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Compulsive, pink
I asked a friend why he was giving what seemed to me like way more than enough time and energy to a project, and he said, in the clipped manner that sometimes made me laugh, “Compulsive.” Both of us laughed in mutual acknowledgment of his “condition”.
Compulsive people are a dime a dozen, though my friend is certainly not. Being compulsive is a norm not only of behavior but also of attitude. Doing doing doing, which may be escaping escaping escaping or distraction distraction distraction, all of which denote an urgent cover for anxiety, which itself overlays fear.
A society, such as contemporary Western, that touts success, competition, and productivity may reward compulsive behavior. But . . . compulsion is not its own reward. Compulsion is its own failure. A failure at peace and balance. I saw that in my friend.
Regardless of the fears that compulsiveness covers and for which it provides the cover of must do, must accomplish, and the more the better, compulsion feels crummy.
My friend and I haven’t talked with one another for a while, so as far as I know he’s still compulsive–not in the pink. As an enthusiastically understanding scholar writes about my work, in which the color pink figures potently, “Why be blue when you can be pink?”
Why be compulsive when you can be at peace?
Compulsion is the opposite of choosing, and changing oneself most often requires choosing to do so. Compulsion is a very problematic irresistibility, in which a person’s behavior becomes compulsory and self-coercive–I-can’t-stop-myself or (more consciously perhaps) Here-I-go-again. I’m not sure if experiencing anything as irresistible is a great idea. A man who’s too tempting. A pair of shoes that’s too beautiful. Some chocolate concoction that’s too delicious. An argument that’s too convincing. Irresistibly good is probably too good to be true, so I wouldn’t say that changing oneself needs to be an irresistible choice.
Some might say that pink is an irresistible color. Despite my great fondness for it, I’ll say, rather, that it calls me, as a metonym, to health. Pink inspires me, and, more romantically put, it’s a calling. Maybe that’s as good as changing oneself gets–it’s a calling.
- March 2, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind
- Comments 1
Why be blue when you can be pink!!!