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The Premise Addition |
| Written by John Wells | |
| Saturday, 01 March 2008 | |
He hoped to God that he was experiencing some radical intellectual growth. Over the past two months, he had become an avid reader of authors such as Tolstoy, Freud, Woolf, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, and Chekhov. His mind was now having glimpses of a higher realm of consciousness. It was as if he had developed a new mental tool, something of which he could use to detach himself from falling into moments of folic stupor. He would think of some memory. He would then begin to have an emotional response to it. And now, using his new mental tool, he would arise from the emotion and analyze or gage its effect on his well-being. Was the memory or thought he had painful or pleasurable? He was beginning to ascribe a new value system to everything he had ever experienced in his life. He was breaking things down and remodeling, so to speak, the inner workings of his cognitions. Every memory, every thought, he was reducing to a pain or pleasure effect on his well being. Here are some of his conclusions: when he sensed that a thought was painful, he found that his body experienced a drain of energy. But he noticed that the drain was temporary. He also noticed that when he broke the experience down into segments, he sensed that some of those parts of memory or thought were actually pleasurable. Then, he added something radical to his new value system. He brought in a new premise: this was something he had read of in one of the stories by Tolstoy. It had been about one week since he had read the story; yet, one of the ideas within had not left him. The premise was this: That life has no true meaning. Now, he began to entertain this notion, meditating upon it throughout the day, and as he did so, a most astonishing thing happened: He discovered that he was liberating himself from the many daily displeasures he so often faced. If life had no meaning, then surely, his feelings did not mean anything either. He could lift himself from the emotional drain, from the negative baggage, which would often refrain him from new adventures, new moods, and new ideas. This was the way he made use of it. Anytime he realized that he was falling again under an emotional spell, whether it being a memory he was reliving, or an actual event he was in, he would remember that saying, and he would instantly be lifted out of the bondage. A modern day psychologist might say that he was undergoing a transformational stage, wherein, he was developing a capacity to use both his right and left hemispheres of his brain more equally and more often. Unfortunately, he knew there was a flaw in all of this: he wouldn’t be able to remember this premise for any great length of time. In fact just as this one-day was wearing on, he was having great difficulty concentrating upon it. He wanted to make it stick with him everyday, but he knew once again that his mind would shift and he he would probably forget. It was only yesterday when he thought about the many frames of mind, which took hold of him. He believed that there was one final kind of understanding, something of which could abide with him for the rest of his life. But as he looked again and again at his thoughts, he saw that they were but temporary moments of great interest. After a passing of some unknown time frame, they did not entirely disappear; they just took on a lesser role of prominence. Then, what usually came to the forefront, that is, what employed him onto a new mindset, was simply, a new idea. Two months had passed since he had gained any new psychological or philosophical insights, any of his so called flirtations with the higher realms of consciousness. And then something hit him. He had been pondering on the state of happiness. This was a major topic for cerebral entertainment. He was asking himself how it develops in an individual and why it does not always continue. If he could somehow acquire at least an elementary understanding of this, he believed he could change the world. His purpose would be to make people happy or happier. His knowledge would become their source of happiness. In his observations thus far, having an exposure to two people in his close proximity over a two week period, he concluded that happiness is much about someone getting their way either with themselves, with someone else, or over another. The happy person gets to act out a specific role either privately, publicly, or both to the point at which it is accepted personally and or in the company of others. The person projects an image of happiness when he/she has been able to freely express oneself emotionally, intellectually, socially, intimately, etc. There is a perception one is under and it is the belief of being totally free to express, create, or act out. He, himself, believed that he could not arrive at such a conclusion if he were not free to think, but there was something much grander, more austere in his quest for understanding. If he did indeed, acquire the key to happiness, he could not be sure if he could make the people he loved be receptive to it. The reader may ask how could this happen, and the answer is very simple. Some people want to arrive at their own answers; they want to discover truths about themselves on their own. If he were to explain it to them, he would be taking away their freedom to express their feelings and intellect on their own. But is this really what is at work? It is true that if he were to offer a suggestion, an option, a strategy for helping other people to become happier, he would be laying something on their own path of individual thought. The question is, has their freedom to express themselves been hindered? He does not believe so in every case. What he does believe is that they have 'perceived' his explanation or counsel to be an infringement. And once that perception is made, their freedom to be happy in a particular situation is repressed. There may be a sense that his thoughts have invaded or encroached upon theirs. He could retreat from helping others and only focus on his inner self. He would like to be an individual in a constant state of happiness. He would like to be that person more often. Sometimes, he liked to think of happiness as merely a chemical reaction in the brain, a clutter free neural pathway with his dendrites being drenched in a bath of dopamine and seritonin, a nirvana as what some buddhists attain as they shed much of their worldly lives for the spiritual. But he did not want to tag a religious dictate or dogma to the whole experience of being happy. He really only wanted to imagine the process chemically like a smooth flowing river. These thoughts made him feel happy. But he knew that what would make him happier and perhaps other people as well was his freedom to share his understanding of happiness with others. These gems of knowledge, he felt, could be of value to many. Copyright 2008 John Wells |
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