kendrick said clout chasin’ hell of a disease brother. i definitely have thought about that a lot after he said that. like it’s something where i see it as an energy which informs the way one relates to the self that allows self actualization and desire to be informed by pride, envy and a binary approach to “better than worse than”. energies that make the self hard and sharp. against each other and forceful in a way that is false.
pride is really interesting to me in that way. in myself when it emerges it’s oftentimes a kind of restriction of my core (bodily). my face hardens and i feel the need to protect and defend my position. i’m not suggesting that i don’t think there’s a time and place for me to protect and defend my position. i think pride is (in my experience) an alienating force that undermines connection and interconnection. it distorts my perception of “the way of things” and keeps me from engaging with my life in a way that i want to. it also seems to contain the desire to use potential in a specific way.
i think about anything that can be done excellently in the world. the expressions of creativity are endless and able to be rendered through various dynamic and iterative patterns across the teeming experience we exist inside of. it seems to me that this desire to be sharpened to a point (in order to be esteemed as better than in a specific way) is a motivation that inevitably injures and undermines the potential it’s seeking to exploit. in simpler terms, it seems to me that pride is self sabotage.
i’ve been thinking about being humbled (some) lately. i think the way that it most frequently crops up for me is engaging with my vulnerability in a gentle and compassionate way. for example, when someone is new at something they are often times clumsy and don’t know what indicators to look out for when interacting with the medium they are engaging. this opens them to the potentiality of being judged by themselves or others. however, to meet oneself in the space of discovery with an intention to nurture, cultivate, connect and become changes the relationship with the thing that is being discovered.
of course, this isn’t to dismiss the violence of the systems we exist inside of in the current ways humans have found to engage with one another through colonial ideologies. in our resilience, we sometimes get pulled into dysfunctional relationships with ourselves and others through the trespass of others upon us. that part isn’t a mystery to me at all.
for me it’s interesting to acknowledge and take stock of the aspects of this (the current experience i find myself living through) that i can work with and change to imagine a kinder space for us to share together. i think being a full grown person and realizing that one of the most subversive and defiant actions that can be undertaken inside of a system that values “production and progress” over the sacredness of life and experience, is to position my energy and self in a way that cultivates flourishing in myself and around me. in this way i do think clout chasing is a hell of a disease because it shifts the focus of our experience onto a craving for something that is (at it’s core) a distorted view of ourselves and others. we are not objects to be collected and used by one another.
structures of home 