Yesterday was nothing short of an intense, non-stop bulletcoaster ride for me, with the deployment of endless responses to incalculable numbers of comments from Steemit's amazing members bearing positivity and encouragement upon my participation in the MAP #18, my newly acquired membership to its Discord channel, my connecting personally with several members of the channel and the excitement that came of having my first heavily upvoted post. Which is where I stumbled upon something that sparked old interests.
While I was responding to the many comments and messages, I was lead to a post through the M-A-P channel, written by one of my MAP #18 co-competitors, created for another competition on Steemit called the Spotlight Contest, and naturally I went over to have a look at it myself.
What I discovered was a post I myself would have written nearly two years ago had Steemit been introduced to me then. A post, abounding in the plenteous virility of sweet, sweet rebellion and awakening. While she had written about a great many gripes she had with the world and its perception of beauty, including hers, and how said perception made life challenging for women as well, I saw, first and foremost, the resplendent, effulgent seed of defiance in someone who had finally woken out of the system she'd been caged in and claimed complete control of her life. I saw the birth of yet another into this evolutionary metamorphic crucible of revolution. And I relished it.
Leaving the sphere of the hyperbole, allow me to share just why I thought so highly of this post. Having been indoctrinated as a child by more archaic schools of thought, where I was naturally led to believe that homosexuals were 'untouchables' that needed to be avoided as far as possible, gay rights were a bad thing, and that if you had a problem with the way the world around you worked, you had no choice but to put up with it, I had a great many questions about why these things were so. My curiosity had a nose longer than Pinocchio's and sharper than a cutlass. A curiousity that felt perpetually constrained.
As a child...I despised this. Loathed it. But was ultimately always forced to pander to the whims of the aversive, backward adults around me, who believed that children had no right to question their adults, ask them why certain things were the way they were, and who would immediately repress any and all argumentative curiosity the child exhibited if it got too close to any uncomfortable truths they didn't have the courage to face themselves, by guilt-tripping the child into questioning its own still-developing morality with arguments the likes of 'good children' being ones that unquestioningly obeyed their elders, and that 'good children' would have been taught by their parents to never ''backanswer'' those older to them, their way of ensuring the conversation ended without them having to concede their positions.
Even as a child, it made no sense to me that one such as myself, capable of holding a logical argument to the end, could not exhibit fully his propensity for such argument, simply because the adults were too shackled by the beliefs and ideas they'd been educated with as children themselves, that they had never tried to question either. So when no one would explain to me why I had to conform to these rules and beliefs, in ways that may make sense to me, and when no one was willing to hear me out...I went rogue. I said what I wanted to. And I got beaten for it. Got my earlobes pulled (another favourite Indian-adult tactic of subduing a child). And was penalized for my insubordination. And it was then, that the spark of defiance took hold, because I realized, at an age that could not have been more than six...that the curt closing arguments, guilt-tripping, 'gentle' coercion and violence were only ever broken out, when I was on the verge of making an irrefutable point. And I took a strange, almost twisted pleasure in the fact that I had forced them to that point. Now...I no longer cared if I was beaten to a pulp, as long as I knew I had wantonly expressed those sides of myself that had for too long been forcefully restrained by authority figures in my life who were too afraid to reflect upon the same questions I was asking, and that I had galvanized them into action because of it, even if against me.
And as I grew, this spark enflamed, and became like a fiery forest fire. My body matured...I grew impervious to the pain. My physical lessons in rebellion and endurance were complete. It was now time to learn and absorb the conceptual lessons.
What was rebellion, exactly? I'd been practicing it, but what is it defined as? Or better yet...how does one find their definition of it? And how does such a concept affect humanity at large? I came to understand rebellion, in its basest form, as daring to think and act differently from the norm. Something that at this point I had proved my mettle in all too well. But how did me doing this affect the balance of things everywhere around me? And where might I draw a limit? I had understood that it was definitely necessary at times. But it also could not be blind, directionless defiance, as that would absolutely do more harm than good. So it was then that I set a limit I could live with, when it came to exercising my natural aptitude for breaking the norm, and when it was wiser to work with, compromise, or accept things as they were; I'd push back when I wasn't offered a choice. Until then, I'd be willing to bargain and broker until a mutually acceptable understanding could be worked out.
No one would ever force me to do or say something I didn't wish to commit to. As an Indian especially, having come up the way I did, rebellion was one of the most important lessons I would ever be graced with. To set oneself free of expectations and obligations one had no way out of. To try and exist beyond them. To do what you know you can do, not what others expect you to do with no say of your own in the matter. And when this understanding of personal freedom finally dawned upon me, I was suddenly elevated to a perspective and league of thought orders of magnitude higher than the one I'd been toiling away in. Like Steemit, the minnows in that playing field were those like me, fresh initiates, the dolphins, those that applied their rebellion to active 'real world' situations, breaking the norm to achieve better ends, and the whales, the all time legends of our species, who overcame insurmountable feats out of the norm, simply by virtue of being able to forge their own approach to things, and then persevere down those paths irrespective of how much opposition they'd face for daring to try.
Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, to name a few...men who dared to think differently, who suffered for it, but who were ultimately right, regardless of their respective end fates. Every one of them faced criticism initially, but achieved lasting recognition of the efforts they spearheaded, engendering humankind's tremendous technological and theological leaps, all by virtue of their divergent opinions on how to go about said efforts. What they left behind weren't just cornerstones of human progress and evolution of mind, but redefined precedent. And when history today is recounted, it is their names that stand out amidst the legions that sought to oppose and deter them. They left behind legacy. And so it was that I came to understand one final lesson; if humility paved the path greatness walked, conflict was the stallion progress rode it upon, and rebellion, its reins.
In a world like ours, with such immense competition seeing everybody climbing and clambering over one another whilst casing after the crumbs of success and glory, this sort of initiative, not only liberates those individuals who wear it like the armour it is from the encumbrances of their own minds in that struggle, but it also fuels the necessary fires of innovation, perseverance and resolve needed to keep that struggle alive and aflame. Like Steem Power, you need it to leave a mark. And so when I saw the post I referred to earlier, I felt a great swell of pride and joy, for here was another who had understood that she was her own master, obliged only to those of her choosing.
Another one of us was born. And she too would lay weight to the ultimate crusade of every human being; self realization.
Rebel And Proud.
If you thought this article was great, and would like to show support, I have been selected for the "Six of the Best" MAP18 Minnow Contest, and could use a vote on the accelerator (not an upvote, mind you, though I could use those too). And feel free to also check out the content of the other talented contestants there too. They have some really interesting articles to flaunt too. Cheers and happy Steeming! :D :D