Five Over the Limit
It seems to me that my biggest problem (and from what I can see, a lot of humanity's) is higher cognition. In my world, my mind wanders to what I should change in myself or whether or not a concept is bullshit or the best answer to a relative problem. The problem is that there are no answers in this realm; only theories. They can be good, but more often than not (in my head) I don't trust them enough to make them fact when I've already heard a different theory.
So cognition's purpose outside of giving humans the ability to drive themselves mad? For solving problems when they need to be solved.
And in our current world this isn't required as much as it was, say, when we had to fight to survive and were only learning about our world. Now we are at the level where we use our cognition positively to solve issues that are based on the world we humans have created, which isn't nearly as dense and full of life as the world outside of us is. When there's some downtime from my thinking about people or making things fit which were never designed to in the first place, I use my cognition for new ideas. Otherwise, I let my sub-conscious be my guide; the parts I don't have to think about. Because there's never any indecision or question when it's in the moment, and I think that's the way things should be. It's a shame life has to move at that slower pace because of how much we've advanced. But at least, in my world, I can still go five over the limit.
A Big Change (in self)
When I most recently decided to stop smoking, I realized something I never saw the 10-something other times. Sometimes we willingly make a large change. It's easy to live in hypothetical land ("this option is good because ... and bad because ... "), but the real strength comes out when you actually decide to go with one or the other. Then a step above that is actually sticking to what you've decided and going with it 100%, whether it's right or wrong. This is what makes confidence; and you a person.
So I've fought going to the store and buying a pack these past few days; this time it wasn't as easy simply dropping it as it has been times before. Right now I'd love to have some to smoke as I drive around with the sun setting (as it currently is) and all the windows rolled down; something I'm used to doing in this nice weather. If not that, I'd like to go stand outside for 7 1/2 minutes while I smoked one, just to be out of the house.
But my blind stubbornness is keeping me from doing that. Stubbornness usually gets a bad rap when it comes to other people, but when it's internal it is an important element for your own growth. And so what am I left with? Well, since I'm not so fond of feeling like shit (for any reason), I need to adapt. Since this new cigarette-less environment is my current one (and I don't want to be a miserable bitch), I might as well get used to it and see what I can do with where I'm at.
And on the larger scale of things (since I like the big picture), this is an extremely fundamental element for life. Change is what keeps minds, countries, planets, the universe moving. If anything remained the same for some amount of time, it would die (in some way) because it no longer has any use to the environment it is in. Atoms constantly move; stars that seem so far away are moving even more so; galaxies are forming; people are thinking; and when the forces that keep these things going cease to exist, the universe outside of it will as well.
Upon accepting what "is," whether in or outside of you, it becomes easier to move on; to keep the forces within you moving and ensuring you don't "die" from a lack of expression or stimulation that otherwise keeps your mind (and you) going.
I think I'll go for a drive.
A Mental Plateau
In my health class the other day, my professor was talking about how, through routine exercise, your body gains and gains and then levels out in a plateau-like fashion. In other words, with the same workouts--same intensity, duration, mode, type, etc.--your body gets used to it and, eventually, it can literally no longer grow from the activity.
Since the mind is contained in the body (and it's of more concern to me) I started to ponder if it fell under the same restrictions. At first I didn't believe it did because, I mean, it's the mind. It has to be different. But I'm starting to think otherwise.
It's like this: when a place (city, street, house, etc.) is new to you, you grow; change promotes growth. After you spend enough time in that town or area, it starts to look bland and not nearly as interesting as it was when you first arrived. You don't spend nearly as much time thinking about the place because your mind has become accustomed to it; you've reached your plateau. You get in a relationship and out of the honeymoon stage-- you've reached your plateau. I would guess this is why people naturally argue in a relationship; your brain needs to grow and it can only do that with some kind of shift in the dynamics. So arguing upsets the stability of that level, unpromoting state.
In the context of my own head, I was fighting with the idea of stability before I started to doubt instability and fight that. I'm now seeing that I want to promote the growth of my mind-- this came after this morning, when I thought that seeing emotions and all these pseudo-human-attributes as what they are--bullshit--was going to lead me no where. It's a good thing I'm getting better at killing off my negative thoughts. So, since I am going to continue promoting the growth of my mind, I need to keep running. I need to keep changing things up. And, as a result, I won't have stability. In fact, stability will cause me to plateau and then what am I fighting for?
Absolutely nothing.
This is why I don’t like society
When it comes down to it, I have one basic complaint about society. We spend the rest of our lives that we aren't so easily manipulated by it dealing with what it has made us into. So instead of living (granted, it doesn't make that very easy anyways), we are stuck wondering why everything doesn't work out for us or how to make the best of some situation we're in or anything you, as a human being, occupy your thoughts with when it concerns yourself.
And it makes life into such a waste of existence because half the time, we're too focused on the bullshit of our environment that we can't focus on ourselves or actually taking advantage of our existence that has been so shortened by society. And if we can just be free from the environmental standards and expectations on an individual basis, we can truly live rather than simply exist.
That's what I really want.
Reflections
I've realized that I need to take a little time out of my daily routine to reflect. I need to think something for myself again. The thing is that I get so caught up in my surroundings that it becomes hard for me to be myself unless I'm in an extremely comfortable and done-this-before environment. But I'm purposely putting myself in the opposite situations right now-- because I want to learn more. I want to leave my comfort zone and be vulnerable to gather as much new information as possible.
So I need to look at what's really going on in my head. It would be most effective to do this in the moment that I'm in that new situation, but that's not only hard, but impractical. If I spent those moments in my head, I'd miss what was going on around me-- consequently not gathering much from the situation at all. But if I can look back on it or even have the me mindset going on before I get to a certain moment that requires it (such as interacting with people-- the main time I need it), I can learn as much as possible from the situation without overlooking it.
There's a problem: I usually reflect in my last waking moments of the day-- the time between when I remember I have to get up for work in the morning and when I decide I'm actually ready to close my eyes and shut down my brain (I usually don't decide I want to do the latter right away if I'm not yet satisfied with my day). So I lay there thinking-- on bad days, about things I can't control (other people, where I live, etc.) and on relatively better days I think about things I've been wondering (having to do with myself) and I work through them and I have my revelations. The problem is that these self-realizations don't help when they occur at the end of the day (although for the first time it made me wake up in a good mood today). I need to be able to have them during my day so I can, in a sense, wake up from the sort-of drifting state I can fall into by simply being in an environment that affects me.
So I'm setting aside time every day to do this. Whether this is on my smoke-break at work or when I drive to a place out of my hometown to sit for a while, I think I'll finally be able to stay sane and afloat in an environment that seems to constantly try to drown me.
Archives
- July 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- March 2010 (3)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (9)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (2)
- September 2009 (1)
- August 2009 (1)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (3)
- March 2009 (7)
- February 2009 (3)
- January 2009 (5)
- December 2008 (3)
- November 2008 (2)
- October 2008 (6)
- September 2008 (3)
- August 2008 (8)
- July 2008 (6)
- June 2008 (6)
- May 2008 (3)
- March 2008 (2)
- November 2007 (1)
- September 2007 (3)
- August 2007 (4)
Categories
- Blurbs (3)
- Concepts (1)
- Day-to-Day (2)
- Driving (1)
- Experiences (2)
- Experiments (1)
- Ideas (4)
- Overcoming Time (1)
- Internet (6)
- Miscellaneous (4)
- Music (1)
- Personal (7)
- Philosophy (6)
- Photography (4)
- Projects (9)
- Quotes (2)
- Rants (5)
- Realizations (7)
- Reflections (5)
- Stream of Consciousness (1)
- Thoughts (35)
- Life (6)
- Uncategorized (6)
- Writings (1)
