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Went to the dentist the other day for a cleaning.

I was tense. Waiting for him to accidentally machete his way through my gums. Expectant wait…

I just KNEW it was going to happen. And so I prepared for the worst. By being tense.

It makes perfect sense: being tense makes it less likely for anything bad to happen. It’s science.

Then I felt like I tend to react this way to difficult situations in everyday life. Just brace myself and expect the worst. I know it makes no logical sense but it’s a bit of an automatic reaction for me. I get all tense imagining the worst possible outcome. As in: “here it comes… wait for it… wait for it… WAIT FOR IT…”

Then, if it doesn’t happen, I think I was just lucky THAT time. And if it does happen, I’m all proud to have foreseen it.

I guess my brain benefits from this, trying to trick me into believing I have any control over certain things, any control over a situation whose outcome is uncertain. For, you see, uncertainty is my brain’s arch-enemy… So I guess it’s always trying to convince me that everything’s under control, that it knows exactly what’s going to happen. And that I should follow him. And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But, frankly, it’s getting old, and I think I’m starting to get a glimpse of how the illusion works.

So I relaxed and actually tried to “enjoy” the dentist grinding metal into my teeth, for the first time. And I did. I felt like Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors. And the guy did a fantastic job; it was absolutely painless and I was running my tongue over my teeth with glee for a good hour after that.

Now to carry over this attitude from the realm of dentistry and into the real world!

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“One time, at Jesus Camp…”

*Warning: I’m just going to rant for a while, so don’t expect any closure out of me for the time being*

I saw the documentary Jesus Camp with a friend. He was outraged by it. He couldn’t believe that those young kids were being “brainwashed” into believing such “BS,” according to him.

Not that I entirely disagree with him but, really, isn’t most religious education brainwashing at around that age? When is it not? Perhaps it’s not as obvious or exaggerated as in the film, but isn’t it brainwashing all the same?

OK, so apparently brainwashing means “forcible indoctrination into a new set of attitudes and beliefs.” Do kids even have an old set of those to start with?? Aren’t we sort of starting with a clean slate? Would the first education be just… staining their brains, then? Making them dirty?

That’s interesting, I wonder if that’s how mine got to be that way…

Posted in Daily (?), My Truth | 3 Comments »

Oh hello…

Nice to see you again. I’ve been gone for a while and haven’t really felt the itch to write, to tell you the truth.

It’s changing. Slowly. I think.

For now I hope you’ll be content with some pictures:

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Key issue

I live with a roommate. In an apartment with a really flimsy front door. One day we had a locksmith come in to fix one of the window mechanisms and, seeing as the door was just closed (not locked), he strongly recommended that we turn the key at least once, saying that it was really easy to open otherwise.

This post has nothing to do with keys, by the way.

Now, my roommate works early, so I’m always asleep when he leaves. I’ve asked him to lock me in from the outside when he leaves. He’s been doing it pretty regularly, but sometimes he forgets, and there was a period where he forgot often.

So, whenever I’d go to open the door, I’d find that it wasn’t locked. That annoyed me. Or, well, I thought it did.

I’d kind of grown accustomed to his forgetfulness, but was still annoyed by it. One day, before I even reached for the door handle, I was just convinced that he’d left it open again. I was annoyed. Preemptively annoyed, if you will.

Then, when I turned the handle, it turns out the door was locked.

My immediate reaction: annoyance. I was in a hurry and now I had to find the key in my pocket and use it to let myself out! He was making me late! The nerve.

Then I paused for a second and started laughing at the absurdity of the situation. This was a catch-22 for him. There was nothing he could do to redeem himself. Damned if he does, damned if he don’t. I would be annoyed regardless.

It made no logical sense, and that’s why I found it interesting… I’ve been pondering it for a while now and all I can think is how our feelings and emotions have little to do with what actually happens to us.

I have a working hypothesis: we feel a certain way and our brain immediately looks for external reasons to justify those feelings to “make sense” of them. We’re so accustomed to blaming others or outside occurrences for the way we feel that it becomes an automatic reaction. The underlying inference is that others have a lot of power over us or that, inversely, we have little power over ourselves…

I just seems… illogical. And while I agree that emotions don’t answer to that same kind of logic, I do think that taking responsibility for our own emotions is really important.

I think we’ve all had days where no matter what someone says, we just react angrily. And it’s always: “Well, he said this or he did this…” but, really, isn’t it OUR problem? If what he says is irrelevant, how could it be his fault? We’re just cranky.

Maybe we just need some food or a little nap. Or someone to help us burp over their shoulder…

Posted in Daily (?), My Truth | 3 Comments »

Necrophilia

This past summer I read The Heart of Man by Erich Fromm. In the book, Erich — we go way back — uses the term “necrophilia” as the opposite of “biophilia,” meaning a love of death as opposed to a love of life. His definition of death is everything that is static and constant, i.e. objects, machines, etc. So, according to him, necrophiliacs love everything that is not alive, everything that does not change or evolve, and so everything that is completely predictable.

I thought about how that relates to me and my need for certainty in life. I gotta say that I’m mildly autistic in that I like my routine. I don’t like uncertainty and change so, according to that definition, I don’t really like life. On the other hand, I love computers, electronics, books, etc. That must mean I love death, right?

I really don’t mind saying it: it makes sense. I hate uncertainty. How can I like life if I hate uncertainty. Life is uncertainty, for the most part. I’d rather life be more… certain.

But, really, isn’t that what we all do to a certain extent? Some people get married to reduce that feeling of uncertainty; all of a sudden the relationship magically becomes solid, something that is certain, something that is supposed to last forever, or at least till the end of your life. So, really, many people try to reduce the relationship, which is alive, to something that is dead. Or we make up rules, moral codes, laws, perhaps because we’d rather follow set instructions instead of having to think and act autonomously at every moment.

…

“And they lived happily ever after;” that’s how fairy tales end. There is nothing after that. Once you get to that point, you can just slide it into cruise control. And we’re spoonfed that stuff from an early age. That’s happiness: a sort of diffuse goal that, once reached, allows you to enjoy life until the end of your days. No effort required, no more conflict, no more learning, no more growing, no more changes. So basically death.

Happiness is death? Are we really teaching kids that?

I need to get a life. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

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