We are Borg

     Just watched some re-runs of the space series Voyager where Seven of Nine, former Borg drone, continues to explore her regained humanity amidst flashbacks of her childhood capture and assimilation by the mechanistic Borg.  In one episode Captain Janeway attempts to introduce Seven to the virtues of art, specifically sculpture, in a Da Vincian hologram studio.  Seven obediently puts a piece of clay on Janeway's half finished sculpture, then matter of factly states:

   "This activity is truly unproductive.  The end result has no use;  no necessary task has been accomplished.  Time has been expended, nothing more."

    Captain Janeway patiently explains to Seven that it's a matter of perspective.  She herself finds great pleasure in working the clay and creating something.  It's relaxing for her.

    Seven says, "The concept of relaxation is difficult for me to understand.  As a Borg my time was spent working at a specific task.  When it was completed, I was assigned another.  It was efficient."

   I have to say I laughed loudly watching this again, mainly because I too was assimilated in my youth.  Borg thinking and living weren't the prettiest but they were efficient.  Analysis and knowledge meant survival and even a measure of success.  Over time, though, the rest of my humanity kept trying to reassert itself.  In response my left/logic brain made consistent, mostly unconscious efforts to suppress and bully the right/Gestalt side of me.  After years of this, the integrity of my personhood started to disintegrate.

   Like the crew that took Seven from her captors and brought her onto their ship, a few, fellow life crew members have been rescueing and re-humanizing me.  It has been slow.  Often my Borg collective still seems like paradise lost.  Many times the process is painful or terribly akward.  I've am still like Seven of Nine learning to eat food for the first time as an adult.  Having Nelix look at my blank expression and kindly tell me to pick up the fork, put a little food on it like a shovel,  put it in my mouth, chew and then swallow.