Humans
will to lead a uniform life that is increasingly rewarding. We constantly try
to seek what is better. We build
expectations and we live trying to reach them. Sometimes we reach them and feel
the reward and at times we get shattered not reaching them. When we don’t reach
them we feel disappointed. Some people have the capacity of maintaining
positivity and going on while some are so prone to fall down and get wrecked.
Being a mixture of frailty and strength, we differ in how we react, and that is
also dictated partially by how we were molded through our lives. We differ due
to many factors. Biological, psychological, cultural, environmental, and the
list goes on.
We
humans think and discuss and since we are societal beings, we have been
expressing our feelings and trying to understand what stirs us and what we
really seek. From philosophers and sages, gurus and mentors, theologians and
thinkers, and today even scientists who are dealing with physics are also
sharing their ideas on some of our inner stirrings. Among scientists, those who
were given a lot of respect when they talk on these issues are psychotherapist,
for they endeavor to understand our minds which apparently is hard to
comprehend, for it is the tool used to comprehend itself and it always realizes
that it leaves away mesmerized learning a lot but realizing that a lot is still
unknown about itself.
Freud
the psychoanalyst focused on how to make our unconscious thoughts and feelings rise
to the conscious, for when they reach this level, we are able to understand
what appears to be the underlying guiding thoughts which we are seemingly not
overt. Sigmund Freud concluded that depression can result from exaggerated
expressions of guilt and self-blame.
Some guilt may be due to a certain event that took place in the past and has
already sink in deep. It may send its negative powers to the whole mind and the
goal is to get to it and deal with it. Psychoanalysis tries to allow one to
bring up these deeply rooted thoughts up to the conscious then deal with them.
Looking
at another school of psychotherapy, we see Victor Frankl, who thinks that the
most intense feelings of being desperate is due to the loss of meaning in life.
When you lose meaning in life and your situation is in wreckage you start
getting deep into the realm of depression, but what is the meaning of life and
what does human want indeed? When most people hear the sentence meaning of
life, they feel that it is an abstract notion, and it is so in most cases.
Humans like to seek abstract notions especially when they feel that most of
their biological needs are met, but for those who are not able to reach certain
biological needs and at the same time, they are desperate of knowing their
meaning in life, the challenge increases in some form.
When
we are unable to reach our goals or if we are not able to find meaning in what
we are doing, we start to find ourselves feeling guilty of why we are alive and
we start to give in with those negative feelings. We start blaming ourselves
and this pushes us into a deep and dark chasm.
We
are biological beings and we do realize that we have brains that guide how we
feel and behave. We are shaped by our environment and by our expectations too.
Looking at the matter from an evolutionary biological perspective, we should
understand that we could roughly categorize the brain into three main
categories. We have the part of the brain that functions for the basic needs
which are food, sex, and shelter, then we have a more evolved part which is
dealing with emotions and then comes the prefrontal cortex. I always think that
when the three basic needs are satisfied fully, which appears impossible, one
can get the ability to move on to the other parts and if there is a disruption
in the three basic needs, or one just imagines that he is not yet satisfied in
those three matters, we will find people who are acting so desperately to reach
things which they will find in a short time satisfaction and then start the search
again.
With
this in mind, I would like to say that in our culture, these three things are
not fully met. We find people who are so desperate to unite, but there are many
hindrances that stop them from doing so. We find people who gave up their abstract
dreams just for the sake of getting jobs in order to reach a soul mate. It is
well known that for those who really will to live together and support each
other, being together might be a fuel of development. When he realizes that he
wants her to be the person to correct his misdoings or to add ideas on his
goals, he will yearn to be listening to her, yet the culture stands erect
between them, asking for the boy to function all alone in his path and strive
for so long to meet high demands set by the parents of both parties. Parents
think that that reflects their respect towards their daughters, while that does
nothing than instill upon her the notion that she is no big difference from a
car that is respected when it is more costly.
We
end up seeing people loving others to fuel them to attain mundane goals, and
they forget about their higher goals they once set in life. One seeks a job for
the sake of reaching her because her father is in control of her will. At this
stage, people who had certain high goals and at the same time were yearning to
unite with the other, start to face inner turmoil, of either putting down his higher
dreams or reaching her. It is an inner dilemma that can drag many people to
different low feelings, yet there are many who can reconcile them externally
but for being a human, that person shall face intermittent coming turmoil. Normally,
one wills to pursue his dream with the right person but society pushes one to
feel that it is an either or choice.
Today
our youth are changing their paradigms on love and sex, and they are realizing
that they are not willing to repeat the lives of their parents, for those who have
parents being married traditionally. For those youth, who try to know each
other and love each other, face cultural constraints to be together, it is not
a mere cultural hindrance, but it is a deprivation of one of the basic human
needs of connection, and by that we have the basic human brain unsatisfied,
which reflects on the other parts of the brain. It is well-established that
brain connections between these three categories – roughly speaking- is
bidirectional and when one part is unsatisfied in a certain way it will reflect
on other parts of the brain. It is no wonder to find out that in our cultures,
pornographic addiction is higher because there are deeper factors going awry in
the minds of our youth than those in the western world. What pushes many into
pornography after some desperation of uniting with someone but not being able,
is that the internet is greatly accessible while what they might be seeking in
real world is seemingly out of reach, so they seek what is easier. It might
appear to the reader that I reduced the connection matter into a sexual act. It
is well known that when one is interested in the other and delves too deep,
there is a mixture of emotions that is experienced, and the sexual dimension is
naturally instigated. Some biologists also proposed that our minds are sexual
tools and they are also part of the courting mechanism.
Many
people reduced these addictions to the mere reason of being visually stimulated
when you go outside, but if that’s the reason, we would see low numbers of such
an addiction in our countries, yet we are seeing the exact opposite. The brains
of many remain unsatisfied and by that they seek satisfaction in a different
way, and once they get hooked up in this vicious cycle, they turn into
pornographic addicts, and yes it is an addiction which shares the same
functionalities of addiction of something like cocaine.
As
long as we go on with our weird cultural constraints and our hateful system
that makes a girl’s choice restricted upon what her parents filtered, we should
expect more nonfunctional youth who have many chances of development ahead of
them, yet they feel that they are not full humans and they keep on seeking the
unknown. If we look from an anthropological perspective, we shall realize that
humans have a feeling deep inside them to connect with some people, and when
this connection is constantly being severed, we find people whose minds have
been shaped in a negative way. These people start to get an impression that the
world is conspiring against them and whatever they seek shall not be reached.
From a biological perspective, love (sex) has been a very powerful driving
force. It is evident in history and those interested can seek to probe on the
matter further.
Choosing to live with someone who shall widen your horizon upon
life and support your inner experiences is life in itself. Living with someone
whom you can show yourself with full clarity, pure intention, respect, trust,
confidence, and above all Love, is the dance of life, that’s how a Zen Master
sees it.
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