Quote of the Day – July 7 2012

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

When we make a choice to recreate ourselves, how do we do it? How do we identify ourselves? More specifically who do we identify ourselves with and how much of who we are do we allow to be submerged within the framework of this group or identification?
When i was seventeen and had a brief sojourn with a religious group, I tried to make myself over into a mold of a perfect member of the group. I would pray the way a member of the group was supposed to pray, eat what they ate, fundraise in the way they fundraised, sleep etc. I did my best (rather unsuccessfully) to subsume myself within the group. I believed or tried to make myself believe that being a member of this group made me better than everyone else. I put the cult’s interest above all others including my own.
Gradually I left the cult. I found too much cognitive dissonance creeping in and my own individuality started to emerge and I left. My mother had called it correctly when she pointed out that when I was there I wasn’t writing. “As soon as he starts writing poetry again, he’ll come home soon after.” Indeed I left within forty-eight hours of writing my first poem since i had come there. The lady knew here children.
What makes us need to define ourselves in terms of other people? What groups do we identify ourselves with? What happens when we start to feel that our group is so special either because of things people belonging to the group have done or because of the way our group was treated in the past that it deserves preferential treatment? What happens if we lose sight of the fact that our group is just one part of a greater whole, a collective of being?
I have lots of questions around this area these days and wish to explore it further.
Blessings, G

 

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Falling Towards the Light by G A Rosenberg

Eyeful Spirals by G A Rosenberg