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juushikaI've never felt less like a cat then in the week or two after declaring that I was one. I have never doubted that identity more than I have now, in the last two weeks. Overthinking can burden anything—and it has certainly burdened this declaration of identity. By questioning everything, I began to doubt everything until I became so far distanced from my identity that it seemed rather foolish to speak on it in the first place.
There is an ideal balance between knowing thyself and being thyself. I use this example all the time, but I do so because it's true—and particularly famous. Shakespeare's Hamlet I.iii.78: "This above all: to thine own self be true," Polonius says to Laertes, but when Hamlet tries to do just that, to know himself and be true to himself, he began a play's worth of murderous inaction. I've written a post about it before, but the point is: when we—rather, when I become obsessed with realizing my identity, I get trapped within a Hamlet-like contemplation of that identity and forget to actually exist within—or despite—it.
I am very good at reading, at observing, at learning; I am very bad at putting knowledge into action, or achieving action at all. So I've spent the last two weeks reading deep into everything I can find of therian and otherkin writing: theories, treatise, awakening stories, surveys. I also went through and read the Wikipedia articles on cats—while hardly the best source of information, it is an adequate starting place. The constant theme of the therian community is to question what you think you know of yourself, and in the face of it I've been feeling rather ... doubtful.
Some things makes sense: I have the urge to meow to the boy, but never in the privacy of my own company—and meowing is a form of communication that cats use almost exclusively with humans. "The human keeper of a cat functions as a sort of surrogate for the cat's mother, and ... adult domestic cats live their lives in a kind of extended kittenhood, a form of behavioral neoteny" (Wikipeida:Cat:Sociability)—which is pretty much a description of me, in a nutshell. Cats associate water and disgust (Wikiediea:Cat Behavior:Body Language), and I do as well—even if water doesn't pose quite as much of a cold threat to me in a body without fur.
(I still believe there's room for some essays about domestic therians.)
Yet, no matter how often I nod my head in agreement, I doubt. I doubt because, as cats go, I lack the hunting instinct usually associated with them and prevalent in so many feline therians (most of them, mind, are big cats, like panthers and tigers). The boy thinks that my lack of hunt instinct—and my vegetarian diet—is strange, given the rest of my cat-like personality. Nevermind that I was raised alongside three of our four cats that exhibited no hunt instinct, who never in fifteen years did I see hunt or deliver or leave a carcass—it remains such a fundamental deviation from the norm that, well, I doubt.
I doubt, too, in the face of die-hard certainty in others. The community is so emphatic on "knowing thyself" but it seems that some members do, and they claim these animal identities in bold, lyrical declarations. I admire that, but I'm rarely so certain about anything in my life, and I'm definitely not at that point with my therianthropy.
And so I doubt. I think, and I question myself, and these things are healthy—but I doubt so much that I feel like I've driven myself away from something that felt so true just two weeks ago. Running across mentions of being a cat that I wrote before I've even contemplated the therian label—and there are dozens of mentions, in my journal, in interactions in Second Life—seems almost surreal. How could I know, and state so simply, what I question so heavily now? The answer, I suppose is simple: behind my self-doubt is some fundamental knowledge of myself. That is the sort of knowledge that I need to embrace, and not forget, even while I question my assumptions.
I'll continue to read, but I think I've emerged from the obsessive reading and thinking which surrounds each major revelation that I make in my life. Now I can try to find the balance—the balance between questioning myself to discover who I am, and living the life and identities that I have discovered thus far. I am not Prince Hamlet, indeed, thought I do tend that way. Therianthropy is not about communities and essays and constant comparisons to others, although they can all function as tools. Rather, therianthropy is about knowing and being the animals that are the self: human, and non-human, as they are.
There is an ideal balance between knowing thyself and being thyself. I use this example all the time, but I do so because it's true—and particularly famous. Shakespeare's Hamlet I.iii.78: "This above all: to thine own self be true," Polonius says to Laertes, but when Hamlet tries to do just that, to know himself and be true to himself, he began a play's worth of murderous inaction. I've written a post about it before, but the point is: when we—rather, when I become obsessed with realizing my identity, I get trapped within a Hamlet-like contemplation of that identity and forget to actually exist within—or despite—it.
I am very good at reading, at observing, at learning; I am very bad at putting knowledge into action, or achieving action at all. So I've spent the last two weeks reading deep into everything I can find of therian and otherkin writing: theories, treatise, awakening stories, surveys. I also went through and read the Wikipedia articles on cats—while hardly the best source of information, it is an adequate starting place. The constant theme of the therian community is to question what you think you know of yourself, and in the face of it I've been feeling rather ... doubtful.
Some things makes sense: I have the urge to meow to the boy, but never in the privacy of my own company—and meowing is a form of communication that cats use almost exclusively with humans. "The human keeper of a cat functions as a sort of surrogate for the cat's mother, and ... adult domestic cats live their lives in a kind of extended kittenhood, a form of behavioral neoteny" (Wikipeida:Cat:Sociability)—which is pretty much a description of me, in a nutshell. Cats associate water and disgust (Wikiediea:Cat Behavior:Body Language), and I do as well—even if water doesn't pose quite as much of a cold threat to me in a body without fur.
(I still believe there's room for some essays about domestic therians.)
Yet, no matter how often I nod my head in agreement, I doubt. I doubt because, as cats go, I lack the hunting instinct usually associated with them and prevalent in so many feline therians (most of them, mind, are big cats, like panthers and tigers). The boy thinks that my lack of hunt instinct—and my vegetarian diet—is strange, given the rest of my cat-like personality. Nevermind that I was raised alongside three of our four cats that exhibited no hunt instinct, who never in fifteen years did I see hunt or deliver or leave a carcass—it remains such a fundamental deviation from the norm that, well, I doubt.
I doubt, too, in the face of die-hard certainty in others. The community is so emphatic on "knowing thyself" but it seems that some members do, and they claim these animal identities in bold, lyrical declarations. I admire that, but I'm rarely so certain about anything in my life, and I'm definitely not at that point with my therianthropy.
And so I doubt. I think, and I question myself, and these things are healthy—but I doubt so much that I feel like I've driven myself away from something that felt so true just two weeks ago. Running across mentions of being a cat that I wrote before I've even contemplated the therian label—and there are dozens of mentions, in my journal, in interactions in Second Life—seems almost surreal. How could I know, and state so simply, what I question so heavily now? The answer, I suppose is simple: behind my self-doubt is some fundamental knowledge of myself. That is the sort of knowledge that I need to embrace, and not forget, even while I question my assumptions.
I'll continue to read, but I think I've emerged from the obsessive reading and thinking which surrounds each major revelation that I make in my life. Now I can try to find the balance—the balance between questioning myself to discover who I am, and living the life and identities that I have discovered thus far. I am not Prince Hamlet, indeed, thought I do tend that way. Therianthropy is not about communities and essays and constant comparisons to others, although they can all function as tools. Rather, therianthropy is about knowing and being the animals that are the self: human, and non-human, as they are.
