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Trepanation and Transgression

Finding Redemption in Curiosity

By Ricky McQuillanPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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I am glad that we don't drill holes in people's heads to let the demons out. I am actually pretty happy about this. I think this is a development, a positive achievement for humanity. Let's call it a step forward.

Back in the day, I would probably have been a likely candidate for an unwanted aperture in the skull. Now, that is not to say, that from time to time there seems like there is a lot of pressure inside my head, and my brain feels like it is going to explode, and in some metaphorical way you could say that I long for something to relieve the pressure. But, if someone comes anywhere near me with a damn drill...

Heretics. That is what they would call the people who cut open human bodies to discover what lay inside, to see what made them tick when they were still ticking. To the pious, we were made in the image of God, made alive by the breath of God, and to take dead bodies and cut them open was an act of sacrilege. We were vessels of the divine mystery. These inquisitive, interested people who had to steal bodies or even purchase them on the black market, to escape the ever watchful gaze of those in charge of protecting the sanctity of the now-inanimate humans, were defiling the temple. This is not to say, that the apprentice surgeons didn't believe that the body was a miraculous thing, and I am pretty sure, there were many of them who believed in a creating God; but they interpreted that in a different way. They allowed a question to be asked.

Mystery, oftentimes is used to protect something that we feel is valuable. It becomes something we use to maintain a protective distance; keep our distance from some thing, and then call this imprisonment of our curiosity, humility or reverence.

Sometimes things become so valuable that we are afraid to touch them, afraid to lose them, afraid to damage them.

The most important things in our lives, the things we most value, can then become the things that protect us from our curiosity. Things are designated a mystery, as if we are afraid of what we might find if we allowed ourselves to be curious. Those that express curiosity, the ones who want to sneak-a-peak behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies, are frowned upon and anathematized.

They risk destroying it for everyone else. These are the heretics. They see things differently than the rest. They point at the emperor's naked body asking the blind to see, but that takes a miracle that not even a heretic can bring about.

The unspeakable

The unmentionable

our beliefs... our loves

our naked bodies... our naked desires

our fears... our shames

our depressions... our difficult feelings

our illnesses, our death

The emotional skeletons in the closet

The emotional dust under the carpet

our hidden self.

I am glad that the inquisitive and courageous souls risked severe punishments, to make discoveries about the human body. In the journey of their curiosity, they did not discover an end to the mystery of humanity, but it opened up a whole new undiscovered miraculous world... and we stopped drilling holes in our heads.

I wonder if curiosity is the twin of transgression. After all, a child only becomes curious about what is between his or her legs, after they have encountered the disapproving look of the embarrassed or anxious parent. Before that awareness of transgression, there was nothing different about any part of the body, no boundaries to the child's being, no division and no "sin." We arrested the natural development. We created the fracture that gave birth to the transgression and the need for a redeeming curiosity. For some, the curiosity never sees the light of day, it is never nurtured. Yet, what is the ideal childlike state, but one where the child feels safe enough to explore their world without fear. To interact with other children, to dig in the sand and the dirt; to create, make messes; to leave their dirty finger prints on windows.

I often think that the fear that enters the child's world, does not come from the child's experience of themselves, or themselves in the world, but has come from parents, adults, the adulterated people, who curse the child with their own fears.

We answer the questions of the child, as if the child were looking for answers. We become answer-addicts; junkies for appeasing truths. We lose our sense of curiosity. We stop asking relentlessly, “why?” We start accepting all sorts of questionable things, like, our lot in life, the status quo, the way things are. We become the dull-eyed automatons, who will accept any medicine from unknown men in white coats.

In this story, maybe the only salvation is curiosity.

humanity
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About the Creator

Ricky McQuillan

Belfast-based singer and scribbler. Born in 1977, journaling since I was a fifteen, did a degree in Philosophy in my late 20s, but since then, have mostly been reading Psychobabble, and blogging

https://rickymcquillan.blogspot.co.uk/

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