Musings
From The Heart
An
Essay A Day For A Year
By
Roe
Day
145 May 24, 2012
Peer
Pressure
Our peers are our
contemporaries, they are supposedly our laterals, people of the same place and
time, people who inhabit our paradigm and our sub culture. Why in the world
would or could we feel pressure from them? If we feel pressure from anyone for
any reason, then we are feeling coercion, and ironically we are out of lateral,
out of place and time, and out of our paradigm and sub culture. We all have a sense of self and a sense of
“heart”, and we all know who we are and what we want and why, and when, and how
we are meant to “be”. If we feel peer
pressure, and especially if we acquiesce to that peer pressure, then we are out
of touch with our sense of self and our sense of heart, we don’t know who we
are and what we want and why and when, and we don’t know who we are meant to
be.
Human beings are social,
tribal creatures, and human beings have peers.
We have always had peers, and we will always have peers. Our peers are
our own people, they share our own lives, and they live when and where and how
we live. It can be assumed that our peers are like us, and that we are like
them, it can be assumed that we look like our peers, and they look like us, it
can be assumed that we act and do and live like our peers, and that they look
and act and live like us. Our peers are deemed to be equal to us in background
and status. If we are supposedly so homogenous with our peers, why in the world
would we feel pressured by them, or why would we pressure others to be like us?
Clearly there is a difference between us and the others in our subculture, or there
should be and would be no pressure to acquiesce to be like them, or coerce them
to be like us.
The base of all Life of all
kinds in all places is Love. We humans especially seek to love and be
loved. Part of Love is feeling accepted
and feeling admired and feeling approved of, and fitting in. When we seek to be like others we are seeking
Love, we are seeking to be accepted, to be admired, to feel approved of, and we
are seeking to fit in. When we feel the pressure of being accepted by our
peers, when we feel the pressure of wanting to be admired by our peers, when we
feel the pressure of wanting to be approved of by our peers, and when we feel
the pressure of wanting to fit in with our peers, we are seeking Love from our
peers, and acquiescing to our peers is the way in which we receive the desired
Love. The problem is that molding
ourselves to the shapes and colors and sizes and behaviors and attitudes and
interests of others is not actually authentic Love, for real Love is
universally accepting and universally admiring and universally approving.
If we
are feeling pressure from our peers to be like them, with equal backgrounds and
status, we clearly are not yet like our peers, and we feel the pressure to be
like them if we want to be loved, and we clearly have a problem. The first half of the problem is that we
don’t know who we are and don’t accept and love who we are and what we want,
and rather than surround ourselves by peers more like ourselves, we mistakenly
reach out for Love from people that expect us to adapt to them, rather than
accept us just as we are. We that acquiesce to peer pressure do not feel our
own love of self where we can clearly give and receive Love without changing to
be like others.
The second half of the
problem is that we are lacking Love, Love of self, and Love in giving and
receiving, and we mistakenly believe that we will become fulfilled by being
like “them”, especially those that we admire, rather than realize that we
already have everything we need. We that
feel peer pressure have lost sight of ourselves and have lost track of
ourselves and our true needs and Love fulfillment. When we are emotionally and psychologically
healthy, when we are grounded in Love of self, not only do we not feel peer
pressure, but we also feel no need to adapt and fit in to the pressures of
others or their distinct sub culture.
Sub cultures have a way of accepting and admiring and approving of each
other in their shared likeness and shared, common relations, while judging and
even ostracizing others outside of the sub culture. In truth, sub cultures that are not freely
accepting and freely admiring and approving of all other sub cultures are
insecure and selfish, and we that gravitate towards the Love of a judgmental
and critical sub culture of peers tend to seek insecure and selfish Love.
Whether we are the one who
pressures others to be like us before we show acceptance and approval and Love
for them, or whether we are the victim of succumbing to peer pressure to obtain
our desired fruit of acceptance and approval and Love from sick people, peer
pressure is conditional Love, it is Love pressure, and Love pressure of any
kind is neurotic. We all grow up as children who are never good enough for our
parents, never right enough for our parents, never the way our parents want us
to be or expect us to be, and we therefore are all victims of the original peer
pressure, known as parental pressure. By the time we are grown up we have been
kicked in the teeth of self by our parents and teachers and our sub culture so
often and so viciously, that we become like sheep, followers always of another,
nose to tail, desiring to fit in with the sheep up in the front of the herd, or
off to the left of the herd, or off to the right of the herd, or in the rear of
the herd.
In order
to really be who we are and not care about peer pressure or ever acquiesce to
it, we have to have had parents that honored and valued and supported and
approved of us as we are, we have to have had pure respect and pure honor of
our true selves, and we therefore will always be our true selves. In order for us to know who we are we must
have had someone love us as we are, and we must love ourselves as we are. A parent should never mold a child, and never
expect anything of a child except to simply love the child. Schooling and homework and chores and
manners and do this and don’t do that and wear this and don’t wear that and say
this and don’t say that and be like this and don’t be like that and look at
those people and they are like this and they are like that, and on and on and
on, turn children into robotic sheep with dead spirits that identify their own
selves by what others think and feel. Parents
therefore create children that are measured and defined by peer pressure, just
like their parents did the same to them.
There is
no such thing as peer pressure, except to people lacking Love of self, who are
reaching out to people who are lacking Love of self. Let us all only succumb to
the pressure loving only our true selves.
If we are unable to do that, we must realize that we are reaching out to
others for the self that we are lacking, since we were never valued as we are as
true selves by our parents, and we must get help for ourselves. When we can love ourselves truly we will
never feel the pressure of loving or being loved by our peers. When we can love
ourselves truly we will only recognize and feel and share simply peer Love.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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