“When you play roles, you are unconscious. When you catch yourself playing a role, that recognition creates a space between you and the role. It is the beginning of freedom from the role. When you are completely identified with a role, you confuse a pattern of behavior with who you are, and take yourself very seriously. You also automatically assign roles to others that correspond to yours.
Although the social structures in the contemporary world are less rigid than in ancient cultures, there are still many pre-established functions or roles that people readily identify with and which thus become part of the ego. This causes human interactions to become inauthentic, dehumanized, alienating. Those pre-established roles may give you a somewhat comforting sense of identity, but ultimately, you lose yourself in them. Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.”
One of many though-provoking “moments” from one of my favorite books - A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.
Although we have been discussing roles and sexual labels on Black Gay Men’s Blog, this can be applied to all aspects of life (work, relationships, friendship etc) and really speaks to me. It is very freeing to stop being identified with a role, whatever that role is. We are all so much more than the restrictive roles we slip into and identify with. It is much easier to play a role, than to discover the freedom of not needing one. Roles in this context should not be confused with the functions we fulfill in the world – of course we do need social structure.
Just a lil something to think about.
No related posts.
One of my favorite authors and books. So glad to see this in a black gay space!!
Much love!
I agree with your statement “we do need social structure” and because we don’t have one, I believe we will continue to have these conversations around roles and sexual labels.
While I certainly understand and for the most part agree with Tolle’s position, I wonder if we, as gay men, don’t have another layer to our public persona. A layer which, at times, can force us into a public role which is limiting. As relaxed and at home with my homosexuality as I may be, there are those moments in our complex world where, inevitably, I will come up against a situation where it’s necessary for me to occupy a public role which is not really me. Alas, we don’t live in an ideal world.
On the flip side though, sometimes roles can be liberating. I discovered photography is one of my passions; something I have always done and done well. I love it and use my photography to communicate, but found that “photographer” was limiting how people saw and interacted with me. Taking on the role of “Artist” freed my thinking, took it to a “higher” level and changed how I and my work was looked at. Yes there is the danger of falling into the “Artist” role and become stagnated and not using that role to grow beyond that box.