Dodge This!

You see a situation, you've seen it a hundred times before, you may have even experienced it yourself; what are you supposed to do anyway? The human condition immediately defines things it sees and turns it into experiences. When drinking cold tea by mistake or accidentally touching a hot plate don't you find yourself stop at one point and think, "Oh this was like that one time I..." etc. Well that's the mind trying to filter the information into sections that you can comprehend and then experience in memoriam. If your mind can't filter it because it is a new experience, then nine times out of ten it will create a new section and that first experience will become your definition. Notice all the italics? They mean I'm emphasizing those words. Now you try it. :) Thanks for humoring me.

ANYway, so what? What's the big deal with defining experiences? Well. For one, we borrow a lot from people. You've probably noticed a friend telling you a story that their friend told them that happened to this one guy...well those stories become our truths. Don't give lifts to strangers cause you'll probably end up dead. Well, probably, but I've never experienced that truth for myself. So we're influenced more or less by other people. Bless them they don't mean to make your mind up for you...in fact if they do, all the better for your brain cause it might not have to make up it's own section.

I don't mean to come off snarky, I make the same mistakes and probably more so, it's human. Now I find myself at a point where I'm looking for a definition and suddenly as if by miracle...nothing. I don't know if my mind has run out of space for new categories, but there was no defining anything and you know what that did ironically? It blew out a new wing for new categories. Everything is new, all is as nothing.

Ok now the point of the blog. I think defining certain things in your life help you understand your situations and I think it's up to each one of us to decide how we look at things. Some views are automatic, some are obtained through practice, but most of us at some point in our life will come to a conclusion and when that happens we almost certainly know how it's going to end (at least we think we do). And when that happens we almost see things we didn't see as if by magic. Suddenly that friends laugh you laughed with so much is the most dreadful sound you ever heard, all examples don't worry friends...no one's getting ripped into here (promise). It's just like the flick of a switch because that's how the mind works, because by defining things around you, you make them so in a vicious cycle documented below.

We create our world without knowing it, so what if we knew it...what could we do then?

Understand, categorize, conclude, experience, repeat. More or less. :)

I'm teaching myself to experience everything for the unique context, tone, whatever adjective works, that experience is. My second cup of coffee one hung over morning or the order I put my shoes on any given day. No matter how mundane the act, we've done it a thousand times before or never, it's STILL different because it's happening today, now and that's never happened like that before...planned or otherwise. Prove me wrong.

With that thought I leave you this night, I will sleep like a baby now and never again...who could know for sure? :)

PS: I'm trying to think what pictures I can scatter through here to break it up. Let me know if my choices were sound, should be interesting.