Soo...I just went on a me date to go see Avatar. And by "just", I mean "yesterday" or technically "day before yesterday" since it's 12:57 a.m. on Christmas morning. Merry Christmas!
You know, I've felt for a long time like a soul in the wrong world. Watching Avatar seriously made me fervently wish that reincarnation happens. It honestly does feel like I've been alive before. I want to believe it's true so badly, and suspend my disbelief of anything that I can't see proof of. I can't tell you how much of a war I am waging on myself over this subject. I just want to believe. Why? Because my entire life, I've felt like I don't belong here. I've felt like my own being belonged to a whole different set of customs, a whole different set of things that I consider normal, a whole different set of behaviors that are acceptable. I feel like an anomaly in the human way. And I know how this sounds, but the kind of culture that feels right to me closely resembles that of the Na'vi. Even their jewelry, the style of their hair, their clothing...that is beautiful to me. Skinny jeans and tank tops are not beautiful to me. Nature makes sense to me. The smell of it, the feel of the ground under bare feet, treating it with respect because it is your mother, the place that protects you from the sun and that grows the food that you eat. The place where you experience everything. Now, as for putting it past that, and assuming there is an actual life-force to be worshiped, I don't know. Nobody does.
I will probably not ever know what it is that I am really after. Is it that I'm just bored with earth and humanity? Is it just that I read too much sci-fi? Or is what I've felt my entire life real? Do I have a soul, and does it belong somewhere else? Have I been alive before? Is that why I was born acting like a thirty year old? I am so starved for adventure. I don't want to be a grown up. I don't want the adventures that grown ups have. The only adventurous thing that grown ups do is buy a new rug for the living room. They seem to give up on really living. They lose their hearts for animals and for other human beings, and get jobs that pay and buy new furniture and coddle it like a toddler. How do I keep myself from losing this? Where can I find adventure? I feel like I was born for danger. And you know what? I think everyone feels that way. I think that's why we love books like Harry Potter, where the person assumes that they are so average, until one day they find out that they were destined to save the world since the moment that they were born. I think we all strongly identify with that. So why is that? And why do we always lose it?
This sounds silly, but maybe I should join the armed forces. Because honestly, I am not afraid. I am a fighter. I was born to be one. If I think someone is breaking into my house, my heart pounds with excitement, not fear. I get still, and I listen, so that I can determine what I should do. And honestly? I smile a little bit. Because I want to fight. I want to be a protector. I realize that this isn't a traditional female role. We are the ones being stuffed into a closet and told to hide. I don't want to hide. I want to protect. I want to protect because I am not afraid. And call me old fashioned, but protecting something that I love seems like such a preferable way to die. I don't want to die in a nursing home, pooping my adult diaper. But that is how things are in this culture. That is what people dream of. That is why they pay a million dollars in the hospital to treat their sickness. So that they can die in a nursing home surrounded by strangers, so weak that they can't run anymore. They can't stand. I would never, ever want that. I am so thankful for the fact that I am now old enough to be listened to. That I am fully grown, so that I can use my body. I don't ever want to be a reduced to a child again, powerless and weak. I am so thankful to be at a point where I know for a fact that I can do anything, as long as I am given an opportunity. And I am very good at convincing people to give me an opportunity.
To give another example of a culture that I am extremely familiar with and that I identify with, take wolves. Wolves and any other canine...I understand them. They operate in a similar way that humans do, except humans have overrun their natural instincts with all sorts of strange new things. With wolves, there is an alpha. There is a beta. This is true with humans as well. If you look hard enough, you will find them. You will know. There are the ones who eat last. The smaller ones. The ones who do not run as fast, and are not as successful. The order is only changed once established if there is a fight. You have to prove that you are stronger and more deserving of the position. There is no bitterness, only acceptance. And acceptance is easy when you understand that you don't have to be the alpha to be an integral part of a functioning pack. As a lower ranking member, you are just as key to the pack's success. An alpha is the protector. The alpha is always the first to be hurt, the first to challenge. They eat first because the other members respect them and the things that they do to protect those that cannot protect themselves. As for me...I think I'd be the female alpha. I still feel like I want to defer to a strong, healthy and dominant man, but at the same time I would not lower my head to anyone else. I'm extremely strong and able, very dominant with incredibly strong protective instincts.
ANYWAY, I'm tired of talking about this, because I've talked about it for years and it never gets me anywhere, really. Maybe one day I'll find out that I wasn't crazy all of these years.
The beautiful thing about the human condition (probably other beings as well) is that with questions like these, we do not have definite answers imposed upon us from the outside. Sure, as we're raised we're offered answers, but being that both those answers and those we create for ourselves are people's imaginings and that what works for some people does not work for others, we must decide for ourselves. And by for ourselves, I don't mean for all of our selves throughout our lifetime - created truths can be meaningful on one day and mush on another, so we have as much freedom to create who we are in any situation as we do to interpret the context of our lives in ways that suit us.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, you can assume that fictional worlds don't exist except in the media where we perceive them just like you can say our dreams are just imaginings, but chances are, to the you that exists when you're having an epic dream, the world where you're reading this, the world we call material while we're in it, is but a glimmer of memory. The question is, would this give your life the sort of narrative that would help you to accomplish what you desire, and to have the experiences you need? Say you're just some sad human bored of a dying earth, much like this way of interpretation would view James Cameron (but without the movie studio). What would believing this help you do? Go on living your life like as if this peculiar impression never occurred to you? If that's what you want to do, sure.
But consider the alternative. Say there is some resonance between you and the Na'vi, regardless of whether they exist in the form you imagine now or in some other permutation of the universe, here or elsewhere. How can you transform your life to amplify this resonance? That seems to be what you're yearning to do.
Well, you could certainly zone out and fantasize all you want, dropping out of this world for the alternity you glimpsed in Avatar. It'd be nice, until you had to feed yourself, and your daily life might be diminished if you got to think of it as something you have to do, but that you wish you could avoid. So perhaps in measure fantasize, but the great thing about imagination is that its creations can be brought into the world of the being that imagines.
Suppose you wanted to bring an aspect of Na'vi life into your own. For me, their most fascinating facet in terms of capability is the umbilicus of fibers that intertwine with those of other beings on Pandora. This connection is the synecdoche of the difference between them and humans, as I see it: Na'vi have an obvious organ with no function besides to connect to the natural world; humans, without such an organ, operate in Cameron's film as if they are disconnected from the natural world (and not just in his film.) If you really want to resonate with the Na'vi, you may want to alter the capabilities you allow yourself in order to allow yourself such a connection.
Upon examination, it seems that believing one has no such capability and attempting this may prove one right, but so does believing that you can connect and trying as many ways you can until you find one that works.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the simplest ways to create a connection like this is by interacting with (rather than just being around) a tree. If you put your attention in your left elbow, you can feel a sensation in that region of your body that indicates to your that your attention is there. You can move this attention around in your body, and most people are at least vaguely aware of that, but we've forgotten that we can feel other beings this way, as well.
Stand before a tree, acknowledge it as an entity in whatever way suits you ("Hello, tree"). Reach out to it with your arm until you can feel it on the surface of your hand. Then, bring your attention to your breathing, and at the same time, to the interface between skin and bark. As you exhale, you give the tree carbon dioxide, and as you inhale, the tree gives you oxygen. So when you're breathing, touching this beautiful tree, as you exhale you direct your attention, just like you directed it up your arm earlier, through the skin/bark interface and along the tree. Then as you inhale, feel the tree flowing up your arm in the same way you went into it. With the next breath, you might find that you flow further into the tree, and the tree further into you. Eventually, you may find the tree reaches your heart just as you reach its roots, leaves, and trunk. If you'd like a rather detailed article about communicating with our arboreal friends, http://www.dharmacafe.com/index.php/gaia/article/how-to-befriend-a-tree/ . The technique above was distilled from there - appropriately, I tried this the day before I saw Avatar with little idea what was coming.
Of course, the tree is just an example. If you rode a horse and became a dual unity with hir, you might find better rapport than when you ride a horse thinking of it as a tool for travel. Similarly, I hear this method helps expand the boundaries of sexual experiences, though I have not had the opportunity to try it since learning it.
Above all, I think this yearning can help you expand your horizons, and that your sense of alienation is helpful for this in that you are more inclined because of it to use assumptions you haven't seen all of these humans relying on. You only know the limits of your reality once you test them, and when we know something, we mean that we have known something. Reality is subject to change.