Would we be free?
"Free of what?", one might ask.
The answer... judgment.
Would "happiness" be redefined? Perhaps new parameters for happiness would be set.
"Happiness is only real when shared." is what Chris J. McCandess (bka Alex Supertramp) scribbled in a book as he lay dying in his "Magic Bus". Chris was dying a slow death from poisoning. He mistakingly ate toxic plants that soon claimed his life. And I guess he came to his conclusion when he realized he was dying alone. Sad. Very sad.
Recently I watched "Into the Wild". My friend is going to loan the book to me. But the film got me to thinking. I think Alex's story is a portrayal of what many, nay, most.... well, almost all of us struggle with, but don't necessarily know it. We are running from something and running toward another. But what? Do we know? Do you know? Do I know?
I have an idea of what I'm running toward. Freedom. More specifically, freedom of socially induced anxiety. This anxiety manifests in many different ways. But all of it stems from internal conflict. (I hear Freud knocking on my door). As much as he's mocked, he was on to something that harkens back to the very cores of our being. But he wasn't alone. Others soon realized that as people develop, social influences shape our view of the world around us and our role in it.
Hence, the birth of behaviorism. Stage theorists operated under the same principle, but used different frameworks to convey their ideas. The binding concept is that for a person to develop in a healthy fashion, they had to negotiate a series of obstacles placed before them by society. If a person was unable to complete a "stage" successfully, conflict emerged. So the human animal has 2 choices... resolve the conflict or avoid it. Therein lie the complexities of behavior.
What Goldstein & Maslow called self actualization, Buddhists call enlightenment. Same thing, really. Different framework. I'm no expert on Buddism, but the principle applies.
In Alex's case, he was trying to free himself from socially imposed standards and expectations. He was just trying to.... be. But it came at a price. He was continuously haunted by internal strife stemming from conflicting thoughts and emotions. His conflict was between what he wanted to become and what his (our) world expected of him.
You know that expression about people that tend to do their own thing... marching to the beat of a different drum? I wonder if those people ever figure out who the drummer is. How many of them beat their own drum? Each culture has its own beat... its own drum. And since people define what the culture is, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that each person could have their own drum, and subsequently, their own rhythm?
So we struggle. Amidst the din of drums, we have to decide if we want to step into the rhythm of one or learn to play the drum.
Find your drum.
Be well
Stephan
