The struggle

Lately I've had so many half-formed thoughts in quick succession I have found it hard to pin any down for long enough to write about them. But this is one that keeps flitting back into my focus, so I'll give it a stab.

I've been thinking a lot about how stillness and movement interplay in my consciousness, and how I use them to maintain my state of mind. I choose the word mind very carefully, because I do think that my mind is one level of my consciousness, and sometimes I am limited by it.

I'll just say it, and then we can work back from there: I'm afraid of stillness.

It feels good to admit that - it feels like progress (and progress = movement. Ha.) Stillness fills me with fear because I immediately associate it with being trapped, or with being left behind, or with being dead, or perhaps something else altogether. Perhaps the thing that frightens me most about stillness is having to be with myself, to be present and focussed on the present. Not hurtling towards the future or fleeing from the past. If I focus on the world outside me, then I don't have to look at the dark parts on the inside that hurt me. Actually, if I'm brutally honest it's not the painful parts that scare me. It's the boring parts, the banal predictable parts of me I would rather forget.

And actually, I'm good at the struggle: the striving, the moving forward, focussing on my goal, battling, getting knocked down, getting up again, fighting on and on, experiencing doubt and overcoming it, and succeeding. But never, never stopping. There is always another goal, another thing to push for just around the corner that is nearly in my reach -- nearlynearly -- if I just stretch my fingers out -- I can almost touch it and if I get there, if I can just get there, then it will all be okay. Fuck, it feels great, that struggle. It gives me purpose.

I wonder too if my affinity with BDSM stems from this place of unrest. Let's face it, submission and domination are - at least, the way I play - a supreme and exquisite struggle. The physical aspects of play are obvious enactments of struggle - pain and confinement, pitting your will against your fear - there is a glorious physicality to the struggle. Perhaps it is an enactment of the struggle we experience in the rest of our lives. Its physical enactment is our catharsis. We love and we purge. But there is also the psychological struggle. That peeling back of your pride and ego to make yourself vulnerable for your dom is painful. It is rewarding, but it is not done easily.

Domming is hardly struggle-free either. Its exertion may not be so obvious, but letting your beast out of its cage while keeping it on a leash isn't easy. Exploring new territory with your sub, stretching their horizons, enabling them to do the things they want but are afraid of, and without pushing them too far, can be a difficult line to tread. The learning never seems to end - a comfortingly eternal path, there for you to tread as long as you have the desire.

So is this part of the reason why then that so many find release in BDSM? Does it enable escape of feelings of being trapped? An opportunity to wallow in the struggle? To purge? And perhaps even more importantly to find temporary resolution? Does it provide a yardstick against which we can measure progress even if the rest of our lives are stationary?

Having posed these questions though, I feel I must add: I don't think that all struggle is meaningless. I don't think that the progress made through struggle is all illusion. I think that I am a better person as a result of the struggles I have had in life. I suppose I am examining if the thirst for it is always healthy. Perhaps the answer is yes if you pick your struggles well, and pick those that help to improve you. And I know I'm being harsh here: struggle is a part of being alive. But not everyone seeks it out. Is it emotional masochism?

I'm greedy when it comes to struggle. I'm not content to strain at the ropes and flinch at the belt. I'm not content to leave him in tact when I get that urge to break him. I'm not content to try to communicate until my palms sweat and my heart bleeds. I'm not content to work in a job that is thankless, controversial and never finished. I already have my eye on the horizon, scanning for the next struggle. Right now, I'm struggling not to bolt and start all over again. Struggling to stay still? Now that would be a struggle.