love“Transitions of life”
Antonio Garcia
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
-Anais Nin
Transitions are not really transitions but the consequences of following life as is. The weight of the world and all that encompasses through seeming disparity and uncertainty can be heard in the voice. Sometimes the silence of a voice speaks louder than any functional linguistics could comprehend in illuminating the state and thoughts of an individual. Language is the quantifiable tool we use to express ourselves, but what if there are times when language can not suffice in explaining what we say in silence? Our contemplation and thoughts of ourselves and the world join at the crossroads of life. We participate in a world we don’t understand while comically shouting that the world doesn’t understand us. Perhaps we are living in the wrong world or the world that we know has been created outside of our desires. The transitions in life are the hardest to understand. Many sink into depression or anger as they try to see what there life is to be. What we forget is that life is because we can only live in the moment. What we desire life to be is a fantasy fetish produced by popular culture and promises created by groups who ignore the individual and seek only themselves. Our refuge in such uncertainty should lie in the certainty of ourselves. We can only take charge of the present and reflect on the past. We can’t relive the past just as we can’t project what we will be in the future. Such contemplation is not only vain, but useless. All of us “dream” of what would like to be. We set goals because we believe that certain things we obtain or do make us accomplished. Yet, with all the accomplishments we forget to ask ourselves are we great people? I mean great in the sense of being great to ourselves and those we love.
“An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself”
- Albert Camus
Graduate school is the most complicated of times for many people. We transition and pursue intellectual levels not experienced by most people. We are privileged in this way to be able to take advantage of such knowledge. But are we really at more of an advantage than the high school graduate who has a family? It is subjective and very dependent on the individual in understanding what constitutes happiness, accomplishment, and sense of self in the world.
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.
-Joni Mitchell
The world has constructed a formatted plan for everyone. It is a simple plan that outlines who will be what by projecting a hierarchy of worthiness, value, and success. More so, the world has given freedom to all to criticize the lives, identities, and sense of self determined by each individual. We are therefore placed in constant fear of being judged. We may, with such cliché sensibility, say that we are the hardest judges of ourselves, but is it really true? Everyday we judge our self in comparison/contrast to someone else. We want to be as smart as…, as great as…, as good looking as…, and so on. When we look truly at ourselves and neglect to see ourselves for who we are; the greatness we bring the world through being ourselves.
The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ''social worker'' -judge.”
-Michel Foucault
A deep sigh and release of air from the pit of our lungs signals the desperation we feel in wanting to see ourselves everyday but can’t. We are restrained by the judgments and critiques of others and lastly of ourselves. We stress about the things that have no real value on who we are, but who we think we would be with them. We need a release to be ourselves and become blind and deaf to the world. Most often I see this in alcohol or some other mind altering substance. The brief escape and numbness will numb the world, but it numbs our ability to feel ourselves too. The negotiation becomes a very complex matter of how we feel we are in the world and who we feel we are in the world.
“Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Until we come to the realization of ourselves we will strive for a fantastical utopian vision of ourselves while ignoring and neglecting who we are. Our sense of who we are becomes diluted by obligations and responsibility and the ubiquitous “what if” mantra. What if we did what we felt rather than what we think we should do. The conflict really becomes a matter of emotion versus what we feel is our logic. The balance of the two is hard to maintain. Too much feeling will lead to a dulling of the senses to guard one’s self and the over indulgence of thought will only serve to isolate one’s self from the experiences which breed emotional landscapes.
“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. “
- Erich Fromm
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
- Eckhart Tolle
We are by nature emotional creatures and thoughtful animals. We are cursed by the gift of the two. We turn to our logic to guard against insensible emotional responses. We attempt to remove ourselves from an emotional encounter of experience through thought, yet the truth is that all that we do is emotional. Every experience creates emotion and every thought we have creates an emotional landscape of negotiation. Our world becomes not the one we see with our eyes but the one that we wrestle with as a created pathology within ourselves. It can be restrictive and tormenting or emancipatory and rewarding.
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
-Erich Fromm
I feel the more we think and believe that thought should override the stupidity of the chemical romance of the nervous system and synapses triggering, we fall into delusion of believing we can experience life without emotion and purely by thought. At times, I believe that we even use our thought to create emotion. We think we are in love and allow our thoughts to rationalize such a response, yet guard against any apprehension of mistrust as well. So which do we subscribe to?
The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
- Erich Fromm
It is a matter of understanding that the world is an objective reality made subjective by the individual, and more so when that individual understands his/her own being. We find ourselves in the things of the world, but can we find ourselves as a thing of the world?
THE LIFE AS THE PROCEEDS OF LIFE – A man may stretch himself out even so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective, but eventually he realizes nothing therefrom but his own biography. Nietzsche, Human All too human.
Our life is an experience. It is emotional regardless of our logic, but it is nonetheless always ours...
