the_conversation

Mark p.s.2 has commented on the glass half empty/full discussion on his site. What follows is my response.

The text below was altered in a few places on 2009 November 27, 07:50 pst.)

My intention is not to strip life of desire and emotion. Far from it. Thanks to Mark’s insights, I can see how what I’ve written might be seen that way. The goal of seeing the ‘glass’ neutrally is to separate reality as it exists outside my brain, versus the thoughts, feelings, opinions, and responses that reside within my mind. It is not to negate those internal activities.

As I’ve tried to emphasize, it is important to mourn what has been lost. This is true even if the loss is only conceptual. There are many purely mental phenomena that are of tremendous importance. For example, love. Most often in life, we are dealing with complex mixtures of actual and mental. For instance, consider how aging forces us to give up much in the way of health and vitality. Those are real losses. But we also are deprived of our sense of endless future, reckless love, and limitless expectations. These are symbolic bereavements. Future was never endless, love always had consequences, and our prospects were ever restricted. But we undergo a shift in perspective as we age, and losing that youthful excitement is a real deprivation even though it has no substance in physical terms. To ignore the impact of that loss would be to deny our humanity, as Mark points out in his own way.

To respond with balance to our surroundings, it behooves us to make the distinction between the conceptual and the concrete. I get weary and embarrassed always talking about the medication-induced injuries I’ve mentioned on previous posts. Still, those experiences are central to what I’m trying to say. Weathering that damage has required me to mourn the loss of certain views of myself, but also to recognize the limits of what’s changed. The lesson and practice in making those distinctions has required a kind of growth that I did not ask for, did not want, but have found very valuable now that it’s been accomplished. Ironically, clarity is the key to this improved basis for stability and sanity, and yet I lack the eloquence to make these foundations clear.

I’ve awakened to an understanding of the ways ‘thinking,’ almost by definition, is a distortion of the physical world. Or at least a lens that can and does change color, focus, zoom, etc.

Symbols and attachments are products of interpretation, and interpretations can change. We should not ignore our icons and desires, but we can recognize that they are add-ons to the physical world around us. We are creating them with our thoughts, attitudes, memories, personalities, etc. I always understood the reverence some show for the American flag, for instance. But I could never understand why people thought that symbol important enough to kill over. It’s only a piece of cloth, after all. That’s the kind of clarity I’m aiming for: respect for meaning, but not excessive attachment. My goal is not to eradicate desire, but to keep an eye on it. To recognize when it’s neither making sense nor serving me. (Love may not make sense, but can be very positive, so I might observe, enjoy, and plummet into it; I may speak up against injustice because the anger makes so much sense, even if doing so does not serve my external interests.)

As many times as I’ve tried to expound these ideas, I’m realizing two things: 1) the concepts are more complicated and subtle than I initially appreciated. Others (including Buddhists, and ACT & CBT experts) have explored this stuff with much greater depth and sophistication, and I suppose it is time I do more reading. 2) It’s a good thing I’m going to be working on my writing over the next couple of years, as I am inadequate to the task of saying what I mean in this case.

I appreciate these kinds of conversations. They force me to examine my core understanding, and sharpen my goals. Thank you, Mark.