Working the giant within

this took so much of June, just to put down as words

I've become increasingly aware of the huge role carried on, by the large part of the mind we are not conscious of.
I think it's exceedingly arrogant to think we can greatly manipulate the so-called subconscious giant, with the merest tools of our conscious desires.
Even a deep intrapersonal intelligence should tell us to sincerely respect, not brazenly try to exploit, and fall to, such a giant who actually controls so much of what each of us is.
And the giant's not often telling what is doing, or being done to our lives.

I learnt this the hard and very long way.
I was educated to believe in the adamantine invincibility of knowledge, logic, rules, procedures, institutions and other creations of the human mind.
Nothing was supposed to be unconquerable, through the application of plans & reasoning.
Especially when stamped with approval on high from educated experts and competent politicians.

But I kept noticing what a failure I continued to be.
While my peers seemed to effectively administer iron-cast mental discipline in studies, national service and careers, I repeatedly washed out, feebly attempting to use the same excellent methods.
All my life, I've always felt a boy just wanting his own time & space to play in and be alive, so it became unbelievable that I could be such a rotten reject in society.

Years of youth passed by, as my limbs finally got forcefully twisted time and again, by an inner certainty that started questioning one by one, one after another, one moment after another, all the social and cultural engineering I was pledged to defend with my life.
The simpler, purer voice of childhood with its powerful innocence never stopped speaking quietly, calmly to me, even when I was too enraged, fearful or indifferent to listen.

The giant was summoned against me, and how tormented I felt to endlessly meet his acquaintance.
Deadlines I could not meet, performance I could not sustain; norms I actually, really did not subscribe to; thanks to all the wrestle-downs by this giant with its strong arms.

Eventually I have snail-slowly begun to understand: the giant is my lost much-more-than-half.
We needed to re-unify to become the greater whole of which we were, originally.

It's painful to witness-experience how so much of what parents, teachers, seniors, authorities taught us, must be allowed to fall away, fade away, be ignored, and forgotten.
But persist with them and risk losing that child of boundless potential & resource which each of us once was.

Fight the giant within, or work with it.
I chose.