drawing lines
Have you ever seen a wave swallow a whale before? I love using this analogy because each time before the whale submerges, it surfaces one last time to let air out: it’s blowhole will literally shoot plumes of mist out of its head. Sometimes like a big grand display, sometimes in small, beautiful flashes and sometimes in ways we don’t expect. Kind of like humans: we love to emerge for a single moment before submerging to our comfort zones.
To an extend, everyone has a set of values they have come to use in order to protect themselves. The protection point I will discuss here is not necessarily targeting others but ourselves. In other words, protecting ourselves from our own intrusive thoughts. At the end of the day, people set up these virtues and boundaries in order for ourselves to not cross them.
Enablers: the big bad wolves in the story that exists in everyone’s character growth arc. In my opinion, these wolves are really just goats. Scapegoats. They are the most vegetarian, vegan, NON-GMO folks that is as harmless as a person after their morning coffee followed by cardio. In more fairy tale terminology for those of you who enjoy a good dystopian fantasy, they are the sheep covered in wolf skin. Example time: these people are the drug dealers that came to ruin a recovering cocaine addict. In other words, these people come in when we need an excuse for overstepping our own boundaries.
This might be a hard pill to swallow: oftentimes, we find someone so endearing and favorable simply because we know they are able to enable all of the things we are secretly wanting. I’m going to go back to the cocaine addict here: is it truly the drug dealers’ fault for ruining a recovering addict’s cleanse or is it the addict’s fault for breaking his own boundaries? I think latter. With all being said, here comes my analysis on why this isn’t a bad thing. It’s natural for humans to desire: everyone wants to eat, drink, sleep, love and dream. Being able to desire and wish is just as beautiful as the exploding mists above the water from those whales. In Chinese culture, there is even a terminology and methodological study behind the power of desires called “欲“. If you have ever heard the story of Emperor Qin, he is an emperor that was once a king of one of the six united kingdoms and then took over all of them in dynasty period China. In order to slay so hard (quite literally since he killed so many people), he had to have very intense and strong desires. Strong enough that a famous poem was written about the history of the fallen six kingdoms that turned in the the Qin dynasty called “六国论”. In this poem, it talks about the downfall and folklores of the tyrannical acts of each individual kingdom that lead to Qin’s takeover. One of my favorite lines from this collection is “然则诸侯之地有限，暴秦之欲无厌” which literally translates to the more that these kingdoms had offered up to Qin, the more he desired. In this case, you can see that in a way these smaller kingdoms were enablers into Qin’s actions. The most important takeaway that I understood out of this collection of poems was not to spite the violence and hateful acts Qin did in order to conquer but more so on what causes and what fuels desires. Qin obviously cannot blame nobody but himself for the actions that he condemned in order to accomplish his goals.
To what extent is this troubling is that the mindset we set on desiring or in other words, taking responsibility of our own desires. As natural as these instincts are, we use excuses such as enablers to cancel out the burdens that we were suppose to uphold when acting upon our satisfaction. As a result, there is less enjoyment and fulfillment that comes out of the experience and the quality our relationships with these said enabling factors are significantly drained. Most people aren’t happy by the outcomes of their actions. No matter what social, economical and relationship status we are all at. All due to our own inability to add meaning into the actions we enabled upon ourselves. Let’s moralize desires. Desires and duty should be equated as the same amount of respect. That’s pretty much my ramble for the day. As always, have a great day folks!
