I believe in meditation - it's a good tool to centre yourself, but unfortunately, I'm too lazy to do it. It's very hard work, and I prefer to watch 'Nothing To Declare' on TV!
~ Helen Mirren
I've taken some time away to withdraw look inward (and outward) and take stock of life in general the last few days (while struggling with a nasty eye infection). Sometimes we need to step back and assess stuff without getting bogged down with the myriad distractions that we are bombarded with in general life.
Helen Mirren is at least honest...I love her candor but it made me think about how I also get caught up in the general stuff that is not tangible in the here and now. Don't get me wrong, I love "Nothing to Declare" too from a psychological perspective because it's actually crazy when you see how the human mind works to deceive border patrol agencies by masking nefarious stuff or just flat out lying when they should be declaring things. Does it come down to risk vs reward?
I recently wrote a post on how I feel about AI content and how I see AI potentially over-riding human aversity to danger. There have been some interesting developments in the last few weeks on that front. It got me thinking a lot about what humanity really is, why is it valuable?
To be honest, I don't have the answers because it comes down to the question "what is human life worth" and that's just too philosophical to get into right now especially with the current state of the world.
It's very much subjective. But life is subjective. We each experience our life paths completely separately and in unique ways because your path and my path are not comparable due to our differences. I had to give myself a little pep talk because I often subjectify things that aren't even mine to take responsibility for.
The image above is of a coconut that I caved agreed to purchasing for my niece after her plaintive pleas and explanation that she wanted to drink coconut milk out of a real coconut. We bought it and after messing around with a sharpie for a while, we smashed it open...only to find that it was empty (and rather gross inside to be honest).
My niece experienced a flood of different emotions that I tried my hardest to quell with reassurance and explanations; to no avail. I apologised to her countless times but her wrath at the situation didn't spare me. I am very bad at choosing coconuts. Of course the anger she felt rose from the disappointment she experienced and she needed an outlet for it which I totally understand, but what I didn't realise at the time was how much I internalised it and took it personally. She's an important person in my life and it hurt. I put it aside while my focus was on trying to help her to balance her emotions and work through them. I'd work through my own later. She and I worked through it and she calmed down. We made a pact to find a better coconut at a later time. I had some homework: how to identify a good coconut.
It hit me later that I had to acknowledge that I felt like I had failed her - by choosing the wrong coconut. How ridiculous?! But it's a perfect example of how subjectivity and vulnerability work. We attach meaning to those who are important to us and have connection with. Obviously it was my sensitivities (and inferiority complex) that were playing up at the time, but this kind of thing happens frequently in the world and leads to all sorts of issues and also breakthroughs. Our ability to be vulnerable is our biggest strength and also our biggest weakness which is often exploited by governments, corporations, people we know and so on. It's also where we draw our most courage and determination from. I think that it is something that has been so warped by society that people have forgotten that it's a driving factor of our survival as a species.
Being authentically yourself has never been more difficult in today's world because society in general has lost so many of the core fundamental values that were originally what our society was based on. It's all become a bit warped.
So while I have been musing about all these issues, I've also questioned whether I need to adjust how I interpret this kind of coconut debacle and see it through a more objective lens? Do I balance that with acknowledgements of my own failure and the fact that I'm not going to get things right all the time?
How about you? Do you internalise things that your family and friends say? How have you dealt with it in the past and what have you learned from it?
