#persinette

There’s something off about an Instagram infographic declaring it’s “valid” to end a lifelong friendship, or not be close to their sibling. While these things are of course “valid,” (at the very least, they’re certainly common) they’re also deeply personal choices that should be carefully considered and regarded with a certain amount of gravity. When we “normalize” something, we are communicating that it no longer needs to be considered. This type of post treats the complex relational dramas that constitute real life as a simple matter, something “valid” and “normal” that we don’t need to think deeply about or truly experience for ourselves. This push for “normalization,” the need to deem every experience as “valid,” intends to dissolve shame, but instead discourages real human experience and feeling. Once again, we are encouraged to deaden ourselves. I want to work through my complicated feelings about certain friends and family, pursue the question in the books I read and the things I write. I want to talk about it with people. These are real human problems, and it’s not supposed to be simple. I resent the idea that we can deem any such feeling “valid” or “normal” and call it a day. Let me grapple! Let me exist!

Persinette’s Psalm

When we “normalize” something, we are communicating that it no longer needs to be considered. This type of post treats the complex relational dramas that constitute real life as a simple matter, something “valid” and “normal” that we don’t need to think deeply about or truly experience for ourselves. This push for “normalization,” the need to deem every experience as “valid,” intends to dissolve shame, but instead discourages real human experience and feeling. Once again, we are encouraged to deaden ourselves. I want to work through my complicated feelings about certain friends and family, pursue the question in the books I read and the things I write. I want to talk about it with people. These are real human problems, and it’s not supposed to be simple. I resent the idea that we can deem any such feeling “valid” or “normal” and call it a day. Let me grapple! Let me exist!

I was reading some variations of the Rapunzel fairy tale and I came across what I think Disney might have gotten the inspiratuon for Rapunzel's hobbies in Tangled.

What kind of plant is Rapunzel?

I think of humans as vulnerable, changeable, profoundly open beings. When I use words like “vulnerable” or “sensitive,” I don’t mean weak or emotional. To me, these words convey that we are not the stable entities we tend to believe ourselves to be, and we are never not in a process of transformation catalyzed by everything we come into contact with, or “sense.” It is our nature to be profoundly open to experience and the world around us, and we long for that. Love reawakens us to our true nature as inherently vulnerable beings, because love requires our transformation. Dreams function similarly—finally in a state of radically nonlinear antirational openness, our psyche is able to pour out and express itself to us. Love, dreams, fantasy, meditation and deep prayer all require a vulnerable, trancelike state that enables a break from every day reality and returns us to ourselves. I regard this process of “checking out” from reality as sacred, as it requires one to disregard the fear that accompanies vulnerability in service of a greater purpose, such as connection, truth, spirituality, or self-discovery. When I use my phone to check out, I go into a trancelike state, but unlike the sacred trances I described above, there is no greater purpose being served. I turn off my brain and open myself up, and corporations pour their content into me. They give me their dreams for free. […]  Dreaming each other’s dreams—taking on the other’s experience and transforming oneself in the process—this is why we love. It is also why we shouldn’t attempt to harden ourselves. We are vulnerable so we can love and catch glimpses of reality outside of our tiny, humble individual vantage points, and this feature of humankind should be respected and protected. The endless scroll and the algorithm are mechanisms that invade our psychic space and pervert this sacred vulnerability by making us dream the dreams of people trying to sell us things and tell us who we are and how we should behave. We are lulled with constant meaningless stimuli until we’re numbed out, our screams swallowed. And in the space where we could be letting love in, we are being told all the reasons we should turn it away.