Balance Pt. 2
All of this happens because the human body, and nature in general, strives for homeostasis. When you introduce a flood of a chemical into a relatively balanced system of a brain, then the brain and body begin pumping out the antithesis to the chemical in an attempt to return to normalcy and balance. The human body is remarkably skilled at adapting, while the human brain is terrified of it. Most humans are paralyzed by change. We fear it and fight anything or anyone that enters into our paradigm with machinations of alteration..... That sentence felt douchey to type. We fear and fight anything or anyone that tries to bring change to us.... That sounds better. So when change is introduced in small increments, much like when you titrate dosages upwards with a new medication, both the body and mind accept the change and proceed to begin to associate that with the new normal. Once acclimated then another small change introduced goes smoothly. This is how large positive change can be affected upon your life. However it can also be used maliciously by those who wish to manipulate and pull you away from your core values and dreams. For three years I watched what happens to a person who dedicates their life to the pursuit of happiness at the cost of all else. She would justify it by asking me, "How is me wanting to be happy a bad thing?" To which, at the time, I had no good answer for.
Balance. It is often that we say that we want it in our lives, but do we really think about what that means? A balanced life will have equal measures of bad and good events. Though perhaps a peaceful balance is where there is contentment and trial as opposed to ecstasy and agony. I think my end goal is to have a life that is perhaps mildly more weighted on the good side if I'm truly honest with myself.
I digress.
In a world where cold, detached, emotionless logic is valued above all there are still those who will strive to feel and find that feeling emotion is vital to the human experience. In this culture having feelings is seen as weakness, those who do not care and display apathy are seen as strong. Those who base their decisions upon what logically makes sense in a situation are seen as admirable. Granted, logic is important and objectivity has its place, but to disregard emotion or to regard all emotion aside from joy with such disdain is damaging. There is an importance to bad emotions. We are encouraged to chase happy emotions and told that if we feel sad something is wrong and we need to do whatever it takes to get back on that chase, that pursuit of happiness. I think of it as boiled down to a simple sliding scale. We are given two chips to place on this scale in our lives. Society encourages us to place both chips on the happiness side. The problem with this comes back to the body trying to maintain homeostasis. With nothing to provide perspective, happiness becomes the norm and what was once viewed as happiness doesn't feel special, but to someone attempting to keep both chips on happiness it feels like they've lost their happiness. This causes them to escalate and leads to a treadmill of unending pursuit, instability, and destruction.
Too often are we wished happiness and only happiness in all things.
I will continue this in a part 3.
Balance. It is often that we say that we want it in our lives, but do we really think about what that means? A balanced life will have equal measures of bad and good events. Though perhaps a peaceful balance is where there is contentment and trial as opposed to ecstasy and agony. I think my end goal is to have a life that is perhaps mildly more weighted on the good side if I'm truly honest with myself.
I digress.
In a world where cold, detached, emotionless logic is valued above all there are still those who will strive to feel and find that feeling emotion is vital to the human experience. In this culture having feelings is seen as weakness, those who do not care and display apathy are seen as strong. Those who base their decisions upon what logically makes sense in a situation are seen as admirable. Granted, logic is important and objectivity has its place, but to disregard emotion or to regard all emotion aside from joy with such disdain is damaging. There is an importance to bad emotions. We are encouraged to chase happy emotions and told that if we feel sad something is wrong and we need to do whatever it takes to get back on that chase, that pursuit of happiness. I think of it as boiled down to a simple sliding scale. We are given two chips to place on this scale in our lives. Society encourages us to place both chips on the happiness side. The problem with this comes back to the body trying to maintain homeostasis. With nothing to provide perspective, happiness becomes the norm and what was once viewed as happiness doesn't feel special, but to someone attempting to keep both chips on happiness it feels like they've lost their happiness. This causes them to escalate and leads to a treadmill of unending pursuit, instability, and destruction.
Too often are we wished happiness and only happiness in all things.
I will continue this in a part 3.
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