Hydra

We are hydras, multi-headed monsters,

tongues hissing, spitting, writhing, wrangling

each to get its way above the others.

Many yet one, we cannot pacify

the warring heads, each demanding selfish

and unbending, absolute desires.

Like all wars, this one too comes to end

when at last heads learn cooperation.

__________

You wake with plans: write something honest, take a walk, speak directly, eat like a person who wants to live. But before you even get through the list in your head, some part of you wants to play hooky. Another part berates that part, “You’re lazy, weak, a disappointment.” A third joins in to excuse the first part, and a fourth wonders if it’s too early to drink. You haven’t even gotten out of bed.

It feels like civil war.

And because it happens so often, you long ago began to think that this warring multiplicity of voices is you. That there’s something broken in you, something that needs repairing or healing or erasing. So you do what you’ve learned to do: find the bad part and fight it.

But what if you’re not a war zone? What if no part of you has to conquer?

• • • •

Psychology has many models that treat the inner self as multiple. The mind, these models say, doesn’t speak with a single voice. It’s more like a whole cast of characters in a play. Every “part” of you is a role you learned to play. Every urge, hesitation, outburst, reticence is the voice of some character inside trying to protect you—or itself.

The part that judges you? Maybe you gave it birth when you felt you needed to be a “good child” to keep your parents’ love. The part that avoids responsibility? Maybe it once saved you from collapsing when the load became impossible to carry..

None of them are wicked. They’re like legacy emergency systems, still trying to help in the only way they know how. And the noise? The fighting? That’s what happens when those parts are having it out among themselves.

• • • • •

For most of my adult life, I thought of myself as “driven.” I worked constantly, efficiently, even on weekends. I called it discipline. But really, it was fear that the rug would be pulled out from under me if I didn’t give one thousand percent.

Whenever I tried to rest, something inside panicked. Once, on a sabbatical from teaching, I decided to sit still and stop thinking. I lasted fifteen minutes. Then I had to get up and do something. That’s how deep in I was. No matter how much I tried to control the need to do something, it ended up controlling me.

Eventually, some book I’ve long ago forgotten asked a question like, “What if you stopped arguing with the voice? What if you asked what it’s afraid of?”

So I sat down. I asked. I took out a piece of paper and wrote, “What are you afraid of?” And the answer came, quickly and quietly. "If you stop, no one will need you.”

That was a surprise. It wasn’t a saboteur talking. It was a child.

• • • • •

Plato said the soul was like a city: reason, spirit, appetite—each with a role. When they’re in chaos, we suffer. But when each part does its work in balance, we feel something like harmony.

Even Aristotle, who had no use for mysticism, said the good life was lived between extremes. Not too much. Not too little. Virtue was a mean. The brave man stands between cowardice and recklessness. The temperate one enjoys without being enslaved.

This wasn’t about winning. It was about tuning—like strings are tuned for making music.

Integration isn’t about total agreement. It’s about letting every part have a seat at the table. Especially the loud ones. Especially the scared ones.

• • • • •

You can try this.

Find the part of you that resists something—resting, writing, trusting someone. Don’t argue. Don’t reason. Just ask it, “What are you afraid would happen if I listened to you?”

You may not get an answer today. But you’ve changed the question. You’ve stopped demanding silence. You’ve started inviting speech. Sometimes, that’s the turning point.

• • • • •

You are not a war zone. You are a choir that needs to tune up. Music will not sound if voices are silenced. Harmony doesn’t come from letting the loudest voice win. It arises when every part finds its place.