The Verdict is Guilty, Punishable by Triangle Spins
My third year in secondary school, I had Mr. Joni as my math teacher. He’s…different, to say the least. In an interesting way, though. His tests are known to be tricky, and a lot of people fail it frequently. He’s a good teacher, nevertheless. He will teach you to the best of his abilities, and if you ask him to, he’ll teach you more. He enjoys the schadenfreude of watching us not really knowing whether to laugh or stay silent because he tells his jokes with a poker face and would sometimes slip anecdotes in between lectures.
One of his anecdotes that somehow managed to stick with me was about a triangle in your heart. A very sharp one, in fact, sitting on a pivot, in a very small chamber of flesh in your chest, so small that the tiniest movement meant puncturing the walls of the chamber. And that is exactly what it does, whenever you committed something wrong, did a mistake, made a bad choice. It starts to spin like a fidget spinner, tearing open the flesh, creating the pangs of pain we feel when we went on those courses of action. Pain otherwise known as guilt and/or regret.
Of course, this does not last, and eventually your flesh will patch itself back up again. What changes things, though, is how often the triangle spins. You see, if it spins frequently enough (in other words, you’re being a really bad and/or a really miserable person), either your triangle gets dulled bit by bit, or your flesh stops healing itself. Until comes a point in time, when there is no more sharpness to hurt, or flesh walls to be hurt, that we cease to feel the pain.
The message of the story was to avoid that state of numbness, to keep our conscience alive and well, because otherwise, how else would we know if what we did is bad? If one’s moral compass, as perhaps this triangle may be, is compromised as such, how will they guide their own life?
I recently came to an extension of the story, if you will, while pondering about why I do whatever it is that I do. It is my hypothesis that these days, too many people no longer feel the pain of their moral compass. Not because they’re bad people necessarily, but because we’re all made to feel bad about anything and everything.
And it’s not surprising, really. The utter pressure of having to survive in a cutthroat capitalistic world. The urge to live up to standards set by social media. The sheer severity of the ongoing pandemic. Everything is apparently set up to make you feel bad. Somehow, all these things are your fault. Or at the very least, the responsibility of fixing the situation will inevitably fall on your shoulders, so if you fail, disgrace upon you.
Even Mushu is disappointed in you.
As such, I don’t think that it’s any wonder if a lot of our personal chest triangles don’t really hurt anymore even if we do “bad” things like self harm and substance abuse, abandoning relationships and responsibilities, or being so depressed you can hardly get out of bed. We all just got immensely tired and desperate to at least feel a pang of something inside to help feel a little more human instead of just being numbed up. And just as it happens, trying to feel with what is akin to a gaping hole being filled with local anaesthesia requires things that are more drastic.
Obviously, as much as the plight has my utmost sympathy, this is not the ideal way to go. I do believe that the situation in which we find ourselves in requires acknowledgment: that everything is a mess, and you will have to fix it if you want a chance of survival. That does not mean, however, that you do not deserve to fail, nor should anyone be blamed for anything. Responsibility comes in fragments: you can try and take a majority of it, but ultimately, you will need others to help complete it. That is why it is never shameful to ask for help. On the contrary, it’s essential to do so in order to cross the finish line.
What if you already asked for help and it doesn’t result in anything? Well, long story short, the answer is patience. Therapies with professionals often has to have multiple takes to actually create a visible impact. This is because therapy requires a lot of digging into currently ongoing conflicts as well as past trauma to be able to understand who you are and why you do what you do. That can get incredibly painful, hence the need for separate sessions over a certain period of time.
It does get unbearable at times, and there will be moments when the urge to revert back to more “comfortable” ways of feeling pain becomes stronger than ever. In this case, we need a new, healthier coping mechanism. Something that allows us to feel the pain, but is slow enough to not halt our walls of flesh’s healing process. Took me ages before I realized that that’s writing to me.
I’ve always been a scribbler. Random letters, cheesy quotes, journal entries and crappy poetry litter the margins of my school notebooks. I tried making one or two blogs during my highschool days, which failed because I keep forgetting I even made them. But my spare notebooks are never, ever safe from my barely legible, cursive wannabe script. Somehow though, this isn’t enough to clue me in on how to deal with my own faulty moral compass, at least until recently.
I think writing works for me because it feels like a more proactive kind of therapy. I read somewhere that a good writer creates excellent writing by digging open their old scars and pouring the blood and toxin out on paper. In a way, it feels just that. My writing revolves around stories I experience personally or that I feel strongly about. By writing, I get to push the wound out there for the world to see, but not in the scabby, sticky, icky condition it was initially in. Instead, it becomes more…shall I say, aesthetic. It becomes my art. My expression. My freedom. It helped clean my injuries and sharpened back my moral compass by making me realize what it is I truly stand for.
Based on this, I believe the first step to claiming back your agency is to find something that gives you a voice. It doesn’t have to be writing. Some people take comfort in visual or audio arts. Some like to cook for those they love. Others throw themselves up to the service of their gods, whether it be Jesus, Buddha, or science. There are those who can even find purpose in playing the devil’s advocate on Youtube to every single mainstream idea the population holds. There’s something for everyone. It does, however require you to first experience it, and then realizing it’s the one. Kind of like loving people. Sometimes the right ones are under your nose the entire time. Sometimes they’re on another continent and you need to go get them.
I think you’ll know which one it is when the feelings finally flow. Doesn’t have to be a steady stream, trickles can also work in the beginning. What matters is that the blunt points of your triangle and the gaping holes in the walls will no longer blind you to your purpose. You’d finally, finally, be home.
