Grace notes from a comic
How’d I look? Lady, you’d look stunning in a McDonald’s outfit. The others paraded up there in jeans and sweatshirts and here comes femininity so striking that it blacked out everything around it. The building was yours. I owe it all to my stunning 3.5+ GPA. I’m laughing, but here’s the truth in it from an expert in laughs:
“One of the most inspiring experiences in life. . . is . . . being with a woman whose company is fun because she is an interesting human being. The fact that she is also a member of the opposite sex gives her those grace notes that make her song more pleasing to hear.”
Who said that? A much-loved, world class entertainer named Jack Benny. Not suggesting that it’s for a man to make a woman interesting but only that when that’s what she makes of herself she’s putting value into her relationships. Instead of what? Imagery. Gender and object, role-playing and appearance. By being a person. The real deal.
The ape within
Isn’t everyone a person? For some, slapping names and numbers on bodies is all it takes. For others, becoming a person is a work in progress. That requires concentration, reflection and experience, because we weren’t welcomed into this life originally as persons. All Earth had ever welcomed was animals. And at first that’s what it got until we showed up. Animals trying to be something better. Persons.
Women persons. Men still haven’t gotten past ape. Forever captive to cherchez la femme. The root of not knowing truly who we are, men and women, is the effort we put into hiding our apeness. Hiding ourselves in the process, estranged from thoughts and feelings that would be ours if we could only recognize them. Allowing ape to roam free in our psyches without our being aware of it. You’re not suggesting. . . What? That academic letters were just awarded tonight to fugitives from a zoo? If they were we can blame science, because zoology says so.
What’s the harm in letting a nice ape have the run of our psyches? The whole person that’s better than animal doesn’t find meaning in how animals live. Bodies in constant competition among unequals, relying on instinct, the will to survive and dominate, to tell them what to do. Not to find meaning since animal instinct doesn’t understand it and has no use for it. Ask animal instinct for the meaning of anything and you might be risking your life.
An ideal worth pursuing
Then where does the whole person find meaning? In what “person” is for: loving friendship. The animal having free run of the human psyche is its opposite: unrelatability. Not coming to terms with our apeness means distancing ourselves indefinitely from what person is most in need of: meaning and loving friendship.
We can’t have one without the other? Substitutes lure us into thinking so for a time. The benefits of tribal membership, especially, in a culture of incompatibility and hostility. Made “livable” by tribal uniformity and by distractions. Mainly games of competition. But a constant round of livability interrupted by unlivability can’t be an ideal worth pursuing no matter how much it’s romanticized. The individual needs meaning that isn’t pointless. Loving friendship. The point of being a whole person: relatability. Expressed through relationship.
Who am I?
High school seems to be all about joining groups and playing games. Excelling at stuff in competition, as if students can’t be trusted to excel for the love of what they’re learning and good at. A challenge to relatability that jogged my mind over time into asking life’s most important question: Who am I? So high school could be doing what it’s meant to do. Just so long as it doesn’t mislead its students by imposing the wrong answer.
Which is? Any answer. The response to life’s most important question from an animal striving to be something better, to be a person capable of loving friendship, can only be a question: Who are you? From within the same mind that harbors an ape but also has access to another kind of self that’s not-ape. That can be given whatever form you like just so long as it helps you discover the person behind the mask. That’s capable of becoming your BFF.
Who are you?
Who would care who I am? The voice from beneath the surface of the pond mirroring your image when you look into it. When you ask the mirror Who am I? and it answers Who are you? How else can it be your BFF without you knowing yourself? Without it’s knowing whether you want loving friendship or would rather continue hiding from yourself. Being unrelatable.
Without your accepting responsibility for defining yourself with help from the voice behind the mirror. Without seeking and accepting its offer of loving friendship. When it’s doing what friends do: supporting one another emotionally. Helping one another practically.
Help for an individual striving toward personhood because “whole person” is relationship. Individuals in loving friendship with a part of themselves that’s better than animal instinct willing tribal bodies to compete. Better than ape. Better than the ape-in-chief: king of beasts. More like Mind-relationship, our role model. Love married to Logic, the parents of the Mind-Child imagining us and our make-believe kingdom of animals.
From the spirit of the pond
The answer to who would care who you are is you. You who are not one but two. Not you and ape who wills you to remain in its kingdom of hierarchy, opposed to relationship. But you and self connected with better-than-ape. Who can help you reach meaning with loving friendship when you engage with it. Converse with it. What better source of help with reflection than your own reflection?
The spirit of the pond. Beneath its surface mirroring your image. A sprite. Playful. Funny and fun-loving. Trusting and trusted. Gifted with intimacy that can’t be misled by masks of benevolence or invincibility hiding the ape. Gifted with the meaning of loving friendship.
The reason why we come to the pond to look at our reflection. To ask Who am I? Life’s most important question. Because until we take responsibility and accept help from Who are you? the tribal ape within will go on answering for us.