Integration

One of the things that always frustrated me about adventism was how it roped off fundamental aspects of the human experience as undesirable or deviant. The first one I always think of is dancing. Dancing, of course, leads to arousal which may lead to unauthorized sex, so better to just not let kids dance together at all. Sex itself is horrible, sinful, debasing and wrong . . . Unless you get proper village approval and blessed by the pastor, in which case it is a joyful union between you, god and your spouse. Why any Adventist might have baggage about sex remains a mystery to the church at large. And then there's music. Ideally, most music should put you in a contemplative mood to reflect upon god. Because he gets cranky if you don't spend all day thinking about him. Music that makes you want to tap your foot, or god forbid gyrate your hips in some fashion, is the devil's work and should be treated as such. If, unaccountably, good Christian music makes you want to move, please limit yourself to standing and clapping ( seriously, it's what they do).
It's ridiculous and asinine. They limit self expression and call it joy.
But this is a symptom of our larger culture as well. I recently read a book that asserted the greatest amount of fulfillment and happiness stems firm being an integrated person, meaning you have equal access to your emotional and intellectual brain without one riding rampant over the other. In other words, your right and left brain communicate well in most situations.
But that's not what our culture seems to prize. We prize restraint and logic and minimum display of emotion. We elevate the logical left brain, and view displays of emotion as distasteful. Someone today described crying as a response to something powerfully beautiful as "insane.". The epitome of cool is the appearance of not giving a shit about any goddamn thing that happens. These are not the expectations of fully integrated people. We do ourselves and others a disservice by scorning them for displaying genuine emotion in public settings.
I am not sure where I'm going with this, except to say I would someday like to be an integrated person and able to engage the full realm of human experience, without my baggage getting in the way.