Unraveling Social Norms
Embracing movement, challenging constructs, and exploring the aliveness of being
At the moment we decide to truly question social norms is when a thread in the tapestry comes loose, and we’re faced with the choice of either trying to push the thread back in, snip it off, or pull on it and see what happens.
Social constructs are powerful forces that we adopt and shape our lives around. Because of them, when a thread in the tapestry comes loose, we feel compelled to either push it back in or snip it off. Pulling on the thread seems wrong. Living our lives without the trappings of a “successful” life seems wrong. We live in the realm of shoulds and shouldn’ts. When we meet people for the first time, we have conversations around whether or not we have kids and how many, where we went to college, what work we do, are we Christian or other, are we straight or gay, are we Democrat or Republican.
Well, pulling on the thread is what I’ve been doing of late.
I’ve never been one for social conventions. In both my marriages, I never felt it necessary to have a “legal” wedding or even one in which all manner of friends and family attend and we perform various rituals of which we’ve long since forgotten their meaning. Or one of the newer traditions of smearing wedding cake on the face of the other. It was probably funny the first time, but then it became a thing and lots of couples took to the new tradition because it seemed like the thing to do.
As a kid, I tried baseball, but I wasn’t into it. Instead, I found long-distance running — a solitary sport requiring a connection between the rhythm of the body and the mind. I was into skateboarding for a while but was also into riding a unicycle. I loved music and gravitated toward blues and jazz fusion while most of my friends were either into rock or soul. I liked rock and soul, in particular Santana and Pink Floyd — two bands that couldn’t be more different.
Christmas has always seemed weird to me, a feeling that has caused much consternation in both my marriages. As the narrative goes, when there are children involved we need to do Christmas for them, and I just need to get over myself. I’ve tried to make an effort, but it never felt right to me.
I never wanted children of my own, for lots of reasons I won’t get into. Let’s just say the idea of the nuclear family didn’t appeal to me.
Although . . .
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