Humiliation is now my kink ;)

poem and profundity

profundity

Omfg y’all, I did it!

Most of you read this post that opened with the line, “Humiliation is not my kink.”

If we will do anything to avoid being humiliated, we will even use oppression as a weapon. And we will feel fully justified.

In Kadampa Buddhism, there is a practice called accepting defeat and offering the victory. You could say it’s finding the empowerment in humiliation. Humiliation feels like agreeing to be small, because an external force says you’re small. We live in a culture where smallness is seen as a bad thing… Smallness, weakness, newness, being a noob, a beginner. We don’t respect people who are small. We respect people who are not just big, but the biggest. While we are each big, glorious beings, we also have small tender parts: feelings, ear bones, blood vessels.

Yielding is feminine energy, and not acceptable in a sexist society. But half of life is yielding. Only half of life is standing tall, holding boundaries, and making things happen. The branch that refuses to bend, breaks.

People have unflattering views of you. Yes, they do. You can waste your life energy fighting those narratives with your own, or you can admit defeat. Admit that your free will is not stronger than theirs. Each person has the infuriating right to believe what they choose.

Our marginalized identities experience a lot of humiliation. Our marginalized identities are often made to feel small. It has not felt life-affirming.

But the true test of big and small is, can I be big enough to be small?

Can I become so big that when people make me small I am too big to be bothered by it? I think my heroes Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and James Baldwin achieved this level of bigness. I think their dignity was unshakable because they became so big they could be small.

What a joy to stop fighting. What a relief to finally lose! Losing is the only way off the battlefield in an unwinnable war. The war to change other people’s minds and hearts about who I am is a war I am finally ready to admit I cannot win.

Join me in losing! It’s humiliating how they see us! AND we find ease and flow in being made small, because we are big! Join me in bending so we do not break.

Poem

I Am Your Interruption

Welcome to my moment.
I am your disruption,
born with the power
to win
and to lose,

and while no one wants to lose, 
losing it is often the only way
to rid oneself of the burdens hindering success.  
 
So here I am to offer loss
as a way out of the stuckness 
that comes from refusing to lose 
an un-winnable war.

In that kind of fight, 
losing is the only way off the battlefield.

Have you tried losing yet?

You could lose your God-given right to be miserable.
Your determination to choke down the positive side 
of the things you hate.

Have you tried losing the self who cannot go on 
when things don’t go your way?

Why haven’t you lost your self-hatred yet?
Why haven’t you driven your defensiveness out to the woods, 
“set it free” and raced home before it could follow?

Why haven’t you said “it’s not you, it’s me,” 
and lost that old version of you you’re still dragging along to parties 
so you won’t feel alone?

Well, it’s not you,
It’s me.
I am your disruption,

and this is your opportunity 
to experience the freedom of winning
by losing what(ever) weighs you down.

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Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash