How You See It

Tonight i want to type about world views. It is something i have been thinking about since i was reading a few blog posts about depression and how people deal with it as well as other emotions. You can probably tell that emotions in general have been on my mind lately as well. About how they affect writing and choices, about how people choose to deal with them and how i deal with them.

And in thinking about this, combined with my uber lack of sleep lead to me thinking about how the emotions a person experiences in a given moment can take one of three paths (yes, that's right, i avoided writing one of two paths). Those three different paths are joyful passion, painful passion, and indifference.

As it is said in this quote quite effectively:

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
-Elie Wiesel

With each thing that life gives you can react passionately, burn in the moment like a fire, react together like... hmmm gunpowder and a flame, gas and a match, baking soda and vinegar.

When you react to it you can react positively and enjoy it just like fireworks or negatively like a bullet from a gun. See, each way is possible, both are easy to start but the more you do the easier one path goes.

To react with indifference is different. It means that simply put, something doesn't matter, no food on the table, doesn't matter, failed a lab for your class, doesn't matter. Your favorite TV show gets canceled because all the actors, writers, and staff dies in a plan crash? Doesn't matter, that's what it means to react with indifference. Yes, i know, this sounds like something that would only happen with a drug user or alcoholic... or possibly someone who is a sociopath.

Yet that is another possible action, and just like both the routes of passion with more use it grows. Now i am going to yank psychology into this, see the more you think about something or think in a certain way the more brain cells in that area you use, the more they become wired together and the easier it becomes to think like that or think that way again.

So the more you focus on that negative passion that a situation creates in you the strong it becomes, the stronger that structure of your brain becomes. But if there is one thing i have learned through all my psych classes and extra readings that i do for fun is that the brain is not carved from stone. Rather it is made from an ever changing structure that alters the more you think. (my current psych interest goes along with the changing in brain structure due meditation)

That means that you can alter the way that your thoughts travel. You can change it though it is hard, and not hard like lifting a heavy weight, but hard like running a marathon. You can do it, but it wont be easy, however speaking from the view of someone who enjoys more good passion than indifference and more indifference than bad.