The Happiness Equation

Your brain is the most magnificent, unbelievably powerful, seductively destructive piece of machinery you own. Your brain is 1.5% of your mass and yet, uses 25% of your oxygen and 70% of your glucose. But how many of us actually stop to think about what our brains do for and to us. As you are reading this article, you are using your conscious brain and its 40 bits of processing power. Your sub-conscience brain can process up to 20 million bits of information. It can essentially read up to 500,000 of these articles...at a time. Mind-blowing (pun intended).

Your brain is currently, breathing, blinking, making sure you don't pee or poop yourself, and digesting food. It's also regulating blood pressure, blood sugar, neuro-chemical levels, hormones, enzymes, temperature, balance and of course your heartbeat. The list is never ending. You are 100% concentrated on this article and you are aware of it. But your brain is doing dozens, maybe even hundreds of activities in the background. It is SO efficient and SO powerful, it is doing it easily. So easily in fact...that you don't even notice. So the question is...what else is it doing that you don't notice?

Have you ever had Deja Vu? You could have swore you've been here before, or put that there. Or, maybe you swore you emailed Jim back, but you look in your sent folder. Its not there. What gives? Normal explanation; "ah, I must of thought I just did." But have you stopped to think about that sentence. A mere thought can give you the illusion that you actually did something you didn't. What?! How is that possible? How is it possible that your conscious self actually believed you sent a email you didn't. How is it possible that you couldn't remember the difference between the thought of you doing it versus you actually physically typing something. I'll tell you why. You ready to have your world rocked? Its because, your brain cannot tell the difference perceived vs objective reality.

Our brain, does not hear, see, feel, touch, smell, or taste anything. But yet, through electronic impulses it paints an entire reality around you. What happens if it misinterprets one of those electrical impulses? What if, the reality you are seeing is not really the reality you are in, but merely your perception of the reality you are in.

Did you know that your brain can't tell the difference between a movie and real life? In one of the first movies produced, there was a train scene where the train is barreling towards the viewers (the camera). The ENTIRE audience jumped out of their seats because they thought there was a real train about to come through the wall. I am sure you are laughing at this moment thinking how stupid people were in their day. But, we all still have that same response.

The last time you watched a horror movie, I am sure there was some scene where the music gets really low and quiet. Then BAMN! Out of nowhere a monster jumps and startles you on the couch. It might not be as drastic as you running out of our living room thinking a train is about go through your wall. But why did you jump at all? You know you are watching a movie, you know its not real, you know you are safe. But yet you got scared. Even if it was for a brief second. It's because; for that brief minutia of a moment, no matter how small. Your brain thought it was real, it saw a real threat, and until your learned behavior of "oh its just a movie" can override your Medulla Oblongata, you experience fear.

Your brain can also fill in gaps where information is missing based on previous knowledge of patterns that appear the same. its hwo uoy cna raed htis senetnce eevn touhgh i ma sepllnig evrethying wnorg. Your brain is automatically projecting the correct spelling over the word based on its best guess of what the word should be from your decades of experience reading. I absolutely brilliant what an unbelievable tool.

Our brain's fill in the gaps in our electrical impulses that are possibly missing, essentially making it so that you are only seeing a perceived version of your reality and not ACTUAL reality. Now its obviously really accurate because you don't run into tables. But, we also demonstrated that it is not 100% accurate by the sentence that was jumbled in the previous paragraph.

We know that your view is merely a perceived view. By definition, that also means, that everyone's view is a perceived view. With that in mind, you start to think...if my perception of a situation is merely my past experiences projected on to the situation. Would I have the same perception as someone else if I had their past experiences?

What if, human consciousness is that? What if me to me is the same as you to you? What if we're all experiencing life through different viewers. If I was you and had your life experiences, I would be you. And what if you were me and had my life experiences, you would be me. Whats if everyone is exactly the same, but we are living from different perspectives. What if that is the secret to happiness? Treat everyone if its just you living a different life?

@das_ivan