Arcana VIII: Strength

Words condescending but wise. To be fair to the writer of this thing, I too might feel tempted to be condescending if someone came to me whining about having 'nothing to do'. This is the fallacy of individualism: a sense of entitlement and ennui, a guzzling sense of the world failing to succor a vacuous and bloated 'I' when all one really needs to do is to produce worthily -- and grow strong. If you're feeling helpless, help someone. Aung San Syuu Kyi. Quod erat demonstrandum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0#h[]

I also ran across this very interesting article about the neccessity of the community in the formation of the self.  Like some of the commentators below I too have reservations about the kind of family history that children grow up with when they learn under the grip of trauma and negativity. But I do strongly believe that we find ourselves only through storytelling, and not just within families either. We draw ourselves from a wider world of logic and literature. Who am I to my mother and my father, to the centuries that precede me, and the centuries that will continue without me? What are villains and heroes, what is suffering, what is determination, what have others done so that I too may do if I must? What is love, that I may love? Whole tropes of behaviour and paths to choose from, to deny or adapt and learn from, all from the simple and fundamental act of conversation: of interpretation and interaction, of eschatologies, of narrative.

For here too are the tropes of tragedy.

SALARINO
Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take
his flesh: what's that good for?

SHYLOCK
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany
you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

-- The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene I

Fierce, flagrant, incorrigibly biased, by God, and though it certainly doesn't place Shylock anywhere near a moral high ground for wanting to gouge out flesh from one of his erstwhile bullies, and legally too, he makes me recognise in myself what drives it. I spent three quarters of the play rooting for Shylock out of pure gut feeling. Later I realised that it was because he stood for the impotent rage of the oppressed. I never want to be his position and I certainly never want to be like him, but I think this rage is something that everyone can understand, and it makes the question of permissibility even knottier and more difficult. Every character in a narrative, conversational or written or visual or otherwise, is a foil and a mirror to the reader's own.

We are learning every day. In reference to the picture article above, I do actually think the world owes me a living. If I didn't, I'd be dead. But the way I see it, the world has offered up to me all the living that I could have wished, suffering and love and wealth and shame together, and what I owe it is what I owe it in return. What I owe is that which I make of my life and the abolishment of all that fails to support life. And my strength is the strength that others can lean on.