Thursday, 2 July 2009
Feelings vs. Silence
In endless attempts to understand human mind and feelings, only more questions come up. Why do people feel love, hatred, passion and indifference. How does it come about that some constantly fall in and fall out of love, while others are not capable of understanding even the term of it. Why do some people care about others, when those do not feel the need of this care. And finally: why some people are happy and others are not. Are those really happy, or do they only think they are? Or do they only show that they are? How can you make yourself happy? How can you keep on smiling, keep on walking with your head up when life strikes you, trying to make fun of you?
Thinking every now and then, I had some pictures and personalities in my mind. Right now, I felt that time had come for these personalities to become real. At least here, in the spinning room they have the right to exist. They have the right to be "set free"...
Soon "The kingdom of closed doors"
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“Know Thy Self”
ReplyDeleteReading your thoughts I couldn’t help going back in time, more than a decade ago, when similar questions were troubling my mind. Questions considering not only the behaviours of others, either towards me or each other, but mostly the procedures and mechanisms that were going on in myself, making me acting, reacting, thinking and feeling in the certain ways I did. Main reason for that quest was the profound power of feelings which at times seemed to be able to assume control over the mind, determining the fundamental qualities of my reality, under rules of their own which were neither obvious nor logical. Bliss or sorrow was decided back then under externally imposed conditions, over which my cognition stood almost helpless trying to figure out how to manage itself. Needless to say that setting things in place became soon a primary cause for my intellectual pride. I couldn’t allow anything else but my own mind being the boss inside my head. And even if it had been so in the first place, at least from then on the game should be played with open and known rules.
As the years went by and after countless hours of meditating and analyzing the perceived realities around and inside me, certain things gradually got more obvious and clear, building in a long term an overall sentimental calmness and stability, which combined with one’s mental capacity produces the whole set of what is usually referred to as the “inner strength” of a person. Namely, the acquisition of one’s cognition of the capacity to be aware under most conditions of what it is feeling, why is it feeling it and finally, if it is approving that feeling or not, under a predefined set of principles commonly known as ethics.
That awareness was often greatly enhanced by readings in the fields of philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology, neurosciences and physics, which in most times were matching with personal general conclusions made on the basis of careful observation of cause and effect relations in the chains of events. A mathematically logical (some times even in a linear way) simplicity could be often discovered underlying in many originally appearing complex and inapprehensible situations. A simplicity beautiful and mind friendly which often seemed to be the key that gave causes to (up to then) seemed irrational feelings, hence enclosing them in a logically manageable causality.
By no means do I declare that the context of the human behaviour and relations in its totality is simple or prominent. What I do believe though is that the lack of awareness and control of the basic simple principals that initiate most of our behaviour leaves more space to the unconscious part of our mind to rule that behaviour. That in its turn can insert unneeded, artificial complexity in it, mixing it with irrational impulses and reflects, hidden fears etc., which at the end, along with the relative responses of the others, define realities that we might not be happy with...
Speaking of happiness, one could positively state that this is the ultimate wish served by human beings and hence the “star” that guides and determines totally their life routes. Things would be rather easy if the meaning of the word was the same for each and every person. The problem is though that this particular term could accept as many definitions as the number of people walking on the planet. For a nomad in the African deserts it could be defined as a cup of clear water, in other words pure survival, while for a Saudi prince, a few hundredths of miles away, it could mean having the most insanely expensive mega yacht to show off in Europe. The in-between possible variations are infinite. The self-deriving right for everyone to be happy is what moves the world around. And when those independent rights of happiness collide with each other, chaos is at hand.
ReplyDeleteThere could be said though that in all cases the however-defined happiness consists of two basic parameters: a) the person that pursues it and b) the rest of the universe around that person. Since one cannot and, anyway, should not live alone and isolated, the influence of the environment in which that person is called to live is critical to its potential for happiness. But, to what extent is that so? Where the ultimate decision does lie? Obviously the person cannot, in most cases at least, determine its environment. It doesn’t get to choose the conditions under which it will be born nor can easily change the facts imposed on it by the far bigger and extremely complex physical and social environment that surrounds it. Then is happiness just a matter of chance?
Before I go on I’ll post hereby an unknown writer’s small text that I’ve encountered long ago someplace on the internet:
«ATTITUDE:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, or say, or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a friendship...a partnership...a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with every one... We are in charge of our Attitudes! »
As already mentioned, “Happiness” is a term with an extremely vague and in any case subjective definition. Now, could that flexibility be used as a benefit for humans? Since the ultimate purpose of our living does not seem, in first approach at least, to have any universal standard label on it, is it possible that each one of us could decide to tailor it in its own measure, regardless what externally imposed influences have to say about that? And to take it even further, could there exist a hidden universal routine, build in our source code, which if properly initiated can produce the so eagerly wanted sense of happiness without the need of the environment? A kind of self deriving and self sustained happiness, like i.e. the inexplicable serenity and fluffiness that experience certain monks that live alone in a hole on a mountain, lacking absolutely everything that seem to matter to the rest of us?
ReplyDeleteBefore one can start to make conclusions about human control over happiness and human behaviour in general, it is (in my belief) essential that he examined first the fundamental mechanisms that govern human biological processes and especially the ones of the central neural system. Because none of what is discussed here would have any point if we are not capable of making are own free decisions. Although the question sounds strange, there is a great dissension among the international scientific community considering the ability of humans to exercise true free will in a deterministic universe. In other words, does free will really exist or is it an illusion?
But that is next post’s discussion...