💾 Archived View for welovedyou.xyz › janwen › misc › tarot101523.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:31:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-04)
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I was in analysis today talking about my last draw, and I talked about the image of the insect ferryman guiding the golden figure to its destination. I said that I thought it was a pretty metaphor for teaching, but wasn't it a little patronizing? And my analyst actually laughed. She thought it was funny that I looked at this peaceful image and immediately had to go into a "critique of patriarchy". I hadn't noticed the connection between "patronizing" and "patriarchy", but it's definitely there.
My critical-pedagogy Paulo Freire brain had wanted to object: teaching isn't carrying over a passive passenger, it's actively engaging them in building knowledge collaboratively. Her laughing at this felt significant to me because of something I noticed while I was high on shrooms-- I was able to look directly at my superego and simultaneously recognize what it did for me and get exhasperated with its shit. Having this voice whispering in my ear that what I'm doing might be wrong, that I could be doing something more productive or noble, that I have ideals that aren't being met right now, that rest and enjoyment have costs... yeah, that guy sucks sometimes. That may have been the voice that was bringing up the critical pedagogy angle.
Which tells me another thing about that superegoic voice: another thing it polices is my leftist credentials, which I felt would have been threatened if I had left it at that. I can't leave myself open to being accused of sentimentality, patronism, etc.
Much like this voice's other axes it grinds, I don't think this is necessarily a harmful impulse, but I noticed its grounding in desire to conform with my chosen social circle and not just in authentic political conscience.
Why do I procrastinate on important things like this? I should be grading right now. Do I want to fail? Am I attached to my problems? In what way?
What do I gain by making my situation worse by inaction? It's hard to say that the concern of my loved ones is something I actually crave, considering how bad I feel about accepting help.
I say or think sometimes (though not very often, now that I think about it) that I want to get better, that I want to be a good teacher, but when I look inside for what I really want most of all, it's just to be dead and done with all this trouble. Which is very far from my professed ideals to say the least.
In a perfect world, I'd have time to interrogate this and heal, but in this one, the wise thing to do might be to just go back on my meds and to a certain level of functionality.