In a conversation a few months ago, a friend shared the view that orthodontia could be described as similar to "foot-binding"— in other words, a kind of deliberate bodily mutilation. My friend was not endorsing this viewpoint himself—just observing that it existed; but I immediately leapt to agree with it. "Yaaaas," my heart said—that's exactly it. It's tooth-binding.
"But it's just cosmetic!" people say, in defense of the practice. "It's just because straight teeth look better!" Well, that's what they said about foot-binding too!
"So," my friend said, "You don't believe in orthodontia. You're a heterodontist."
Once again, I couldn't improve upon this. Pure genius. Le mot juste. "Yaasss" my heart said again.
And, having gotten ahold of this idea and run with it (which my friend now probably regrets sharing with me in the first place), I find myself applying it to everything. It seems to me that a great many professional interventions could be described as a form of deliberate deformation of the natural human state.
How much of psychotherapy, for instance—I ask—is not similarly trying to bind people's characters in accordance with some cosmetic ideal?
How many of the personality traits we now pathologize and try to "treat," are not in fact just natural forms of human diversity? How many different specimens of the human animal would sprout in the natural hothouse of our society, were we not trying to railroad everyone into conforming to a single ideal of human normality?
Are we not practicing personality-binding, then, as well as tooth-binding?
"But many people want to go to therapy," people respond—"because they want to change some of these habits. These bad habits are causing them pain; they are getting in the way of their happiness!"
To which I say, as Captain Kirk once did (in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier): "I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!" Our pain, he says, is part of "what makes us who we are." I'd rather be myself, and in pain, than another, and in happiness.
I am reminded of Stephen Crane's poem about the strange creature in the desert, whom the speaker finds feasting on its own heart. He asks him if the heart tastes good. "It is bitter—bitter," the creature replies. "But I like it/ Because it is bitter,/ And because it is my heart."
The creature would plainly agree with Captain Kirk. He wants to keep his pain—because it is himself.
I wrote in the previous post on this blog about a morning earlier this week in which I felt particularly awful about the state of the world. My insides were racked with a kind of metaphysical sob.
And yet—what I notice most about that episode of pain is that, on some level, I actively sought to prolong it. I wanted to linger over the pain—to accentuate it—to paw at it—to analyze it—to understand it.
I can't be the only one who responds to misery this way. There would be no market for sad and maudlin music otherwise. People, when they are in a mood—even a very horrible mood—somehow feel the need to double down on it. They want to experience it fully.
I was listening to a recent episode of the Dr. Demento show, for instance—and he describes in one section an early twentieth-century vogue for "sobbing" records. He plays several downright horrifying examples, some of which were still echoing in my head on Tuesday—accentuating my own misery. The fact that people would actually go out of their way to buy these things proves my point.
People want to keep their pain. They want to catch it in their hands before it slips away. They want to eat their heart out, even if it is bitter.
Why? It has to be because the pain is as much a part of themselves as their joy. Take away one half of it—bind the personality to happiness and normality—and part of the person goes too. So, part of us tries to grasp hold of our pain and clutch it close to us, as soon as it comes. We say: let me double down on this mood, no matter how much it hurts.
We say:
"I like it/ Because it is bitter/ And Because it is my heart."
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