Autonomy
Last Sunday at 12:37am the Moon was New again. We’re at three consecutive months at publishing these within a week of the New Moon. I don’t feel like I can rest in the timing yet – but, as with all things, we’re getting there.
The last cycle’s focus was Courage – of which there has needed to be plenty. This year keeps presenting new and different challenges, which have required me to seemingly adapt my view of my reality as well as my place in it. To quote Plato from ‘Cratylus’, “Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river.” Or from ‘Dust in the Wind’ from Kansas, “only for a moment, and the moment’s gone”. In every moment, we change, and the world we live in changes. The Courage that was my focus last cycle was to try to face all of the changing moments.
This seems simple – things change every day, for everyone – we have to adapt. This is where I ran into issues with my deep seated psychology. My fundamental mission rule – “don’t upset your mother” – had expanded to “don’t upset anyone or anything”. If this casts me a bit as Nomad in the Star Trek TOS episode “The Changeling”, I’ll accept that. But that initial programming morphed to the point where I felt compelled to compartmentalize everything – including myself – to the point where I’ve come to realize that I never really belonged to ‘me’.
I said something in passing some time ago – I think it was around a tooth extraction – that the anxiety wasn’t that I was having a medical procedure performed, it was that I had somehow damaged the body that my mother had trusted me with. I didn’t belong to me. If we extrapolate from there, then who was I living this life for? This is why seemingly radical choices like flying off to Australia are so revolutionary – I made a choice that served no one but myself. No agenda, no rationale, no moral imperative – just a choice. Autonomy.
People sometimes question why I need to spend time alone so often; why I shut down communications and recede into my own shadows. It’s to reassert my sense of Autonomy and self-determination. This poses the philosophical question, can someone be self-actualized who is not also self-deterministic? I would posit ‘no’, but we’ll save that for another time. The lyrics from this cycle’s companion song ring true here:
I know that there’s a reason why I need to be alone
To show me there’s a silent place that I can call my own
I am moving through a season of my life where I am on the cusp of truly embracing my sense of self – to answer the question “what makes Sean, Sean – when he is not trying to be what anyone else needs or expects?” Or –
You don’t have to win
And there’s no need to fight
So this cycle, I will explore how I can express my own Autonomy. How can I believe and trust in it, and how can I incorporate it into a life where I am called to interact with other individuals? In 1795, Immanuel Kant published his account of Autonomy in his book “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”. In it, Kant suggested that the concept of Autonomy entails individuals acting in accordance with their rational will and self-imposed moral principles, rather than being governed by external factors, or heteronomy. To me, this signals that Autonomy is at the root of both authenticity and the path toward self-actualization.
No one said the waters of Heraclitus’ river wouldn’t be deep.
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