7.12.21 // connection

It occurred to me recently how much where we were born and raised impacts the way we view connection.
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Our most basic and intrinsic need for connection and human interaction is dictated by strangers from years past and enforced by a silent voice and an invisible firm hand.
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What a funny thought...
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The way we interact, the way we hold friendships and romantic relationships, the way we love, is entirely based on the fear of being exiled from a community, of the threat of having judgment and respect withdrawn, of not being respected, of not being held with open arms in our own individual curiosities and freedoms.
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Taboo: "a social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing."
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A custom dictating a society most likely put in place not to help us with survival (religious customs especially not built for survival, but instead control, but I can't open that can of worms today), instead these customs were meant to keep us docile and often satiated in the uncertainty of life and existence.
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If we stop thinking about customs, norms, and deviations from the prescribed paths, what would our lives look like if we lived according to our own voice, those deep yearnings, the voices constricted by the invisible hand of societal enforcement?
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I wonder if the world would be an even more colorful place...