Osho #26: Playing a Role

Feed the baby. Bathe the baby. Change the diaper. Time for baby to sleep. Upon expulsion into this world, we're helpless & at the mercy of our parents. And so the puppetry begins. The baby is crying: must make that stop. Feed her. Change her diaper. Shake the rattle. But stop the crying. I'd like to see the baby smile and laugh so make silly faces, odd sounds, somehow taunt the baby into lifting the corners of his mouth and then OH PRAISE! He has learned to do what I asked! That's a good baby.

As we grow a bit older and walk and talk and have independent thoughts, we're molded even more to be what our parents would like. Don't touch that. 8pm is your bedtime. Eat your carrots. Dinner guests are coming, be on your best behavior. That outfit doesn't match, wear this. Dance for me puppet, dance. Play the piano like a good girl. Do this. Don't do that.

For years and years we play the role of the child, yet are rarely allowed to truly embrace our age and color the crap out of the living room wall with finger paint, or roll around in the mud because it just feels SO damn good to be covered in filth and muck. No no little puppet. I said dance for me. Sing for me. Don't try to break the strings else you'll be sent to your room, spanked, scorned.

At some indeterminate age we start to venture out and explore, but the strings aren't detached, they've just been re-tied. Everyone is doing it. Drink beer. Try drugs. Smoke. Have sex. Dance, oh but NOT like that you freak, only this way. On to the working world we're good employees. We make our bosses happy. We please our peers. We follow the company rules. We gotta make that buck and move on up. Just like everyone else. You don't want to move up? Must mean you're lazy, have no goals, surely you're not very ambitious.

We date, we love, we attract others. We've explored new things and are starting to feel the real us come out. Others are drawn to our independence. Drawn to the way we view the world & fascinated by our brains that don't operate like everyone else. And we begin to share those puppet strings and think maybe now. Now I have a partner to not direct me, but to dance with me and bond himself with me as we're drawn closer together. But these same things that drew the person to us begin to come apart at the seams, to tangle, and we feel that familiar tug to move over just a bit toward the mainstream. Toward what they want from us. Our separate interests were once encouraged & made us unique. Now we're taking too much time from the relationship. Finding space for ourselves is threatening the strength of our togetherness. We've been riding an edge that our partner is no longer willing to step alongside.

So go ahead and pull my strings. Offer up that same steady nudge to become more like you want me to be. Make me into your perfect mate. The one who fulfills your insecurities, who does what you want, who thinks as you do. Let's become just like everyone else. "Normal" couples. I've been here. I've done this. It's familiar. I can offer my limp body to your whims and dance when you want and be still when you want. I can do this. Yes, I have done this.

But I'm done.

It can be good to expand with your mate, please your parents, drop what you're doing to comfort a dear friend, to hold a good job that pays the bills, and to have some sense you are a part of the rest of the world. But by our own choice. I've snipped those strings & in their place are the finest strands of silk like a spider's web. They're light and effortless and follow my body with a fluid grace that's intoxicating and draws you to my world. But tread carefully, my love. These silken threads are tough, but gently caress them and play them like a beautiful violin, else be left holding a reminder of me that softly falls to the ground as I drift from you, floating back to my sacred space of all that makes me who I am and holds the future to who I am becoming.