A dilemma came before me today. The details aren't interesting, but the interior state I found myself in, due to the dilemma, was interesting.
There is a difficulty embedded in our genes. Namely, that all genes worry about is propagating the species. After you've done a good job of that, you can pretty much just die and go to hell.
Oh, but in order to propagate, of course you should flourish and grow happy and healthy and strong. Physical and intellectual health secure survival to full generative potential, not to mention the social clout to obtain the other half of strong genes. Important baby ingredient.
When my own genes look at me, those generators of the urges I find most meaningful and tender within me, they don't see Kathleen in all her beautiful uniqueness. They see, in potentia, one really freaking strong baby. No, not one, so many strong babies; as many as I could pop out.
This realization sometimes makes me a little put out. Why? Oh, I don't know. I guess because I was beginning to think, "Hey, I think Kathleen is kind of ok."
I was raised by an emotionally repressed Italian Catholic stay-at-home mom, so I started out suspecting Kathleen was about as wretched and useless as all my poor mother's own unresolved baggage about her self-worth told me I was. Counterintuitively, that was what bestowed my youthful swagger: because, back then, Kathleen and her genes were tight. Sooo tight.
What is this you exhort us to? "Self-gift?" Spend my entire life doing nothing but pouring out my love on everyone around me until I shrivel into a papery husk of a human being? Is that supposed to be hard? I'm so freaking good at that. I do it without thinking; pure instinct. Bro, I don't even think I have real human rights. I'm just that humble.
When a woman lives without a motive for self-preservation blocking the way to her own death, everything made a crazy amount of sense. I nurtured my hearty sacrificial/maternal instincts (aka traditional family values), which were in turn overwhelmingly canonized by my community as deep selflessness. I was in an infinite affirmation loop.
Then thanks to some relatively mild spiritual abuse, I had this falling out. All these canonizations, affirmations that I should give up basically all sense of my desires and rights -- or at least, the more the better -- began to feel a tiny bit fake. Then a tiny bit faker. Now they're gone.
Having lost that thread, I started trying to be happy in ways that didn't require paying a spiritual debt upfront in the coin of gratuitous suffering. This is an extremely difficult habit to unlearn. But anyway, this had the effect of gradually causing me to think that I might be someone who is worth making an effort to give good things to. Maybe I don't have to die to self just yet -- maybe I'm kind of ok after all.
But keep in mind, it's only the canonizations are gone. The genes are not. They're here. They don't see even one single baby.
And they're angry.
(Unfinished. Haha yep I'm never finishing this probs)
