Absurdly right vs Rigidly easy

“Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.” 

JK Rowling

"We have to choose between what is right, and what is easy.”   

JK Rowling

(These were not quoted together, and I'm going to share my context on them which may not be what JK Rowling meant... sorry JK hope this isn't maligning your words.)

As much as I try to empathize and see things through someone else's perspective the only person I can ever get deep inside of is me (even that requires a lot of work). And the inside me is not limited by convention and is often absurd, and I like that, but it sometimes I belittle and shut it down with the outside me; my outside voice. The outside me that tries to fit in to the constructs of our society and its expectations. The outside me that is serious, impossibly rigid and hard to live up to.  That outside voice is critical and far less compassionate and empathetic to the inside me than it is to other people which is also absurd. Paradoxically that critical outside voice is the voice of "easy". It is "easy" because it does not challenge society, the so called "values" that we are conditioned to conform to. "Right" we feel inside, but if we choose based on that we have to face being different, being ostracized, sometimes bullied and ridiculed. If we choose "Right" we have to be prepared to stand strong because society is going to throw everything it can at us to protect its homogeneous values and conformity which it thinks makes it secure. 

This is why the Harry Potter books and JK Rowling's experience are such a welcome joy to read.  She exposes the inside and outside worlds of her characters and the stories hinge on choices made between what is right and what is easy. There are hard fought battles between the two  and then when right wins the victory is sweet, liberating and the easy is exposed as a hole that, like quicksand, sucks its victims deeper into the darkness of the isolation of the individual losing their imagination and absurd-ability each time it is chosen.

The choice between what is right and what is easy translates into the choice between what our inside says and what the outside expects. 

And it is really hard to trust that voice inside because sometimes it seems ridiculously incongruous with the outside world and I would like to say that I think the world needs us to be a little more absurd and not take ourselves quite so seriously!!

Cheers

Jeanne