Animal Farm & KMOYBox

Animal Farm helped me to reflect on why I created this brand. It reinforced what I started learning about losing myself and finding myself and losing myself again, and again, again…

                  This is an important perspective, and it was a little unsettling for me to think about. These days, it gets a lot harder for me to think about and reminisce on my past. I moved through so many phases of myself just to be accepted by other people. At the end of each failed relationship, I inevitably exploded from complete emptiness and perceived lack of appreciation. I was never asking for anything in return while I was giving all of myself just to feel important.

                  What’s unsettling about Animal Farm is not how quickly they fell into dictatorship, but how easily all the animals adapted to the ever-changing commands of their environment that they once swore they never would stand for and should have rejected immediately.

                  I lost pieces of myself from compromising, rationalizing, and not asking enough questions. My story is a psychological one. My pain was always mental. Sometimes it was physical too, but mostly mental. All the things I had to overcome were inside of me and learned from a young age.

                  Keep Me Out of Your Box is meant to challenge invisible boxes that shape the way I think, behave, and define myself. Orwell’s farm defined the way people unknowingly build boxes and mistake them for freewill and a ceiling.

The promise: “Getting through this will make life better”

1.        The first box always opened with a persuasive story. The animals in Animal Farm are promised equality, better conditions, and an overall better future. They rally together for hope, not control. Psychologically, humans are drawn to community, belonging, like-mindedness, and what feels like the simplest solution to their problems or to get what they want.

a.        Taking another job

b.        Moving to another city

c.        Leaving an old relationship

2.        The second box is the box of compromise. Letting something slide “just this one time”. In Animal Farm, the commandments changed over time. When the animals began to question it, they were gaslit into thinking they had misremembered. On its own, these small changes felt insignificant, but over time, they realized it all meant so much more. Life is like this, too, in many ways. Especially in relationships. The small test of my boundaries where one day I realized I never agreed to any of this; it just started happening, and I just went with it.

a.        Staying silent when something feels wrong

b.        Making excuses for behaviors that don’t align with who I am as a person

c.        Accepting unhealthy behavior toward me

3.        This box is the box of going with the flow. The animals eventually stop questioning what they are told altogether. They rely on the pigs to think for them. They no longer reflect on why they do things but just know that they must do it. This is a form of mental fatigue. The animals are exhausted from challenging the pigs, and it comes to nothing. They no longer have the will to challenge the animals they should trust.

a.        Repeating opinions without doing further research

b.        Creating an identity based on a “feed”

c.        Letting a social group decide what matters

4.        This next box is a cage. One, we keep ourselves in when we make only one thing our identity. I am not only one thing. No one is. We are a culmination of many things. The worst prison to be in is the one we put ourselves in, in our minds. At the end of Animal Farm, the animals can imagine another way of living. Their identities are the systems that were built around them. Limiting beliefs are not reality. Studying psychology has shown me that the one thing our identities are not is fixed. I had to learn that I am capable of change and changing throughout life. Once I was aware of the narratives that I had been telling myself, I began to challenge them. That's when I really started to live life.

a.        Labeling ourselves

b.        Limiting ourselves

c.        Not believing in ourselves

5.        How do you look in the mirror? This box is full of mirrors. How did you end up in your current life? I mentioned the final scene of Animal Farm in a previous blog. It’s a remarkable scene. The animals can no longer tell the pigs apart from the humans they had rebelled against at the beginning of the novel. The ending represented all the small changes made right in front of them and their inability to stand up for what they once knew to be true. When did I start noticing that I wasn’t living my life for me? When I couldn’t smile at myself in the mirror. Who was she? I had no idea. 

What happens when you look within? You notice that you’re in a box created by either you or someone you trust. Be curious.

Who built this box?

Why am I still in it?

What happens if I leave it?

Link here.