Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini

Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan Experience spoke about how there are three levels people engage with the world. There is childhood, the tribe and the individual. Timoteo, the protagonist in the book, is better understood in this way. I think he is stuck in the tribe part of his life and his unhappiness or general dissatisfaction with life is due to this. Every decision he has made: becoming a surgeon, getting married, dutiful husband, devoted son and doting father have been what society has asked of him. He has willingly obliged until now. He finds that his life is rather stifling. He has an affair with Talia, a woman life dealt a bad hand to. She doesn't expect much from life and doesn't expect much from him either. He constantly degrades her in his mind, calling her a whore, prostitute and synonyms ad nauseum. He does this because it's the only way he can live with himself. He has to believe she is less than in his mind so he can justify his treatment of her. He treats her with contempt and yet he is the one who continues returning to her time and time again. She is generally very apathetic and so she hardly chases him. He is drawn to her because she is a conduit for him to become himself; to enter the third stage. Engaging with the world as an individual requires you to deal with all aspects of yourself including the Jungian shadow self. In the words of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, 'the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.' In order for Timoteo to actualize in the individual stage, he has to contend with his shadow self. Eckhart Tolle says 'Whatever you accept completely, you go beyond'. He has to come vis-à-vis with his own malevolence, to wrestle with it and emerge transformed on the other side. He had to become meek as described by Jordan Peterson; to be fully aware of one's propensity for violence and choose not to exercise it. It is to carry a metaphorical sword and be able to competently wield it but choose to keep it in its sheath. 

Timoteo's  maturity as an individual spells destruction for Talia but there was a willingness in her as well. She seems to have given herself to him as a sacrifice. She knew she would die but dying for his becoming gave her little life meaning. As though her mortality was immortalized through him. It reminds me of a paragraph I read in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns:

'Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.'

Esther Perel (Author of The Mating Game and The State of Affairs) is known to say 'sex is not something you do, it is a place you go to'. Similarly, Ayn Rand wrote:

'Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.'

It then comes as no surprise that Timoteo and Talia's relationship is a sexual one. Necessarily. Sex is a fundamental way to access our deepest selves, to somehow manipulate the ether, to transcend, to enter liminal spaces. The song Holy Room by Somi encapsulates this whole idea. When you slow down and pay attention during sex,you notice the shift. It hits you that you have crossed over a rubicon and are forever changed. This is the place where you take off your shoes; not just to honour the other person who is helping you peel back the layers and reveal your hidden self but also to honour yourself by being aware and learning things about yourself it would be hard to otherwise learn.

NOTES:

[1] Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Move-Margaret-Mazzantini/dp/1400034663

[2] A Thousand Splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini

https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Splendid-Suns-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/159448385X

https://www.takealot.com/a-thousand-splendid-suns/PLID4610591

[3] Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

https://www.amazon.com/Mating-Captivity-Unlocking-Erotic-Intelligence/dp/0060753641

https://www.takealot.com/mating-in-captivity-unlocking-erotic-intelligence/PLID34707221

[4] The State of Affairs by Esther Perel

https://www.takealot.com/the-state-of-affairs-rethinking-infidelity/PLID44117598

https://www.amazon.com/State-Affairs-Rethinking-Infidelity/dp/006322583

[5] Joe Rogan Experience #1208- Jordan Peterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vleFt88Hm8s

[6] Somi- Holy Room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCFxVi_bolg