Everyone is a number in this dystopian near-future where cameras track your every move. Score above 90 and your set for life. Score below 75 and you’re on your own, kid.
The Cycler Series
The Cyler Series: What would you do if you woke up one day as a member of the opposite sex? For Jill McTeague, this is no hypothetical question. It’s real life!
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I’ve lived in New York since 1990. I know the streets, the neighborhoods, the best bagel place (Essa), and how to hail a cab in the rain. I spent a good part of the nineties in much the same way that Carrie Bradshaw and her pals spent the nineties. And if you had asked me back then whether or not I was a New Yorker, I would have said yes emphatically. But lately I’ve come to the realization that, despite my familiarity with this city and its folk, I am, and probably always will be, a New Englander. Call it personal terroir. For those of you who don’t know what terroir is (I only learned of it recently), it’s usually associated with wine. Here’s wikipedia’s definiton:
I was grown in New England and only now do I see the characteristics that geography has bestowed upon me. So here (because I haven’t said anything controversial in this blog for a while) are two things that make me a New Englander. 1) Nature. Nature is everywhere, no matter where you grow up. But in New England, we have a specific attitude toward it. Nature is not something you visit, experience, consume, or appreciate. It’s bigger than you and you are of it. It is the seasons, the sea, the snow, the cold and the mosquitoes. It is not to be conquered but endured. It is not there for your enjoyment but rather for respectful contemplation. This is why I’ve never had any appreciation whatsoever for the Hamptons. The Hamptons are nature tortured into an amusement park for the rich. For me, a beach only counts if the human footprint upon it is small. Crane’s Beach is a beach. Coney Island is not a beach. 2. Complaint. A New Englander is allowed to complain about the weather, traffic, politics, education, and a whole host of other issues. But we’re not allowed to complain about personal problems. We’re supposed to suck it up or do something about it. The whole time I lived in Massachusetts, I knew maybe one person in therapy. In New York, at least half the people I know are in therapy. I’m sure there are many more ways in which geography has engraved itself on my personality. But the great thing about New York is that it seamlessly absorbs people manufactured all over the world. It doesn’t even have a problem with Red Sox fans. And I’m not sure I could say the same thing about New Englanders and Yankee fans. 10 Responses to “Personal Terroir”Leave a Reply |
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Hi
Thanks for sharing.
It’s a terrific blog post.
I like using the term terroir for people, for it is true that we carry where we grew up with us forever.
Love and all the best to you and yours,
twitter.com/RKCharron
xoxo
I don’t know if the “complaint” part is a good thing. I tend to think that people not given the leeway to express their less-than-good feelings just feel worse and worse. Bottle up and explode, you know the deal.
Thanks, RKCharron.
Andrew: “Bottle up and explode?” or Bottle up and ferment? All those less-than-good feelings can mutate into powerfully creative forces if you fix the cap on the bottle just right. Or yeah, they can explode. But at least with fermenting it won’t cost you $200 an hour.
Dear ‘Terroirist’
Three comments concerning your last post:
1. Thanks for increasing my “euro-cabulary.” I can’t get enough of those perky little ‘untranslatables’ requiring a phrase or more in English to explain the succinct, single word of a cousin tongue such as ‘shadenfreud,’ ‘fremdwort’ or ‘healthcare.’
2. You made me think of my own ‘terroir’ – Walking under an elevated subway, swinging paint cans, and strutting to the background music of the Bee-Gees. Ah, talk about nature…
3. New Yorkers really don’t tolerate Red-Sox fans … I shouldn’t tell you this, but since their world series win in 2004, us S.L.O.B.B.’s (Secret Loyal Order to the Bronx Bombers) have been collecting information to pull off a “Long Knives” night if those Mass-holes should ever win another championship. (What? 2007 … I must have been out of the country…)
ahhh, the apple, the city so nice that they named it twice
It’s funny, Sal, because when I think of that inimitable New York terroir, you are precisely who I think of. Sorry about 2004 and 2007, by the way.
Lauren, re: “bottle up and ferment,” I can definitely see that side of things as well. I don’t know that being in therapy really does all that much to remove the pain that can also be a source of creativity, though. It never has for me.
Really, though, I think there’s a difference between being someone who seeks out therapy and someone who sits around complaining all day. Therapy seems to me like something that someone does in order to try and do something about the troubles in their life, whereas complaining seems like just the opposite. More of a wallowing than anything.
In the end, channeling pain into creative urges has never been enough to make the pain go away, for me, and I’d hate to think that there were people out there judging me for seeking therapy at points in my life where I felt like I couldn’t handle things on my own. Not that I’m saying you’re doing that, but the whole stiff-upper-lip attitude can become counterproductive at points, I’d say.
You may be right, Andrew. Seeking therapy *is* doing something about the pain. And undoubtedly it works for some people in some circumstances. But overall I don’t have a lot of faith in the process. For one thing, I think a lot of psychotherapy is founded on pseudo-science. Freud, for example, was not a scientist. He was a mythologist. And don’t even get me started on Jung. Insightful men, perhaps, who may have stumbled on some truths here and there. But their methods fall so far short of the minimum standards of science that I can’t acknowledge the scientific legitimacy of any practice that bases itself on their work.
For another, therapy often places far too much emphasis on the significance of past events, which, in my opinion, is disempowering. The more time you spend dwelling on past events, the more you intensify their significance in your life. You can’t change the past. You can’t change what your parents did or didn’t do. By picking and pawing at what they did in the past, you’re essentially letting them mess you up all over again. So why dwell on it?
This brings me to my final reason for distrusting therapy. It’s a brilliant business model. It hooks people for life without ever delivering on the promise of recovery. Since you can’t change the past, the therapeutic approach is essentially an endless one. Recovery is not in the interests of the therapist. Permanent therapy is.
All of that said, I don’t think anyone should look down on you or anyone else for seeking therapy. Trying to solve a problem is better than just complaining about it. But I also think we should demand of therapists that they demonstrate the legitimacy of what they practice. And I don’t think a lot of them have done that.
That’s not to say that there are no means of resolving issues other than a stiff upper lip. I’m a big fan of the NLP approach, for example. NLP is not much of a business model. You can basically buy a book or two, learn its techniques, and do it yourself. It’s a results-oriented, totally empowering approach to mental autonomy. I have a lot of friends in therapy. I love them and wish them the best. But I think they’d be much better off pocketing that money and just putting Tony Robbins on their Twitter list. Or just buying NLP for Dummies.
Hah, yeah, I think we have more common ground on this issue than I originally thought. The whole Freud/Jung thing seems particularly weird to me. I haven’t read any Jung, though I’ve come across references to him in passing, and it seems like he was trying to be a mystic or something. Freud I have read, and I’m not really sure how much anything he was doing really had to do with the problems people had and have. I don’t buy into all this stuff about dreams and sexual symbology, etc.
As for the industry trying to get a person addicted to therapy, I’ve never thought of it that way but I do tend to think that the pharmaceutical component of modern psychiatry is way out of control. It seems like most of the pills–Prozac, Paxil, etc–that get prescribed for people’s mental issues are supposed to act as a panacea, and yet they aren’t really all that effective for most people, especially without a simultaneous talk-therapy component. Instead, all that happens is that a person gets addicted to a mental health drug that doesn’t really even make them all that mentally healthy, and doctors and pharmaceutical companies make money. That’s messed up, I agree.
I’ve never really heard of NLP, though I know vaguely who Tony Robbins is (always just thought of him as a motivational speaker, though). I will look into that stuff, see what I think.
Thanks for discussing this stuff with me. It’s been interesting, and I hope I didn’t offend at any point.
It has indeed been interesting, Andrew. And you never once offended me. Even if you did, that would be okay with me. My blog is a safe space to disagree. I confess I thought Tony Robbins was a motivational speaker too, and kind of cheesy to boot. But when I discovered that his methods were rooted in NLP, I took a second look and I’m glad I did. He’s a smart dude.