DrJ
Born again christian 😏
- Jun 4, 2024
- 35
Imagine, you are in a hotel hallway looking through a keyhole into one of the rooms curiously watching people inside it, here you are subject, freely choosing to gaze upon a set of objects but then suddenly another person enter the hallway and sees you vois looking through the keyhole and you suddenly realize that in the act of watching you yourself are being watched, suddenly you become conscious of yourself not as a subject looking at objects suddenly you yourself are the object inside another person's perception, this realization of yourself as the object of another person's gaze in this case manifest itself in shame, it is as if the center of gravity in your experience is suddenly taken away from you and placed in the position of another person and this experience of shame is also to an extent an experience of unfreedom suddenly as you realize you are being watched, you no longer view yourself on your terms but in terms of how the other person views you. It's almost as if you are constrained trapped by their gaze and instead of free being you become an object in someone else's mind subject to all of their potential thoughts and judgment about you
When I experience myself as a subject, I am free to determine what I will do and what kind of person I am but once I am trapped in another person's gaze, I am subject to a certain preconceived notion of who I am, my freedom seems to be limited by it as I ultimately cannot control how the other person will view me. As subject I have limitless freedom and infinite potential but as an object I am judged and narrowly defined, this contradiction often involves the feeling that I must conform to the conception another person has of me, the tension between how I view myself and how I am viewed by another human being can be a quite a painful one
this applies to romantic relationships I have certain conception of who my lover is and I try to possess them as someone essential belonging to me and likewise, my lover has a certain conception of who I am and tires to possess me in turn, and while in one hand I want to possess my lover on the other hand I also want them to love me freely thus there's a tension at the very heart of the relationship which cannot be resolved without killing the relationship itself, or I can just love them unconditionally thus save the relationship because unconditional love accepts other person's many conceptions without coercion or obligations, and in this quite formal sense love is freedom.
When I experience myself as a subject, I am free to determine what I will do and what kind of person I am but once I am trapped in another person's gaze, I am subject to a certain preconceived notion of who I am, my freedom seems to be limited by it as I ultimately cannot control how the other person will view me. As subject I have limitless freedom and infinite potential but as an object I am judged and narrowly defined, this contradiction often involves the feeling that I must conform to the conception another person has of me, the tension between how I view myself and how I am viewed by another human being can be a quite a painful one
this applies to romantic relationships I have certain conception of who my lover is and I try to possess them as someone essential belonging to me and likewise, my lover has a certain conception of who I am and tires to possess me in turn, and while in one hand I want to possess my lover on the other hand I also want them to love me freely thus there's a tension at the very heart of the relationship which cannot be resolved without killing the relationship itself, or I can just love them unconditionally thus save the relationship because unconditional love accepts other person's many conceptions without coercion or obligations, and in this quite formal sense love is freedom.
