Part 7e of Meeting the Voices in My Head and Searching for an Inner Adult
Revolution gives over to tyranny. Having won the right to untuck my shirt from my Simulated Parents, I needed to continue marching against my Simulated Peers or they would be the next oppressors. Usually people exert some independence, but get scared to be alone, so they fall into line with the next set of others that offers some safety. This new group then calls the shots, resulting in a new loss of independence, until another rebellion takes place.
I continued my rebellion against my parents, both simulated and actual, throughout adolescence. I fought a major battle a few days after graduating high school when I married my first wife. They tried to stop me, but I insisted. When I got married and left home, I thought I had transplanted myself out of a hothouse, into the wild, but I had actually just gone into a bigger pot in another hothouse. A few years later, I had already outgrown the pot and my wife couldn’t cope with the changes, got controlling, and I had to rebel again, resulting in divorce. Things continued this way and the Rebel kept rebelling until I found myself in a marriage that could accommodate my idiosyncrasies and give me room to grow.
The job of the Rebel is not only to resist other people, or our idea of other people. The Rebel rebels against life on life’s terms. There is so much about life I have no control over, where and when I was born, the content of my genetic code, the course of history, and the laws I must obey. I didn’t invent the language I speak. I didn’t even ask to be born. Then, I’ve got to die. It’s a rotten deal, so the Rebel pushes against every limit it can find because you never know, sometimes things can change.
My Rebel has been involved in the writing of this series. I could have just accepted current psychological theories as they were, taken Freudian, Jungian, or Internal Family System’s accounts of internal life, plugged in my own experience, and called it a day. But my Rebel said some things didn’t fit. It didn’t like what some things are called, or explained, so it found another way. I believe this is how all human knowledge is expanded, by a Rebel who is not satisfied with the way things are.
You may have a Rebel in you, too. If you were born one place and moved to another as an adult, your Rebel packed your bags. If you altered history, laws, or cultural norms, no matter how slightly, the Rebel led the march. If you put things in your own words, turned a new phrase, or produced something that was not there before, the Rebel guided your hand at the drawing board. If all you do is not go gentle into that good night, you are Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods.
Next in the Series: The Rebel’s Constituency
Keith Wilson - Counseling 