Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self
Samantha Wiktor Team Sphinx
I found this story extremely frustrating. I think it was hard for me to read this tale and picture the way Alice saw herself after the “accident.” She says she doesn’t raise her head for six years and will no longer stare at anyone. I don’t see how someone could waste six plus years of their life feeling sorry for themselves. yes, it was an accident. It did not happen on purpose. Why would you feel sorry for yourself, when you have the choice to live. At least she still had one good, perfectly healthy eye to use. She could never see herself in the same way she did before the accident. She was no longer pretty or worthy. She had lost all self confidence as a result of one incident. Then, at the end of the story she undergoes a procedure to remove the scar tissue in her eye. Then and only then is she finally happy and living life to the fullest again. Once the scar is taken away, then she has her dream boyfriend and becomes valedictorian, is the most popular student, and “queen.” Why did she allow herself to be held back so much? It seemed as if the moral of her personal story was that she was not good enough or deserving of any of the wonderful things life has to offer until she had her scar taken away. And what kind of way is that to live? We can be “beautiful, whole, and free..” even with something we see as a blemish. Not everything has to be perfect in order to enjoy our life.
If Jill Bolte Taylor, Joan Didion, Paul Bloom and Alice Walker had a sit down to discuss their differing opinions on what makes someone their "self," I would mostly relate to and support the ideas of Alice Walker. Here is a how I imagine the meeting going down: Taylor would be preoccupied with starring at her arm and contemplating where it ends and the table begins, all the while describing the setting as from an "astral view" perspective. Bloom would begin to advocate his point with his misinterpretation and lack of understanding previously expressed in his writing, "The alternative view keeps the angel and the devil, but casts aside the person in between. The competing selves are not over your shoulder, but inside your head...." "WRONG! ! ! ! !" I would interrupt, you have misinterpreted this age old metaphor, the angel and devil never fighting for control of the host, they were merely attempting to influence the host so that the host may decide with their own will. Bloom would then proceed to quote Plato (and thereby philosophy) as agreeing or to back up his claim that "different selves within a single person" exist. Then I would explain to him that Philosophy never offered any answers and its sole purpose is to encourage the expansion of one's thinking. Socrates himself never claimed to have any answers and that because he knew that he knew nothing it made him the wisest around, "I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know." Effectively Bloom and Taylor would not be present at the meeting. This would leave the rational and intelligent ladies, Didion and Walker to discuss how time, experiences, memories and needs make up one's self. Walker would cite her eye accident story and relate how when she questioned her family if she had changed after the accident they would respond, "You did not change." After agreeing back and forth, these two ladies would conclude that their is only one "self" and that it is influenced and adapts to its situation. This "finding" would allow the ladies to concretely dismiss the ideas that a multitude of people (different selves) are fighting for control of each and every person.
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