We are not Parrots

I prefer not to make negative assertions, but for this topic I think the title is the right opening. There are times, when knowing what you are not, is important in the search for who you are. Pretending to be what we are not is part of the play that we do as humans. Our imaginations take us beyond where we are and who we are – and that is part of how we grow. We take flights of fancy, then return to reality. You build who you want to be off of the foundation of who you are. The foundation has to remain in place, though. You can’t leave your fundamental self behind.

Humans cannot fly yet we long to. I wanted to fly as a child. I would hold my hand out of the car window to make a wing. I would imagine my whole body being lifted as the air rushed past my hand. I recall dreams of jumping from the top of my grandparents’ redwood tree and actually experiencing flight. I would wake up exhilarated. Where did those fantasies take me? I went on to fly helicopters in the Army. I used imagination and fantasy to experience real flight. Well, I used the imagination of others who were inspired to extend the boundaries of human limits by building flying machines. If I had taken my fantasy of flight and focused on changing who I was, to be like the birds that I loved to watch soar, I never would have experienced the flight I desired. I could have glued feathers onto my arms, like Icarus, but I would never have flown. With the wonders of modern technology and medicine I could have one-upped Icarus. I could have had those feathers surgically implanted into my arms, maybe extend them to be able to produce enough lift to overcome my weight. I take it back I can fly! I can be a bird! But I don’t want to be a bird, I just want to fly like one. At the end of the day I want to be able to take off my bird suit; step out of my helicopter; and experience the greater fullness of being human.

The search for balance is a driving force for me. I look to apply it to my life and encourage others on the pursuit. To achieve balance you have to have a fulcrum. With that anchor point in place you’re able to reach out and explore. Without it you have a teeter totter that becomes a board sitting flatly on the ground. No movement, no fun, no growth.

A teeter totter is a good representation of life. You push off from the ground and propel yourself dizzily into the air. Close your eyes and you can imagine launching into space. Thankfully, that balance point of the pivot safely holds you to ground. You experience the arc of pleasure then are brought back to the starting point. It’s interesting to consider –teeter totters don’t work if you are by yourself. It’s a shared experience. Without a person on the other side you weakly push off the ground then fall back. Hmm… when you are alone you only teeter. I see a lot of people around me teetering in today’s world. I want to see them be able to totter as well. I want to see them find the balance point that comes with discovering that each of us has a foundation and it’s tied the people around us.

There’s a cautionary tale in a story that I read. A man in England wants to be a parrot. He is so desirous of the goal that he is in the process of surgically altering his head. He’s had his ears cut off and has tattooed his face and eyeballs in a parrot color scheme. In the future he will have his nose altered to appear more like a beak. When will he fall into the sun as the wax melts in his Icarus moment of facing reality? There are a horrifying number of similar stories once you start looking. A young woman felt that she was blind, even though she had normally functioning eyes. She was so committed to her conviction that she had her psychologist help to permanently destroy her eyes by pouring lye into them. Then there is the human Ken Doll. Almost $500,000 in plastic surgery has gone into helping him create the perfect façade and achieve the look of the plastic dolls that he emulates. All of these people are chasing fantasies: nothing wrong with that until the fantasy blurs reality. Then, Icarus rises.

We have a term for this phenomenon in medicine. Body Integrity Identity Disorder. It’s a good, clinical sounding label, and it’s from an older one that’s been around for over 100 years – Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I have an issue with those labels. The medical system uses them to neatly package up individuals. Now we can draw the line between us and them. Now we feel a little better about ourselves because they have a disorder and we’re okay. In the end, though, it’s all of us. They somehow got lost in the process of using fantasy as a step in problem solving. A process of disengaging from an unpleasant current reality in order to explore solutions to use in the real world. Don’t fool yourself into complacency, though. All of us are vulnerable. Most to a lesser degree, but we all tend to blur fantasies into the real world.

Every good superhero is vulnerable when he takes off his suit. Without vulnerability he’s a god – not a character that we humans are able to connect with. We need to see that vulnerable person on the inside. He teaches us to beware of deluding ourselves into thinking that we are the suits we wear. The crises that we watch him experience happen when he tries to wear his suit, use his super power in his personal life. In their fantasy lives the parrot man, blind girl, and ken doll see their alterations as enhancing the life experience. In the real world that is not so.

The real-world human is the anchor point to pivot off of. It has to remain as a solid foundation. Changing one’s body form may validate that fantasy state of mind but it limits the reach of the person in life. We need our fantasies. They help us to temporarily escape, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for protection. Being vulnerable is scary but it is the price of admission for riding the teeter totter of life. Embrace your vulnerability. And remember to allow others to embrace that real you as well. That is how life is fulfilled.