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On Self Respect
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
-W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”
You can’t know a thing, not truly, not intimately, until you’ve spent time with it. Until you’ve allowed it to enter you. Until it’s become threaded through your body and wound itself into your breath.
When we come to understand this, we guard ourselves against the world. Some things, experiences, people, ideas: they force themselves on you, and then you know them with the core of your being. Your wisdom deepens even as you blanche and revolt at the intrusion.
Sometimes we forget to repair the gate after the rape. Or we’re afraid to. Or we don’t know we’re allowed to. Or that we even can.
Then all sorts of others enter- people, experiences, feelings. Ones you never wanted to know, but they keep coming in through that broken gate. And instead of fortifying it you retreat deeper and deeper into your sanctum.
But they follow you endlessly. Relentless. Until finally you’re cornered, and you make a choice. Either you die,
or you rise up.
