As of last week, I have been twenty three years in Finland. Next year, it will equate to half my life spent on the other side of the world from where I was born. I'd like to say it has all been a good experience, but nothing is all good and there have been, are, and will be many challenges to come. I think that overall I have done okay here, but in the last handful of years it has definitely been a backward step in many respects. Hopefully, things improve.
If only there were magic.
Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, magic doesn't exist. The things that we attribute to magic or some higher power, are just conditions that we don't yet understand. And the fact is, due to our limited nature and capabilities to understand, there is always going to more we don't know, no matter how much we learn. We are constrained creatures acting within a system that is forever larger than we are, can be, and could ever understand.
This isn't to say that we can't learn and improve, it is just that if we are banking on knowing as our solution, we might never know enough. For instance, when I was teaching business English a lot of clients felt that if they knew some more vocabulary, or improved their grammar a bit, then they would know enough to be confident when speaking. But it is a fallacy, because confidence isn't attached to what is known, often to the detriment of our behaviours.
I was having a conversation with a friend who has OCD and suffered from it for more than two decades. In the summer, they ran an ultra marathon through Finnish Lapland and while talking about their experiences, I enquired how the OCD was impacted. There was no OCD. Which is something I predicted before they set off on their run, because from a few other ultra runners I know, the brain gets overwhelmed with tiredness, hallucinations can happen, and the entire focus goes into one foot in front of the other. There is no brain power to think, to worry about irrelevant - it is just survival instinct. No thought of whether stove or oven is on, or if the door is locked.
What my friend has discovered in therapy, is that she doesn't process emotions well and instead converts them into understanding that makes sense. Knowledge. The problem is, their understanding of the situation isn't necessarily the truth of the matter, but it dictates their behaviours. Which makes sense, because our behaviours are actions - the end process of creation.
Thought, word, action.
But as we were talking I realised that the "thought" part of that equation isn't our conscious thought, but the thoughts that have arisen due to some emotional state. The conscious thought process are the words that we translate the emotion into, before we convince ourselves to act and therefore, create. And when we do this consistently, we create a belief.
All a belief is, is a thought we have repeated enough and created into a habit. And hence, we should be able to uncreate a belief or a habit, through changing the creative process, overpowering what we have known and replacing it with another creative process. And, while our feelings can create end actions, end actions made habitual can create new feelings. And then through repetition, those new feelings become familiar enough that they in turn generate new thoughts, new words, new actions.
I ended the first paragraph with "Hopefully, things improve", but hoping is like believing in magic, that somehow, without intervention, things will fall into place and work out. And yes, technically this is the case, but it doesn't mean that it is going to work out for the best. It all just works out, because that is how the universe operates, but that isn't how we as individuals experience our lives. We experience our lives as apart from the universe, even though we are inevitably trapped within it. We think, therefore we believe that we exist, and the more that we know, the stronger our beliefs are that what we are doing is right.
But is what we doing, right?
My friend logically "knows" that what they are doing is not actually rational, yet they are trapped in a cycle of knowing, without being able to alter their behaviour effectively. Do they not know enough? Perhaps. It is very possible that they don't know the right thing to know that will stop their compulsive behaviours. But, that "right thing" might not be at the conscious mental level - it could be in the physical knowledge base, or the emotional. If conscious knowing was enough, we would all be close to the best versions of ourselves, because we already know so many of the things we should do to improve. Yet, we aren't getting better, are we?
If I could click my fingers and create magic.
If I could click my fingers and become the best version of myself, would it be my thoughts that would change the most, or my behaviours? If I was the best version of myself, how would my feelings be affected? And if I were the best version of myself, how would my feelings, affect my conscious words and then my actions going forward into the future? Do I know what I should be doing?
Then why aren't I doing it?
If only there were magic.
Taraz
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Definitely! Homeopathy fits into this category. The science is there, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15593258211022983, but has not been accepted as fact. No surprise there - conventional medicine is designed to create patients, not wellness. The contents of medicine cabinets of old have been replaced by expensive, toxic, ineffective, patented snake oils. Anything that actually heals is presented, by the medical establishment, as bunk.
Knowing this as well as I do (homeopathy works like magic!), I wonder what other traps we have been led into, not allowed to know anything outside of that trap. Covid was one, definitely. Vaccination, of which covid was just one small but important part, is another. Vaccination is disease management. and not the good kind.
We are not allowed to know. Anyone who truly tries to understand looks outside the recommended literature etc, and is hence deemed a conspiracy theorist, a misinformed being, a kook. This is why we are not getting better.
There are several remedies that could help your OCD friend. If he is also depressed, taking Aurum metallicum 200c, one dose every other day would be a good place to start. This remedy is also indicated when the person finds his condition improve when he is outside in fresh air, walking, or running. He might find it worsen in cloudy weather or winter. When the condition has mostly improved, he would discontinue the remedy, then start it up again whenever the condition reappears, until mostly improved again. Very little in homeopathy is forever, unlike the toxic medications that conventional medicine prescribes. Imagine living with no poisons in perpetuity. Thank you for allowing me to flex my homeopathic muscles here.
You know what I learned the other day but should have known? The word "Cure" comes from curiosity, from attention. I think part of the problem now is we are not curious enough to actually question what has been established, even though we can feel it doesn't work.
Thanks for the tips. I will pass them onto my friend and then it is up to them to do their own research and decisions. At least they like to research! :D
I have always thought you are too hard on yourself. I know it comes with our generation but we actually are the best versions of our selves. There is plenty of room for improvement from this point for sure and a little humility and discipline will improve things for sure. But, the universe tried very hard to us not to even exist as individuals except for a miracle (magic?). After that, it conspires incessantly to kill us off, which it eventually will.
‘Til then, we are bearing the odds and driving to improve. Optimism is a common thread through all who become successful and I would say you are one hell of a success for surviving this long, having such a wonderful family, achieving through the setbacks and finding a place within this wild system to build a life.
Keep snapping those fingers!
This is what I feel daily!!
When I was younger, despite setbacks, I was pretty optimistic. But it got worn down, eroded over time. I am not sure it will ever return.
I'd probably just be more opening to trying new things if I were able to become a better version of myself. I know part of it might be because of my ADHD, but I don't really think of it that way. I just figure I am a pussy.
This is what I was thinking!! ;D
But I do think that the way our brains work are going to make us more or less open to new experiences. Perhaps with ADHD it is where you are looking to create certainty, since the attention is always shifting?
That could be. I know part of it is I/We try to avoid things that seem like they are going to be hard to do or accomplish. I think that ends up keeping me from doing some fun stuff sometimes.
I wonder how connected fear is to it. I think I have missed a lot due to fear of failure, or fear of whatever. Is there a component of ADHD that connects to some kind of fear?
That would be a better question for my wife! I honestly don't know. It might be more just risk in general.
In this life of ours, there will always be challenges, pain and difficulties on our ways. It’s just nature and every one of us will have to go through those difficulties amount, it’s what we do then that matters.
It’s a good experience seeing how you were able to cope all these years in a new environment. Well, magic thus exist and I believe a lot them are just illusion and nothing more.
Most of what we do are as a result of our experience in life and nothing much or possibly what we learn through others people that are not us.
Just imagine if you could click your fingers and give your students the magic of health, stable family, love... What would your classes be like? What would their future look like?
Hmm, they won’t have to bother for much in life since most of what they need is actually attributed to what you have already stated above.
From what I remember I already told you this in the past- When I was young I would get really nervous/ scared if I had to speak with someone on the phone. To the point where I was basically only talking on the phone if someone called me. Now I am somehow better at this but if I have an option to write someone I don't know an email instead of calling I am still likely to do that.
I tihnmk a lot of people are getting like that now, where they are unable to face the anxiety of "too much unknown" when speaking face to face (or on the phone). An internet curse I presume.
by the way this is off topic but I think that I will forget this if I will wait to comment it the next sunday. I just saw a post on facebook: answered whether carrying a certain flowers on September 1st is a Soviet legacy?
I know that sport teams, literature or music may be considered some countries legacy. But this is the first time when I saw someone calling flowers a legacy.
I don't know about the history of carrying flowers on Sept 1st at all. I don't think it is a thing here, or in Australia.
kids who go to school bring flowers to their teachers.
Yeah, I was just reading about it. Seems that is ex-soviet countries that do it, so I guess the tradition has come from there
We all view the world through our own warped lenses and what we think we know is not necessary the reality just like you mentioned...
Imagine if we had the capacity to actually absorb 20 percent of our reality. Even now with our vision alone, we can only focus on a spot about the size of a postage stamp held at arm's length, before it blurs to the peripherals. Seeing is not the truth, though it might be believing.
I actually appreciate this perspective. I agree that many things we once called “magic” eventually find explanations through science and deeper understanding. But I also think the limits of our current knowledge leave room for mystery. Not everything we cannot explain has to be supernatural, but neither should we assume that everything beyond our understanding is impossible. Perhaps the most honest position is simply to remain curious and open-minded.
Absolutely. We can never know it all, so curiosity is the only practical path forward.
I think we can get lesson from our mistakes and even know how to change them, but our habits and emotions may still keep us in the same cycle.
If we don't change the action, no matter what we know, things don't change.
Actually magic may exist, but not in the way we think. There is mind magic, the intelectual kind, like in the Marvel superhero way - any technology that is too far from our understanding may look like magic.
There is the magic of emotions, of art, the kind of waking up our soul, when we are mesmerised by a sunset or by a touch of somebody close to us. Sometimes we call this happiness.
And the list can continue. There is always magic around us, if we stop for a moment and look for it. it is just that the everyday noise is fogging the glass.
Are they instances of magic, or do they just appear so? Love can feel magical, but it is also a complex set of chemical reactions evolved for a purpose. That might seem sad, but at least if we give love, we have purpose.
As I said, any science we do not understand, may look like magic. But once you make it a chemical reaction on paper, is that the same? Do not even make me to start about Flow as a state.
Well, in my religion, islam, magic does exist but its nasty and evil not like the magic we see in hollywood films
The word magic actually comes from the name for Persian priests.
I think that every human build a version of himself/herself and sticks to it as a way of self preservation. As one of my friends told me: even if I know that you are right, I will still be doing that my way. There is no logic from the outside on it, but rather some interior system built to protect him from the outside world. So I think everyone makes a different kind of magic or happy cloud for himself/herself, even that is not the reality of it.
Yes, a story - not truth.
Funny, isn't it? We are our own worst enemies, constantly getting in our own way.
From which country did you go to Finland?
Australia.
Belief is hard. We know logically that to truly believe in something creates neural pathways - positive or negative - but it's all about constant repetition and really, really working hard at it - which is actually really fucking tough!
I always wonder if you get homesick for Australia. I used to, a lot. Then I moved back and was homesick for Europe - ha. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else. Especially in the beautiful place i live (check out my post where I see it from the air in a friends plane - I know you don't visit my blog often but you might like it).
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We have harnessed lightning to zap rocks until we make them do mathematics. This allows us to send messages around the world. Pretty magical if you ask me.
I don’t know how magic works, but sometimes it does—sometimes we influence circumstances in a magical way. My wife wanted a house with a garden in the countryside. In April, I took an empty envelope and put ten dollars in it; I told my wife we needed to make a start on her dream and that we would regularly set aside any spare cash in that envelope. I thought it would take us a few years to save up enough for an affordable house. But three months later, in July, something strange happened: I earned a good amount of money in a single week and bought the very house my wife and I had seen in a listing back in April.
Life itself has rules, and things differently according to our beliefs