Convention

I have been recently contemplating the degree to which social conditioning constricts expression and extends to our public values a narrow range of tolerated behavior. For most of us it is more important to conform, fit in, not disrupt, by not being too much of anything, than it is to really express our full unique experience of our life in the world - peacefully and without doing harm, of course.

Tonight we saw the movie At Eternity's Gate, directed by Julian Schnabel about the late life of Vincent Van Gogh, attempting to present the man from his own interior. It is a film not easy to watch and at least partly successful in the endeavor ...  and it played right into my recent queries.

painted in 1890, his last year

Van Gogh's behaviors made him a shunned and feared individual, beyond the real danger he presented. He was alone with his extreme emotions and tortured internal life of whatever biological, psychiatric, or spiritual cause. He was not permitted to partake of adequate healthy social interchange to support a rich human existence. We always wonder about creative genius - does it thrive in the midst of such suffering or in spite of it?

No answers here, only more questions and reflections back to my medical training which was steeped in an environment of limited tolerance for unusual expression that might simply be natural embodied life force unfettered by strangulating social expectation. Which also makes me think about our educational system and it's confining boxes.

There's plenty of space in America for crazy extreme egoic expression which feels very different from a quiet life dedicated to pure enactment of internal motivation that might defy conventional norms.