Procrustes’ bed
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Procrustes was a character from Greek mythology who had a bed that he claimed would fit anyone - no matter how tall or short you were. And he was right, in a way. If you were too long for the bed then your feet would be chopped off, and if you were too short for the bed, then you’d be stretched until you were the same length the bed was. This was the ancient Greek equivalent of “one size fits all”.
The world that is around us can be like that bed. We can mold our environments to a particular “shape” that will accept us as long as we in turn continue to fit ourselves to the parameters that our environments provide. We talk about this kind of thing when we say that someone is like a “square peg in a round hole”. This can be very painful when it happens to us, especially when the corners of our personalities are brought into conflict with our environment.
The “Procrustean bed” (or the round hole - it doesn’t really matter which metaphor you use) is partly composed of other people, who have developed expectations of how we will behave. They’ve usually based these expectations on how we’ve behaved in the past, so in a way we’ve created our own environment.
When we start to change, it’s often the case that people will happily accept those changes. If we’ve become a bit happier and friendlier, then few people are likely to complain. There are times when changes that seem important to us will simply meet with indifference, although I suspect that this is often disguised fear or hostility. So we cannot assume that there will be help and reassurance from others, even from those others who are most dear to us. As the poet David Whyte said, “In my experience, the more true we are to our own creative gifts the less there is any outer reassurance or help at the beginning.”
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