October 29, 2024 by Dymphna

T-Bomb: Release yourself from this torture

Truth Bomb Tuesday: I don’t need you to be consistent.

One of the great tortures of life is the pressure to be consistent.

We feel we must have consistent opinions and a consistent world-view.

Contradict yourself and people will think you are weak-minded, if not crazy.

And so we feel a lot of pressure to be consistent.

That’s not all that helpful because we are not consistent beings.

At the very least our outlooks evolve as we get older – or at least they should, if we’re getting wiser!

But even one moment to the next, it’s not always clear that there’s a singular “I” having opinions about things.

As Walt Whitman said, we contain multitudes.

To offer a simple example, I can both want to smash an entire packet of Tim Tams in a single sitting, and I can not want to do that.

“Part of me” wants to indulge and live in the moment. “Part of me” recognises that I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow if I don’t do that.

This often gets set up as a conflict between our base instincts and our higher selves. But I’m not sure that’s not just a value statement layered over the fact that different parts of ourselves want different things at any given point in time.

I can find someone irritating and irresistibly attractive at the same time.

I can want to spend time developing my art practice, and I can want to spend time learning about quantum physics.

I can be terrified of public speaking, and find it incredibly exhilarating and alluring at the same time.

There are just different versions of me that want different things.

And sometimes I contradict myself. Very well, I contradict myself.

But we’re terrified of contradicting ourselves because people will judge us.

Worse yet, there’s like this assumption that if we contradict ourselves, then our opinions and desires are not valid.

“You said that you wanted to eat healthy this year, but now I find you stuffing your face with TimTams. I just don’t know what to believe any more. I can’t believe anything you say.”

Worse still, we can do this to ourselves. “Last year I wanted to do art. Today I want to study science. I can trust anything I want.”

And so we feel a pressure to present to the world in a consistent way.

Which becomes a pressure to be a consistent person.

Which is just another way we try to deny our actual lived experience in order to “fit in” with social expectations.

It’s a pressure that’s crazy making.

Much better to just accept that different parts of you want different things at different times. That is just how humans work.

There’s no point pretending otherwise.

DB.