The tale of Procrustes comes to us from Greek Mythology. Procrustes was a towering man. He owned an inn on the way from Athens to Eleusis, where he had put up a hard iron bed. More troublesome was the fact that Procrustes was a madman. He had a really nasty habit of forcing things to fit into fixed spaces.
The guy appeared extremely amiable and gained people’s trust very quickly. He would invite people to stay at his inn and once they had partaken of his hospitality, he insisted that they stay the night and sleep in his iron bed.
This is when his compulsion to make them fit came in. If the bed was longer than the individual lying in it, Procrustes would hammer or rack the body until it filled the bed’s space. Those too tall didn’t escape an equally gruesome fate — Procrustes would cut off their limbs to make them the right size for the bed. It’s fair to say no one wanted to find themselves in the Procrustean bed. Eventually, the Minotaur-killing Greek hero Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed.
Today, we live in a society where many versions of Procrustes have been allowed to become innkeepers… by us, who else? Tragically, today it is not hands and legs, but our minds that are being boxed into rigid iron bed like compartments. Initially, one is invited to partake of something lucrative and apparently free, akin to Procrustes’ meal and hospitality at his inn, and then, one is trapped in the iron bed and cut to size, with no way out.
Today’s Procrustes is shrewd. He doesn’t invite just a single person into his inn. His bed is much, much larger, and can entrap large groups, societies and even countries. Today’s Procrustes doesn’t hammer the victims into iron beds immediately, but takes his time, lulling them into stupor.
Often, today’s ‘Procrustean Guests’ start in comfortable and enjoyable situations. Very soon, things start becoming slightly uncomfortable, and they protest mildly, but begin to make slight adjustments to accommodate the discomforts. In case they protest a bit too loudly, others shush them down.
Gradually, as more and more rigidity is introduced, dissenters are ‘hammered in’ and ‘chopped down’ to fit the Procrustean iron bed. Herd mentality keeps dissent down, and the ‘sheep’ begin to adjust to prevalent traditions, rules and ritual, to avoid discomfort, unpleasantness and short-term problems with habits, people and things that they are attached to.
The ‘faithful’ and the hopeful, keep trying unnaturally to fit into every newly introduced scheme or pattern hoping to gain some comfort and avoid conflict. The tragedy is that most people don’t even realise they are in a Procrustean bed until it is much too late, and they haven’t the will or energy left to escape to freedom of nonconformity and diversity.
We must remember, there are no free lunches in life. Some Procrustes is always lurking around to extract his pound of flesh. If you are on free email or on social media sites, it is your private information that’s at risk. If you are getting free or discounted gifts in shops, they could be stuff nearing their expiry date. Low cost medicine being distributed in third world countries may be banned in donor countries and dumped on you. The list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, a lot of us are happy to be stuck in an invisible Procrustean bed of sorts nowadays. Once hooked to freebies, we become easy prey, and are trapped in Procrustean beds of debt and addictions, trapped in a straitjacket with no room for any manoeuvring.
Deepam Chatterjee is the author of The Millennial Yogi. He can be contacted on deepamchatterjee@yahoo.co.in