A window into what I’m ruminating on:
Giving. Receiving. And Taking.
The manual that I was given to start with in life included lessons that mostly amounted to: giving is good – give everything you have, always. Taking is bad and selfish. You can receive only as much as you give. If you give more than you receive, you will be rewarded, likely upon your death, but maybe sooner if the karma’s good, all TBD by some magical omnipotent masculine universal force.
This manual is garbage. It’s a manual for codependency and people-pleasing, not one for living freely and delightfully.
Which leaves me with, what do I replace it with?
Starting with taking feels most alive in this moment. Taking comes up in my work often. Taking photos. Taking money. Taking time.
In the manual, taking is bad because I’m not just taking something FOR myself, but also FROM someone or something else. The only way that taking becomes useful in the manual I was given is if I’m taking the burden, taking something that is too heavy or too much from someone else, taking out the garbage so to speak, so that taking sneakily becomes a way of giving. I can take the leftovers, the discarded items, the scraps without worry, but taking anything with worth is forbidden because that removes it from circulation, and I don’t deserve to have the good things. There is always someone more deserving.
It also seems like some people got a different manual than I did. One that says that they are allowed to take, even without asking first. They don’t even have to consider value, cost, or repercussions. And I’m not trying to replace the manual that I got with this one, because on the whole, this manual isn’t helpful either.
Maybe it’s time to write my own manual.
What if consent turns taking from something uncomfortable into something that creates connection? Where giving, receiving, and taking are choices rather than things we do because we’re supposed to? Where engagement and desire and energy are considered and have value?
When taking is consensual, when what each person gets in the process is visible, can taking become a type of investment? Where what each person gets out of it feels like more than what they put in? Who do I ask and who do I allow to invest in me, and in turn, who am I invested in?
Maybe what I’m looking for isn’t a manual that tells me exactly how to navigate the world, what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s bad – the prescription for how to handle every situation. I think I want the manual that shows me which questions to ask so that I can find my own answers.