RE: Pensiveness, musing and melancholy
Do you often get pensive?
Very often. I spent long periods of time in reflection. That is how I have been able to get to know myself and transform into who I want to become.
What do you make out of it?
For the most part, I get very good insight into really reflecting on who I am and what I have experienced. I reflect on what I read and learn. I try to give myself the time to really understand, because that is the best way to integrate it into my daily life. I find that reflection leads to great insight, but then you need to put it into practice, otherwise it is lost.
What puts you into that mood?
Anything! Time alone, a song, a need to make personal space, a beautiful scene, an interesting thought...
Are you bothered by it?
Not at all, I love it! I think we need to think about what we have learned and done in order to understand what we can learn and do going forward.
While I definitely agree that putting your insights into practice is very important, I'm always thinking that even pure thoughts can twist behavior unconsciously and because of that I don't think it gets "lost", don't you think?
Seems like we could have interesting talks every 5 minutes considering what puts you into the mood :D
Thank you very much for the comment, it was a pleasure to read!
Being honest with yourself is key to real transformation. The human mind can twist anything into exactly what you want to hear. Part of reflection, is learning to be as objective as possible. Watching your emotions go by, while at the same time being aware that the response may not be accurate. Writing is good for this, so you can go back and check on what you wrote, looking for places where you changed "reality" to fit your needs. Changing is not always bad, since you can use this skill to transform negatives into positives, but it needs to be done with full awareness. Your power of transformation comes in conscious choice. Does that make sense?
More than just mere "make sense" :)
It is funny that when you find some old writing of yours the first question that comes to mind is "Did I really wrote that?". I always have that when reading my old notebooks. Seems like another proof for how everything is changing constantly.
I always think about it when reading about communism and fascism - both are great examples of how people can twist reality to fit their needs. The scale of the phenomenon - terrifying, but the lack of awareness, even scarier. Plus, the cause of it all was, is and it seems, will dwell in us.
So true! On one hand, the human's ability to modify the past to fit what they want to see in the future is a skill. Think about childbirth. If women remembered how painful it is, we would never have a second child. It is our ability to focus on just some aspects of the past, while leaving behind or rewriting parts of it, that ensures the survival of the species.
The same goes for convincing ourselves that what we are doing is correct, especially when we are being told what to do by a leader we admire. Just look at the famous Milgram Experiment. It was only when they began to doubt the authority of the professor in charge of the experiment that they started to doubt the ethics of what they were doing. Frightening when we think of how easily we give up our own power of reflection to follow orders.
I wonder, if you would perceive something that you are doing as "not correct",
would you do it?
for how long can you deny yourself?
how long it would take for you to make it "correct"?
When it comes to the leadership I think it is exactly an answer to those questions - leader makes it "correct" for you, so you are not denying yourself, therefore you do it.
When leader is losing our trust "correct" breaks down to the point of opposition - otherwise you would have to start denying yourself.
I will be perfectly honest with you: if it is something that in my mind is absolutely "not correct", then I would not do it. If it is something where it feels "not correct", but there is a figure of authority that I trust telling me to do it, I would do it, but only after speaking about it. I would want to understand why they think it is correct, and only if I trust the answer, will I do it. If I discover going forward that for me it is "not correct", then I would stop.
Since reading Milgram's Experiment, I have become much more aware of just how much we do even though we know it is not correct. For example, I am house sitting right now, and the family does not recycle the way I do. The first day, I put everything in the bin like they do. But by the second day, I was aware that for me that is not correct, so I created my own containers and will carry it by myself outside of the house because recycling is important.
I think most of us do many more things than we think are "not correct" because general society does it that way or a person of authority says to do it.
It's a joke, but you could pour out all their garbage and segregate it in your way :D
I wonder what they would think about it...
Also, you could look at both, society and person of authority, as if it they were leaders, so the previous steps would apply.
Of course more questions arise from that, for example to what degree they imposing instead of leading, what leading means etc.
I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to say :)
I completely get it! Trust me, I reflect on all of those. These are not easy problems, since on one side, society requires us to do what others tell us now and then in order to maintain public order. A the same time, there is a moment when you realize that something is not right and have to take action. How do you know you are doing the right thing vs just be rebellious because you don't want to do what you are being told? Not so easier to discern.