The Little Prince and the Fox

In the past week or so, as one of my best friends & I talked about lost identities and core selves and finding or rediscovering parts of our selves, he recommended the three Kung Fu Panda movies to me; so I watched them. 

[Spoiler alert: the rest of this post might give away a lot of info, if you haven’t seen the Kung Fu Panda movies, yet.]

I watched all three of them in less than a week and just finished the third one last night. And I totally loved them! But not just as in, “Oh, I really enjoyed that movie, it was so interesting or so fun or so moving”. They truly resonated with me, touched something deep within me, while also surprising me in pleasant ways. I admit, I watched them with no idea of what to expect; but I was sort of expecting a bit of the “usual” or “standard” version of a “hero”, or that Po (the panda) would become “cool” once he discovered he was the “Dragon Warrior”. But no: he remains just his childish, fun, adorable, friendly, goofy self, true and authentic to himself, full of his own doubts and confusion even once he embraces his being the “Dragon Warrior”: and being goofy and scared or confused doesn’t stop him from achieving wonderful goals, not only for himself but also — and just as importantly — for those around him, for the well-being of his communities. 

There’s really A LOT that I loved about these three movies, A LOT that I identified and/or resonated with, so I’ll just mention a few things briefly here: Po’s being childish and yet wise at the same time; Po’s realizing that he is lots of different “things” all rolled into “one”, and coming to peace with this — the plurality of the self; Po’s “unconventional” family, as he has two dads, no moms (living), and is raised and then lives within three different communities (or “chosen families”) — that he finally brings together; Po’s being saved, at the end, by the people he was trying to save, by the persons & communities he was trying to protect — the interdependence of all their separate Qi’s coming together and strengthening Po’s Qi; the idea, expressed explicitly a couple times by some masters to their student(s): “I don’t want to turn you into myself; I want to turn you into yourselves”. 

Being a teacher myself (among many other things), I resonated a lot with this latter concept, since it is also my ideal — whether I’m then able to practice it wholly or not… It’s a concept that has always been very dear to me, partly also because when I was growing up I often felt that those who were teaching me (especially my family of origin) were not trying to turn me into myself (i.e. let me be myself) but rather trying to turn me into new, younger versions of themselves (or of what they would have wanted to be or what their ideal was), and I suffered a lot from this. 

The other feeling that resonated with me from those last two concepts is the interdependence with my students or communities in which I am involved: as I try to help them be themselves, actually it is often thanks to the fact that they see the “best potential” in my own self that allows me to give “my best” to them — or, at least, “one of my bests”, since I truly believe in the plurality of the self. 

So, yes, the Kung Fu Panda movies will definitely be on my “favorite films” list from now on! 

Recently, I started reading the book Life isn’t binary by M-J Barker & A. Iantaffi. I’m usually a slow reader but I’ve devoured this book. I could say so much about it, I hardly even know from where to start, so for now let me just say that this book has finally allowed me to see and put into words thoughts and feelings that I’ve had almost my entire life, it’s helping me not only in my self-discovery or self-determination but also in learning to find my voice and, above all, helping me to feel less “weird” or “insane” or isolated — which is wonderful! 

For today, I would like to share a short excerpt from the next-to-last chapter of their book on the binary view of emotions and, in particular, on the ingrained binary of “mad/sane”.

From Life isn’t binary by M-J Barker & A. Iantaffi:

“A sane response to a mad world?

The psychotherapist Winnicott famously said, of depression: 

‘The capacity to become depressed… is something that is not inborn nor is it an illness; it comes as an achievement of healthy emotional growth… the fact is that life itself is difficult… probably the greatest suffering in the human world is the suffering of normal or healthy or mature persons.’ [D. W. Winnicott, Human Nature, (1988)]

Perhaps we would do well to view the depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles that most of us grapple with at some point as a sane response to an insane world. This would shift the emphasis for change away from the individual and towards the wider societal structures and cultural messages around us.” [M-J Barker & A. Iantaffi, Life isn’t binary]

Once again, I find myself at a loss for words, at least for my own words — today I just find myself with raw, intense, overwhelming emotions and a particular song of one of my favorite musicians (Bruce Springsteen) ringing in my ears: “Human touch”.

So here go the lyrics that particularly resonate with me (due to a situation in which I’ve found myself) lately:

“You and me we were the pretenders 

We let it all slip away 

In the end what you don’t surrender 

Well the world just strips away

Boy ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers 

Ain’t gonna find no miracles here 

Well you can wait on your blessings darlin’ 

But I got a deal for you right here

I ain’t looking for prayers or pity 

I ain’t coming’ ‘round searching’ for a crutch 

I just want someone to talk to 

And a little of that human touch 

Just a little of that human touch

…

Oh boy that feeling of safety you prize 

Well it comes with a hard hard price 

You can’t shut off the risk and pain 

Without losin’ the love that remains

We’re all riders on this train 

So you been broken and you been hurt 

Show me somebody who ain’t 

…  

You might need somethin’ to hold on to 

When all the answers they don’t amount to much 

Somebody that you can just talk to 

And a little of that human touch”

Do foxes go into — and therefore come out of — hibernation? If so, in springtime I’m definitely more like the little wild fox seeking friends to play with —  feeling pretty restless myself and hardly able to focus on work or “duties”! 

I guess I’m more like the Little Prince, roaming and exploring by myself, in the summertime, when I can take time off and travel on the road and/or in nature, when I don’t mind being on my own and interacting with other fellow explorers on the road. 

But now, in springtime, every springtime, I feel like I’m coming alive again and would like to share this “aliveliness” in a playful way, sharing more joy.

This is one of my favorite “tea-tag” quotes and I always try to live accordingly, but I’m realizing that it’s not always as easy as I though it would be…

Recently, I’ve often been saying that I’m “discovering my identity” and “finding my voice”, using the two phrases almost interchangeably. But it just hit me tonight, how these are actually two very different things, at least in my own experience. I’ve truly always known “my identity”, it’s always been instinctively clear to me who I am, what I love, what my dreams are; and that instinctive knowledge has often led me even in the darkest moments of confusion or fear, even when I didn’t know why I was doing something or where it would take me next. But only recently have I started to “voice my identity” or to “find my voice”. Only recently have I come to realize that knowing, or at least sensing, who we are or what we want can still be a far cry from being able to accept ourselves & our dreams as they are; and often an even farther cry from being able to say out loud, “this is who I am, this is what I want/need/dream of”, because too often we fear that we won’t be heard or accepted or respected by those around us. 

Many times, and by many people, I’ve been told that I am “brave”, even “nuts” or “wild” or “fearless”: and in general I think that’s true, I identify with that description of myself. But recently I have often been feeling that “finding my voice” or “voicing my identity” is requiring far more courage from me than any of the many wild, reckless things I usually do!

Yesterday I watched the movie “The Glorias” about Gloria Steinem and the Women’s Liberation movement. 

Apart from loving the film, I really resonated with two quotes of Gloria Steinem’s, so I’ll share them again here:

On instinct: “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but you think it’s a pig … it’s a pig.” 

On truth: “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off!”

[Belated Happy Birthday, Gloria, and thanks for what you and all the people involved in similar activism have been doing to make this world a better place!]

I miss having fun, especially shared fun: this is one of the great tolls this pandemic is taking on me — and maybe on other “singles” or “loners” like me. 

Joy, excitement, enjoyment, play (on my own as well as shared, in company) have always been very important to me, to my well-being — although, I admit, for great parts of my life I have given far too little time or importance to fun/enjoyment, especially to cultivating ways of sharing the fun with others. And some of this is coming back and biting me in the butt now. This pandemic is probably limiting or reducing the possibilities for fun/enjoyment/play for many, if not most, people. But it seems to me that I’m feeling this loss in my current life in an extremely sharp way because I hadn’t built “solid enough ties” with any specific group or community of “shared fun” to somehow last or weather the pandemic: with the current restrictions and limitations on the number and ways that we can safely interact with each other, people are instinctively spending time, including “fun time”, only with their closest ones, with their tightly-knit “social bubbles”. Although before the pandemic I was fortunate to enjoy shared fun in the company of several different “social bubbles”, now I’m not easily included in any of them anymore. And once again, I’m not sure how much of this is caused by my own behaviors or internal conflicts and how much of it is instead due to some bias in our society.   

This might seem like a minor problem, and certainly there are much bigger issues! But I also believe that life without shared joy is alienating and, fundamentally, sad — while joy can be an incredible drive and motivation for so many wonderful things!