Chapter 7c of Meeting the Voices in My Head and Searching for an Inner Adult
Nature has a problem. It needs to stir the pot. It wants you to get out, take chances, spread your seed, and do stuff. Furthermore, it needs you to be a little different from everyone else, so the species can benefit from natural variation. On the other hand, nature made you a social creature. You cannot survive on your own. You must get along with your fellows to thrive. Getting along with others requires a level of conformity so that you can trust each other.
In other words, nature needs you to be both cooperative and independent, compatible and unique, to grow roots and to travel, to tell people what they want to hear and to be authentic. What do you suppose nature does to resolve these contradictions? It creates two opposing drives in you and expects you to figure it out.
In the beginning of your life, it was necessarily all about cooperation. All the inner voices developed early in your life, the Face of the Other, the Feelings, the Simulations, and the Critics, were all to help you get along with others. If you tried to live under their rule forever, everyone would love you, but you wouldn’t be you. You’d fail to live up to your own potential. You’d feel like a fraud on the outside and dead inside.
So, how does a person function in a society, while being authentically who they are? That’s the million-dollar question that you and I try to answer continuously all day long. The optimum point between being and belonging keeps changing; so, as soon as you answer the question once, you’ve got to answer it again. It is the job of the Rebel within you to make sure you don’t cave in and lose yourself too soon.
Here’s the problem though, the Rebel, like all the parts we’ve looked at so far, doesn’t think things through. It just rebels against the most likely target of the moment.
Next in the Series: The Story of the Shirt Tail
Keith R Wilson 