to be accepted as a constant in their life. So, I embarked on a journey to bridge the gap of understanding between us. Here are some snippets from our conversation:
“Have you ever cried over time -like- at all?”
“Over the concept of time? No-not really. I’ve never thought about that; I’ve only cried over other personal grievances but never the concept of time passing or losing to time. Like—I don’t know, this might be morbid, but I’ve always accepted my mortality, so I’ve never really had any inhibitions towards living in the present. A friend told me there are two ways to approach life, -life is constantly moving; you either walk along with life or get dragged behind. I agree with this sentiment because I believe there is no going back; the only thing you can control is your response to life, so why grieve the time that I’ve lost when I can appreciate the time that I have left.”
“Since you’ve never cried over time— why do you think people cry over time?”
“Hm. I think it’s just related to time being difficult to grapple with. There’s this concept called change blindness- the psychological concept that says you don’t realise how much change has occurred until you contrast it with the past. This blindness seems to be compounded by slowness- no one changes quickly overnight, so it’s very hard to predict - think about the frog being cooked alive as the water slowly gets warmer. People fear change because they cannot control it. We cannot control time, death, the price of taxes, and, most definitely, change. Nowadays, everyone is much more pessimistic about the future- the future is cold. Nostalgia is more rampant than ever - people want what they know rather than what they don’t know.
Nostalgia is the idea of a home you cannot return to; change pulls you away from security, and people can’t fathom the idea that they cannot return. The desire to return and fix what they’ve done can be so potent that it blinds you to the future in front of you.
“I find it interesting that you bring up control; I feel like that’s what so many of us fear: a lack of control. What are your thoughts about this?”
“I think that control is a massive thing that we value, as we can’t imagine that the life that we’ve lived can ever expand beyond our regular mechanisms and day-to-day activities.
People are afraid of losing control because they feel they will lose their autonomy and become their surroundings. The objects they once had power over will begin to have power over them.”
“I see what you mean; it’s almost like an addiction - or in the same pattern as how a person falls into addiction when they lose control of their vice, and it becomes them- similarly, I feel like you can also see this in emotions and how when we lose control of our emotions we become them in this really ugly way—they assimilate into our beings and stay there. You could see the stain of someone’s anger in the remaining furrow of their brow or feel the tension that hasn’t been released yet in the air everywhere, no matter where you walk, because no one feels safe on the street anymore. And I feel like if you don’t learn to disregard and reject these emotions, they sink into your being- not just physically but spiritually, and it disrupts your personhood as a whole.”
“Also, for some reason, whenever we talk about fear and control, all I can think about is Makima from the manga Chainsaw Man. That’s literally the concept of Makima, the control devil—but in her case, it’s like—the fear of being controlled. I think?? and not the fear of losing control.”
“Hahah- that’s so real.”
“But for real, though, I think it’s interesting that the manga focuses more on the fear of being controlled instead of the fear of losing it.”
“So, regarding the emotional angle, you shouldn’t outright reject your emotions. As a person who has done that before, I know it causes a splintering of identity that leads to losing control completely — there is a balance between having too much control and giving control. Having too much control can lead to you maligning yourself. Seeing your emotional self as another part of your consciousness becomes a dangerous and unpredictable game, especially when you begin to feel like you cannot get your feelings to cooperate. The best solution around it seems to be to live in a state of observation—allowing emotions to pass through without having them completely take over you.”
“I see what you mean, especially that last part about allowing yourself to experience your emotions in a way where you don’t become them. It’s very hard to stay objective about your feelings, but in a way, I feel like it is kind of good to strive for neutrality when it comes to existing in a mind that feels so strongly. I think this way; it becomes less about resisting or repressing and more about knowing how to channel the intensity safely into a creative or productive outlet.
Another thing that I found to be quite true from what you just said is about living in a state of observation—it reminds me a lot of the Litany against fear that the Bene Gesserits say in the book series Dune. Are you familiar with that?”
“No, I’m not, but feel free to explain it to me.”1
“Well, it goes like this:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
In the book, the litany is used over and over again as a meditative prayer to quell characters out of a state of intense agony. The subject is about fear, yet the focus is much more on pain. It leads me to think that the ‘fear’ this litany is referring to is really more about the fear of pain or the fear of injury. But also, in a way, by saying that “I must not fear”, you inhibit your body’s capacity to feel any apprehension and thus force yourself into a state of openness, allowing any intensity, whether that be pain or any other heavy emotion to ‘pass over you and through you’ just like in the litany.”
“That’s pretty interesting—I feel like releasing yourself from irrational fear can open you up to many life experiences in ways you can’t even comprehend.”
After our enlightening conversation, my friend showed me what a funyun looked like. I had never before seen such a strange snack. But maybe if it weren’t for our little conversation, I never would’ve seen it at all.
They know I secretly want to become a Bene Gesserit sister.