- #writing/ideas write about feeling this inherent fear and shame around assertiveness (bathroom anecdote) and how this is socialized as acceptable among women because it is socially understood that women feel this pressure but not so much for men so it feels weird to be sharing it out.
One of the things I’ve struggled most with in my life is being assertive. Whether it’s about my dreams and my wants or my emotional and even physical needs, I’ve always hesitated to take up space for myself. I hesitate to insert myself in the world, drop my name in the middle of a run-on sentence. Some fear embedded deep in my psyche who thinks that desires are a zero-sum game, that putting my dreams and wishes and needs into the world will prevent someone else’s from being achieved.
I wonder where that idea came from, this annoying edge of scarcity that snags me every time I reach for what I want. It’s like a tiny weight on my muscle joints, hardly noticeable in the day-to-day but devours all attention in the heat of the moment. Whenever I really need to be agile, a split second decision in the heat of the moment, it throws my instinct all out of wack. I miss the window. I forget to jump. I’m stuck in the quicksand of my own mental illusions, imaginary prison walls keeping me trapped.
I don’t easily feel (or show) negative emotion, but one thing that really annoys me is people who don’t have a sense of agency. I feel deeply frustrated on two levels. One is the fact that the actions of someone without agency often feel forced or fake, or their motivations for doing things are so clearly misaligned with how they actually feel. The other is an annoyance at the world, for the set of circumstances that lead to agency-less people, that train them to submit their own ideas in favor of some greater “good” or “rightness.” A sickness that conditions people that they can’t create value themselves because it’s out there in the world produced by the meaning makers, the game-changers, the culture tasters and their job is to tactfully collage together the scraps that fall between the cracks. A meekening of the human mind. The voice that teaches us that dreaming is dangerous. That safety is the ultimate good, worth sacrificing freedom for.
You might rightfully conclude that this belief puts me in direct conflict with myself, when my fear takes over. You might also assume correctly that the deep frustration I feel in these moments paralyzed by anxiety is reflective of a deep frustration with my own lack of agency. A splitting of my mind into dual angers, one at my body for treating me this way and the other at the world, cursing everything outside my control that somehow incentivized me to feel this way.
In the Souls of Yellow Folk, Wesley Yang drills primarily into the cultural experience of an Asian-American male (yes, overblown marketing title, i know). He writes fearlessly about tropes that hide in the shadows of their experience growing up, a set of unspeakable what-ifs related to some of our deepest frustrations.
My interest has always been in the place where sex and race are both obscenely conspicuous and yet consciously suppressed, largely because of the liminal place that the Asian man occupies in the midst of it: an “honorary white” person who will always be denied the full perquisites of whiteness; an entitled man who will never quite be regarded or treated as a man; a nominal minority whose claim to be a “person of color” deserving of the special regard reserved for victims is taken seriously by no one. In an age characterized by the politics of resentment, the Asian man knows something of the resentment of the embattled white man, besieged on all sides by grievances and demands for reparation, and something of the resentments of the rising social-justice warrior, who feels with every fiber of their being that all that stands in the way of the attainment of their thwarted ambitions is nothing so much as a white man. Tasting of the frustrations of both, he is denied the entitlements of either.
Even re-reading this passage is hard for me, some subconscious aversion to confronting this perspective and at the same time, a deep level of being seen. It feels like those things you find horrific but can’t bring yourself to look away from. Yang identifies a strain of thought that repeatedly flits by at the edge of consciousness but is actively (eventually, automatically) swatted away to languish in the shadows. It’s the sort of thing that is a lot to even consider, especially given our cultural upbringing around simultaneously being gracious with what we have and the necessity of maintaining a proper image. How can we complain when we’re doing so well in school? How could we even think about comparing ourselves to someone oppressed or in need of handouts? We’re taught to be resilient, independent, a steady shield for our family against the chaos of life. We’re called upon to bring order to the messy world, to ward away tragedy and hardships with the sweat, salty like tears, streaming down our bodies.
I’ve started to hate moral stories around greed and selfishness. There’s a classic Chinese idiom “人心不足蛇吞象” that my mom has certainly recited to me dozens of times. It means something like “a person’s greed (dissatisfied heart) is a snake swallowing an elephant.” Supposedly, a snake cannot swallow an elephant, but is it so bad that it dreams of trying? Maybe once we satisfy a want we grow the seed of always wanting something new, never being satisfied with what we have. So what if we’re always chasing something we love and risking it all to get more? Isn’t that what living is about: risking what we have in pursuit of what we love?
The risk, the danger, the fear. These are the stakes that make everything matter. The way death gives meaning to life, absence gives meaning to presence, suffering gives meaning to unadulterated joy. Fear is the foil to fulfillment. It needs to feel real, like it’s all on the line for the end to be worth it.
Narcissism is a pretty universal normatively bad thing. I don’t think narcissists feel fear when it comes to their desires. They simply act as if every action is right. There’s a moral superiority that underlies every action, powered by a divine credence in themselves.
Non-psychopaths hearing that will probably agree these sorts of people are usually dicks. But what if aiming for narcissism is good for people who so naturally struggle with being too agreeable? What if it’s necessary?
It’s a lofty goal for those that are so averse to self-assertion, trying to launch yourself to the other end of the spectrum. The socially acceptable way to be selfish or narcissistic is referred to as “self-care,” but I don’t think we can dress it up in acceptable language if we want to change our psyche. How about acting like the main character, rather than caveating all we want and explaining all we do. It’s time to take arrogance for a spin, have your own villain arc. Aim for the opposite of what you naturally value to give your cells a chance to learn what’s valuable from a completely foreign perspective. Accepting an irrational acceptance of everything that comes from you as good, even necessary for the world. It’s the common villain trope: their goals are often for the good of everyone else, and they’re working to actualize it for the greater good. Well, maybe what you think and what you want is necessary, maybe the world needs you to be stubbornly defiant that your presence is a force for good.
Feel for a moment the power that comes from moving past fear, from the freedom to weave your dreams into reality, the latitude to exercise your agency. Linger for a while in the sun shining for your amusement, savor the way the world paves a road in whatever direction you head. Be free from fear. And then come back and notice how light your shoulders feel.
- souls of yellow folk
- main character energy
- maybe narcissism is a good goal for people who naturally struggle with being agreeable.
- I think aiming for the opposite of your fundamental nature is a useful exercise in teaching you what’s valuable about a perspective completely foreign to you.