As a birthday present, I woke up to a plate of assorted fruit in the fridge for breakfast. I didn't eat it for breakfast though, because I had a coffee instead. But it did make a good lunch. We also went out to dinner last Friday and I received a booking for a massage at a pool centre, where we will swim together afterward. It is a few weeks away.
Birthday's are normally a reminder of life, but I also almost died on my birthday when I drowned in a pool as a kid, when I was eight. It was the second or third near death experience I had had by that time, with the first being a severe fever as an infant (my earliest memory) and being electrocuted, which I think was a few months after the drowning, but it might have been a bit before it too. There have been several other near-death events and conditions since. So yeah, my birthday is also a reminder of the alternatives.
Counterfactuals (not to be confused with alternate truths) is imagining what could have happened, but didn't happen in the past. For instance, if I had died as a baby, or in that pool, or been electrocuted, everything past that point in the timeline would have been different. For me, I wouldn't have existed past there, but for others, they would have been affected in various ways. Those who knew me like family would be affected in one way, but then there are all the people who would never know me, and therefore be unaffected by me. However, because I didn't die, those people were affected and the experience shifted as it did.
And while we can't go back and change the past, counterfactual thinking is a pretty brilliant piece of machinery we have, as it allows us to simulate and predict multiple outcomes. Even though they didn't happen, it can inform us and teach us lessons for the future. However, it is also a broken system that can have negative effects, because we can "rewrite" history within ourselves and perhaps negatively influence the takeaways.
Being able to go back and "correct" our behaviour mentally, where we reimagine saying and doing something different is probably a process we use to reconcile the past and also heal ourselves from various harms. But as you can imagine, if we rewrite it in some ways, we can actually create more internal conflicts and more harms that were not consequences of the actual event. We can amplify the negative impacts, rather than disperse them, widening the wounds and creating a larger pile of baggage to carry around with us through life.
But the better use of the counterfactual is when we use them to mitigate the damage of the past and overcome the damage we might have taken, so that we become stronger for the experience, not weaker. Instead of being victims of circumstance, we can take responsibility and be agents of change in our own lives, choosing to act toward being the kind of person we want to be, rather than being forced to be the kind of person we feel pressured in being.
While each person is free to react on their emotions as they please, there are always consequences to our actions. We have created a culture where people are hyper-sensitive to their current emotional state and feel entitled to act based purely on emotion without thought, as if it is the truest, most authentic version of ourselves. But I do not think that our emotions are anything other than guides that point to issues we should explore, rather than facets we should act upon. Especially when they are negative emotions, we should use them as pointers to improvement, not buttons to launch reactions.
It is hard though, especially when we feel strong negative emotions, because they flood our bodies with a whole range of chemicals that make us more reactive, and far less thoughtful. Rather than looking at the alternatives of the situation and ways to respond, we act based on some simple mechanism of feel this way and act uncontrollably, often doing harm to others and ourselves in the process, creating more instances that have to be reconciled, that raise more negative feelings, like guilt and regret and disgust.
Sometimes I think acting on negative emotions are like getting caught in a rip at the beach. The body gets swamped by the wave, panics and starts to swim in the opposite direction toward the beach it is being pulled from. It seems like the sensible thing to do. However, what should be done is to swim across the rip, because swimming against it is a losing battle that will tire the body until carried far out to sea. The "logic" of the reaction to the feeling, is not logic at all. Actual logic would be to understand the situation first, and then choose a course of action. Emotions make actual logic difficult to apply.
However, if we can put our emotional response on hold for a little bit, then we can "go back in time" and work out what kind of responses are appropriate for the situation. If this isn't possible in the moment, we can go back later and reflect on our actual response and discuss ways we could have alternatively behaved so that next time, we are a bit more prepared.
All of our experience can prepare us for the next moment, but if we aren't willing to learn from what we experience, or if we only experience indirectly, then what ends up happening is our emotional response takes over, because we haven't practiced how to delay reaction. A lot of life is lived theoretically from behind screens now and while when things are calm we think we are in control, once a situation comes into play that causes panic, we often find our control is lacking. But, we then believe that we are entitled to behave that way, that we did the best we could, that the situation warranted it, because we felt so strongly.
We are justifying being unprepared.
Life and death are two sides of the same coin. Keep flipping the coin and life might come up time and time again, but death only need show its face once.
Taraz
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I think almost everyone has a 'what if' moment where he could die or at least end up severely damaged... Fixating too much on the past is nkt good often and just promotes negative feeling, negative feelings pump adrenaline and cortisol and you are like iper active when you shouldn't
But when negative events can be reframed into their positive lessons, it becomes an empowering experience, rather than powerless.
Entitlement seems to pop up imcreasingly more when I agonize the human condition. Maybe agonize is just an emotional word for my emotional response though.
Swinging from thinking our feelings don’t matter to them being the only thing that matters seems like opposite ends of bad. Emotion can trump logic but it is a balamce as we probably should not logic our emotion completely away.
I like the counterfactual angle though. I have seen some folks rewrite their history in their favour in an attempt to shoft blame off themselves as a way to cope with their failure, even deny it. That is more fake mews than anything. We don’t learn from our mistakes. We learn from revisiting that failure in an attempt to come up with aoutions to avoid the mistake in the future. Thats where counterfactual thinking helps us as long as we don’t stew too long.
Isn't it interesting that thought is painful? :D
For sure. There are times and places where we should lean into our emotional responses, but those are rarely public forums with strangers.
It is something I came across a long time ago, though not in the form I am writing about it here. What I have found is that a lot of what I did early on in life, I have "forgotten to do" later in life. I have to get back into the groove.
I had a clinical death as a baby from pneumonia, but I don't remember any of it... It is really hard to control emotions, especially in our personal life, I think that is because it is very personal and evokes the strongest feelings. I am trying to be better at emotional management in my personal life, but it is a very difficult process, I think I am getting better at it, but who knows...
Do you ever wonder if that experience (even unremembered) has left some kind of mark on you, or changed your behaviour from what it would have been otherwise?
No I have never wondered about that. I guess I believe that if you cannot remember it and it was so early in my development as a human that it probably left no mark, though doctors said that my lungs would probably never be as strong as they could have been...
I was watching a documentary on guide dogs and they can predict what kinds of behaviours dogs will have based on how they were treated or the experiences just after birth. I am guessing it is the same for humans. As said, mine is my earliest memory, and I found out many years later that I was under one. Pretty weird.
Even if one human most of the time is wolf/monster to the other human we still need each other sometimes. If I remember right once or twice I choked on food. So I suppose I could have died if somebody else would not have been around to hit my back. I now read that this is quite common cause of death in america. I wonder if this means that many americans live alone and don't have anyone who could help them in such situation.
Interesting question. Or, if many Americans are greedy eaters.
I think it is a slippery slope between counterfactuals and regret though and regret is a place you don't want to dwell in. At least I don't, but I often find myself there.
I agree with you. I think most of the time these days, we use our mental abilities to amplify the negatives of life experience, increasing our sense of victimhood.
That is true, but not exactly what I was talking about. For me it's not so much about victimhood, but going back and thinking about things you would have done differently and then assuming those choices would have led to better outcomes. When the present outcomes really aren't that bad. I think it's easy to let regret drag you into a fantasy of what could have been. If that makes sense.
Oh yeah. Some people will stew on things. It reminds me a bit of George in Seinfeld saying, "No, you ate all the shrimp" (if you remember that) as a comeback days after the fact.
And yep, we can't predict what would have happened had we acted differently, but we can think about ways we would have liked to have acted instead.
Happy birthday to you i hope you were very confortable with your family .
Well when you see the past you said i should this or those but this decitions pass and the result of you have is other.
For example we get an accident days ago and mt partner of travel, said what happens if i bought a cup of coffee, maybe this 5 minutes could make we were death in this moment, because we found a drank motorcycle in another place and the car, could fall in a big hole and posible we get death.
By the way th3 coffee is better than fruits, good choice.
A moment here or there, can change everything. However, when it comes to the decisions we each make, we can decide what we do in the moment. We can't stop random events, but we can be prepared for what is likely to happen.
It is true that even though we can't change what has already happened, we can take lessons from it to improve ourselves ;)
Many of us seem to increase the harm of our past, until it becomes a barrier for our future.
Happens all the time when wifey is fighting with me at home. The second I can hear her blood boil, I tell her to take some time to let her body relax and unwind before we continue our discussion. Too many relationships have been ruined because of mean things we say when we are upset. Emotions definitely cloud our better judgement.
For sure. I wish I was able to do the same myself. Though these days, getting any response from my wife might be better :)
Of course acting based on emotions can lead to disasters, almost everyone knows that. The problem is cultivating the ability to set emotions aside and act logically in every situation.
For me, our emotions are powerful forces that can shape our lives, for good or for bad. We can make our emotions work for us by allowing logic and reason to preceed it, not the other way round.
When we've reasoned that something is the right course of action, we should then allow ourselves to feel strongly enough to follow that course.
Mastering our emotions and feelings is the primary aspect of self mastery.
I don't think it has to be in every situation, just the ones where there is a risk of doing harm.
happy belated bday!
yea, timeline stuff is pretty freaky to think about..
and this is a good song..
I should listen to more Joni Mitchell...
Happy birthday Mr. Tarazkp, make yourself the life you have to live over and over again, softer and kinder to yourself, and if you always have answers, always leave yourself spaces for surprises, that's the miracle of living.
I wish I had more answers....
Well, there you have another answer 👌. it is worth remembering that today, every day is your day.
Thanks for sharing this. It reminds me how fragile life can be. Learning from our past experiences can help us grow and become better people.
Have you ever had a near death experience?
Happy birthday my dear!
Thanks :)
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STOPThis it's me. Winter storms haven't been a big issue this winter, because we're in a drought and snowpack is maybe half what it should be in the mountains. People who coasted on being unprepared for winter got a free pass, but the upcoming wildfire season could be worse than they have been lately, so it's more important than ever to clear brush and consider evacuation plans. Few do.