Impromptu commentary on the shadow | Hanekawa (Part 2 of Indefinite)

By jim onion · Apr 13, 2022 ·
  1. I'm not feeling too well, so this might be a bit rough around the edges. But I wanted to do something more on the creative side.

    [​IMG]

    Hanekawa Tsubasa is the class presidents of class presidents, it is said.

    She is the archetype.

    But no human can be a pure archetype. It would be more accurate to say that any human can strive for a given ideal, an archetype if you will, and sometimes *it* may manifest itself through the person.

    Have you ever heard (the somewhat cliche) "it's always the quiet ones" who's wrath one should truly fear? I'm not talking about school shooters; I simply mean that it's always the nice ones, the ones who are too nice for their own good, who can be pushed to a terrifying breaking point.

    Why?

    Just who's fault is it?

    ARe YOU blAmiNG the VICTIM?!

    Well, in some things we do have a reasonable amount of responsibility to ourselves and others. That in no way justifies wrong-doing. But Hanekawa's problem is that her refusal to integrate her own shadow, her own repression (albeit perhaps learned) of her negative emotions, builds-up stress inside of her.

    Then, when that stress becomes too much for her to handle anymore and she breaks, she couldn't repress reality. She could no longer repress something that now made its existence known outside of herself, and had hurt other people. So what to do? Hanekawa basically gives it a name. In other words, it becomes a separate personality she need not take responsibility before.

    Now, I admit that things may not work so literally. The story is told from Araragi's perspective, after all, so all we can get is dialogue from Hanekawa, Oshino's adult input (see the image above), and our own interpretation as readers. Nevertheless I think that there is more than enough there, either the lines themselves or what's between the lines, where this is more or less what is happening.

    That is to say, this is a very realistic phenomenon that has probably occurred to all of us. It manifests itself as psychological projection, or even displacement.

    You have a shit commute to work. You get to work, and maybe you're not in a bad mood, but so much for waking up on the right side of the bed you know? Anyway, you get through the day but right before you leave your boss tells you that you need to stay late. Now you're in a poor mood; you just wanted to be able to go home at the scheduled time and decompress. You're hungry because you hadn't anticipated this. Your boss couldn't have even been bothered to ask you nicely, either.

    Finally you get home and you end up snapping at your S.O. or your kid, or your family or roommate. Somebody who had absolutely nothing to do with all of the things that contributed to your shitty day.

    Here is where I think the worst mistake is made. Hanekawa can't face that part of herself. Even when it comes right out of her and lashes out. So when she can't repress it, she dissociates from it. She separates her "self" from it, except her "self" isn't even a full self to begin with. So she's actually just fragmenting her self, trying to hold onto the desired part of it.

    This ends up making her a very righteous person. She has built a perfect image for herself but at what cost? By way one of the most psychologically damaging sacrifices you can make. A shifting of blame, a surrendering of responsibility to... well what exactly? It's a situation that can only be described in two ways at best: possession, or a mental illness.

    One can imagine how this plays out in the rest of her life. She has the best grades in her school, and is a tutor to Araragi, and is the class president (which, unlike my high school, is actually a VERY involved role in Japanese high schools). But someone like that can sometimes be terrifying, because by way of comparison we see so many of our faults in ourselves, and put themselves above us in some capacity.

    However, she is terrifying for another reason too. And that is upon the realization, or even just the stirrings of initial realization, of her true nature. Araragi is really confronted with this when she's been hit by one of her parents and has a bandage on her face which he asks her about, and Hanekawa comes to defend the parent in a twisted case of something like Stockholm Syndrome.

    It was around this time (I first saw the show a couple years ago) that I happened to be questioning my foray into stoicism. The jury is still out on this, because I'm not a philosopher and I just think that there are smarter people than me, but I was confronted with what appears to be a limit to stoicism. That taken to its full extent it ceases to be attainable, and begins showing diminishing returns.

    Imagine being so stoic that you become inhuman in the process. It often requests a denial of emotion, or saying "you only felt a negative emotion because you had an expectation", and so the only conclusion one can draw from that is to have no expectations. You can also play similar mind games with yourself in order to adapt to an abusive and neglectful home environment as Hanekawa does. You get hit, and you say what Hanekawa essentially says: I deserved it.

    I only got upset because I had an expectation.

    I only got hit because I did something wrong.

    End-goal of both: eliminate negative emotion.

    End-result of both: repression.

    I had to find a philosophy that could allow for a radical embrace and acceptance of all emotion. Hanekawa needed to find a way to radically embrace and accept all parts of herself, including the ugly ones that she especially didn't like, and knew others wouldn't like.

    You may not agree with my take on stoicism. All I'm saying is that my every attempt at being stoic, ever, has had the same result of Hanekawa. Then I would just be told I'm doing it wrong, but never taught how to apparently do it "right". Every time I've tried to logic myself out of feeling an undesired emotion. It has never ever worked as a long term strategy. Other people I hope have gotten much more out of it, and obviously they have since so many people subscribe to its teachings. And I'm not saying there isn't value to stoicism at all. For me, it was more like being a doormat where instead of defend myself from my boss, why not just change my expectations? Expect my boss to tell me to stay late whenever he wants, however he wants. After all, that's the reason I'm upset right? It has everything to do with me, nothing to do with him.

    Expect the worst of all things. Expect the worst of people. Or expect nothing at all. Desire nothing at all. And wonder why you're apparently defective and just can't get woke, can't get enlightened. Feel like there's something WRONG with you for having desires. There's something WRONG with wanting something, with expecting something.

    It was numerous stoic texts that I saw this kind of teaching in regarding expectations. Chryssipus, Aurelius, Seneca... Sorry, but I can't get rid of my passions. I can't get rid of my desires; I did way too much mental damage to myself for years hoping that I could become asexual so I'd stop being attracted to women and could finally be free of not being good enough for them. I'm not going to make endless excuses for others and turn myself into a sacrificial Christ figure.

    Remember this?

    [​IMG]

    I say dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to have faith. But understand that if you try and touch the sun, you'll get burned. Understand the higher you fly, the harder it will be to breathe. Gravity will constantly be pulling you down.

    So don't neglect yourself. Accept the negative emotion. Live with it. You can't wish it away but keep what you want. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

    I can't rid myself of my stress with logic. "I shouldn't be feeling this way. It's wrong to feel this way. It's my fault I feel this way." Nor can I rid myself of disappointment at how my love life has gone. There is nothing to be done about it.

    So what I wanted to know, was how can I live with indefinite suffering? I can't rationalize it away. I can't hide it away. All I can do is embrace it. I am simply the way that I am and there is no explanation, there need be no explanation. I just know from experience and from living with it that it does pass, or there are times where positive emotions happen to shine more brightly, and that there may be healthy ways of coping.

    I don't need to get rid of my negative emotion. If I ever want to do that, I can just sleep, and usually that helps me feel better the next day. But I don't control whether or not my emotions get to exist. That's... not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

    "But why are some people happy all the time and other people sad all the time?"

    There's lots of reasons. Every reason. Money, needs met, better health, genes, hormones, diet, exercise, amount of sunlight, presence or absence of toxic people in your life, meaningful employment, expectations being met, desires being fulfilled, confidence or lack thereof.

    The list goes on until functionally there is no reason. It just happens to be the way that it is.

    In sum:

    If there is something you can do about suffering, then do.

    If there is nothing you can do about it, then try to logic away your own wants, desires, expectations.

    If you're like me and can't do that, then you are stuck with an unattainable want, desire, expectation, and there is nothing you can do about it except exist with the negative emotion that you, likewise, can only embrace. Every day. Indefinitely.
    Dave The Great likes this.

Comments

To make a comment simply sign up and become a member!
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice