VarsityOptimism

I cannon blasted through the second season of TRANSPARENT last night and have been listening to Bob Dylan's "Desire" on repeat all morning and while I can't say that this is an entirely advisable agenda for the first real-life day of 2016, my mind has clasped onto the concept of intergenerationally transmission of trauma.  My family has a lot of it. Most families do. I can't stop thinking about the Pfefferman family, upper-middle class Reform Jews living in Los Angeles and unable to escape the patterns of destructive and self-denying behavior that presses down upon them with the weight of hundreds of years of anger, dishonesty and conformity. This portrayal of secular Jewish guilt, shame and self-hatred is among the truest  representations I've seen in media. I felt it HARD. I lived that shit.  My mom comes from a family not entirely dissimilar from the Pfefferman's. The pain and psychological trauma that runs through my gene pool runs deep, and I only know a minuscule amount. How far back does it go? Was there a singular diversion point where the hurt and pain began? And if so, how do we escape it? Can we walk away from a churning swirl of genetically transmitted emotional trauma or are we just ticking timebombs that are fated to explode our inherited rage? Without defaming anyone, my family is fairly fucked up. All around. Mom's side, dad's side, step-families. They're also good and kind people. Don't get that confused. What I'm trying to get at is that maybe none of it is our fault. Maybe we are just born hurt and have to work backwards by accepting and accessing the ability to be honest with ourselves and be brave enough to become autonomous human beings free from the expectations and whims of the generations that came before us, otherwise, we risk repeating history and passing it onto the next generation.  Being a person isn't a moving sidewalk. It's not something that moves forward with the assistance of emotional inertia. You've got to walk it with your own two feet, even if you think you might have been better off standing in one place, carried along by an unseen force. I think I've taken steps to walk outside of the vortex of generationally transmitted trauma. I'm not perfect, but I sure as hell am not standing idly by asking "Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? This isn't fair. Blah blah blah blah." I also don't begrudge folks who have chosen a different way. People have their reasons for the things they think they have to do and I like to believe they are doing exactly what they need to be doing at this exact moment.  I recently heard that "bravery is easy when you defend yourself from others. Humanity is more difficult: It's when you defend others from yourself." It's an incredibly difficult concept to grasp and even harder to practice, but to not even try is the greatest betrayal to oneself. Be honest. Be responsible. Be respectful. First and foremost to your fucking self.

When your favorite band-that-is-currently-making-music continues to demand the best of themselves, you basically stop whatever you're doing and just acknowledge it. You're not surprised that they nailed it as hard as they did, you're just impressed by the consistency with which they achieve it. Every record just reaches higher and higher. #NoClosertoHeaven #TheWonderYears

88% serious about this. 12% outwardly trying to incite people.