Film Flail Fail: Survival of the privileged

You were born with survival instincts. Freeze. Fly. Fight. Classic.

If you were in the woods and a predator was around, you'd often freeze and become tree-like, hoping for the best. But you just had to wear your favorite sequined onesie, because you're going to a "ceremony/retreat/party," so the predator sees you. No bueno. (This is also why I look at my phone when people start dancing.)

Now you gotta fly. But you only have two legs, and those sneakers that promised athletic greatness lied to you. Oh, and they light up. The predator catches you, effortlessly btw.

So now the predator has you cornered. It's time to fight, as a hairless, clawless problem solver who will chip a tooth trying to bite back. I broke my tooth eating dried mango last year. What makes me think I'll go mouth-to-mouth with any animal? Plus I still carry "trauma" from the time I threw a peanut M&M in the air, tried to catch it in my mouth, and it hit my front tooth. No way. Just take me out.

But we've solved so many problems in society now that we can just poo poo our instincts.

So when stress meets you now, and you're supposed to snap into survival. You still plant your feet; that's good, that's a freeze. But oh no, your new instincts grabbed your phone. Get the shot, great, this might go viral. But uh oh, in the time you spent getting the shot, you should have run to safety. No time to run anymore, so time to fight. Oh snap. You've trained to send snarky comments and powerful emails as a way to "fight", so actual fighting is more like flailing into dreamland. I've actually seen people fall on the ground with their fingers twitching.

You perform how you practice. Sometimes our highest-stress moments now are video games or online. So under extreme fight-or-flight, we reach for hands on a keyboard or a controller, and report to HR as a fighting mechanism.

Freeze, fly, fight has become "film, flail, fail," and it seems like a natural evolution of privilege. Like how being fat used to mean you were rich and well fed.

I'm grateful we made it here. But the pendulum of privilege and pleasure will swing hard the other way.

Freeze. Fly. Fight.

You perform how you practice. The YAMA Practice Library has practices to reconnect you with your natural instincts and to train beyond them.