Got into reading this article this morning. It is the cornerstone of what I have been thinking for a while now. The man is one of the most important thinkers these days. Regardless of anything else, I admire him immensely.
How has your second act been doing so far and what do you have written for the third act?
7 comments
Interesting article. He has couple of insightful ideas there. The idea that our present is not related to our past is true. I had been playing with something very similar. I think that our life goes in cycles, when one cycle ends and the other starts there is a very little overlap and at the beginning of a new cycle there is almost no connection with the past cycle. At that point our life is just “is”. It is not about the past, it is a little about the future, it is mostly about understanding the new space, adjusting our emotions and seeing how much we can believe in ourselves. Interesting that thanks to this “separation” and not belonging to the past we are able to control our emotions, our reactions. People remember us based on our reactions (emotions), because it is believed that those can’t be changed easily. That’s not true. If we do not glue ourselves to any stick (past or future), our emotions will be the new ones every second. Meaning, we can chose from hundred reactions or emotions at any given moment. What made you upset 1 hour ago may provoke a smile on your face now, if you are not attached to your emotions, if you are not attached to the past. This complete freedom of chose how to react opens amazing possibilities. I would say that it opens all the possibilities in front of you. I do not say that past has nothing to do with what we are now. What I believe is that past has nothing to do with our emotions now. It is our choice to decide what emotion we want to live through in any given circumstance. Nothing to do with what happened in the past, nothing to do with what is happening now. And the best emotion is to contemplate and think if you should really react to this. Thinking is the best reaction (and emotion), unless, of course you are extremely happy, then you smile like an idiot… that is a different story 🙂 🙂
btw, I am not trying to be smart. About emotions, I think that every second we live (interact, communicate, see) we are “offered” a vast array of emotions to choose from. The one we chose will be our “reaction”. Generally we are too lazy to stop and think (to use our slow thinking) on what emotion we would love to live through. To take a breath and just think, specially when it is a negative emotion. Instead, we guide ourselves by the past. It is easier. In the past when this happened I cried, ok, then I will show the same reaction again. We should never be lazy. The ability to breath through, to stop, to think, to understand the person in front or the situation, is our real privilege as the Man, and we should use it. It takes about 4 minutes (at least for me) to be able to understand the other (to cool down and to put myself in his / her place), at the moment it happens, it is like magic, all the negative emotion disappear and you get a lot of peace. Because you get the power to control yourself. Past has nothing to do with your life now 🙂 🙂 It is all about those 4 minutes of understanding 🙂
What you are saying makes perfect sense in theory, in an abstract world where we have full control over our emotions. In the “real” world, we are completely conditioned by the events of our past that are constantly come up in our present when something we hear or experience reminds us consciously or subconsciously of those. Like the proverbial Pavlovian dogs, we get triggered without even realizing it and react consistently with our emotions – action/reaction. This goes on most of the time in our lives. The 4 minutes you talk about only work when we still have our cognitive capacities in place and not during the “amigdala hijack.”
That said, when we *are* aware of what is going on inside of us and what causes certain reactions in us (as you so nicely said above), we do get to chose how we react as Victor Frankl brought up a while back. Of course, the only way that would work is when we are fully present to our lives vis-a-vis Erhard’s analogy of the “second act”.
OK, to say it differently, in order to chose freely and not just conditionally decide requires one to be fully aware of the *present* environment and be 100% responsible for his/her actions; i.e., accept that the past is the past and that we are responsible at all times for our actions and reactions.
Also, as Marshall Rosenberg defined in his concepts of Nonviolent Communication, there are two types of feelings/emotions (I do not think he differentiates between the two) – feelings we may have when our needs are met and feelings we may have when our needs are not met. Most if not all of the needs we have are neuro-biological (inherited *as well as* learned behavior, or in other words, both, nature and nurture). Our emotions are just the bodies’ way to express those met or unmet needs. We can always negate or ignore the needs. The outcome may be pathological.
Anyway, I am going on a tangent here. Too serious. I would agree with you that a smile of an idiot is a much better way to do things. 😀
Smiling like an idiot is a God-given right. 🙂
Actually, it is our natural state of being when we are present to the present. In other words, once we accept life for what it is and not fight it or make something out of it, the smiling idiot comes out into the light of day. Look at the statues of Buddha, he is always portrayed as such. Well, with the big belly and those lovely hanging ears. 😛
Thank you! To make it somehow short, as I really can’t say anything wise in the mornings (the sky was too blue and I am not even 1/4th done with my first coffee) i want to add this. I think that in many situations we can make an effort to control our first / reflexive emotions. However, I am not talking about surpressing them. I am talking about understanding. Just an example. Let’s say you tell me something that greatly upsets me at the first moment. I can chose to say something back, to react, or to surpress the first intention to react and shut up. I do not think that any of those two reactions are good. I believe we as human beings can take it one step further. What we can do, what I do, is to put myself in your place, and then what you said or did seems totally right, it even seems noble and more then an average person would do. Thus, my emotion after this process is of deep thankfulness, nothing negative at all. It is not about surpressing the emotion, it is about thinking about the other person and understanding him / her. As I said once, you have to fly high over the mountains to see what is happening in the other land. Then you will understand.
Second thing, you are right, not in all situations we can or should control what we feel, how we react. There are some crucial situations where we have to react and just do it, just live through it in a second, you do not have the luxury of 4 min. However, the 4 min of understanding are still in play here. By constantly practicing it when you can, we make it a habit. We make it a habit to think about the other, to understand, to react in a human way, to take the high road. In emergency situations, we still follow that pattern, if we have trained ourself to follow it in non emergency situations. Thus, it all ties together, to live in the present, to take responsibility of each of your emotions. To enjoy the life now, to understand the other person. And to smile like an idiot, of course. Lately it has been happening too often. I get very interesting feedback from people. Just met a Russian writer and journalist this Sunday, he is writing a book about Sagrada Familia, like exploding it at the end of the novel and modern stuff like that. He is writing fiction, but he is very realistic. He thought that I was totally nuts. I realize that most of the people really do not believe in making this world a better place, in people’s nobleness, in fighting not for oneself. But I know that there is a bunch of us, who will make this world a better place for us and our kids. And my smile (like an idiot) goes for these people. Anyway, I am going on a tangent. Somehow it all makes sense in my head 🙂
😀 To live, to love, to learn…