We, humans, tend to think of ourselves as some collection of past memories.
I hate to speak of all of us, but in this case I believe that’s universal.
We stuck in the past, too much. And the older we are, the more stuck we are. It feels that way. I think, the reason for that is that over time we accumulate some life experience. We transform that into knowledge, skills, whatever else. It helps us survive.
But things at a constant change. It’s super difficult — if even possible — to catch up with ever changing world. I believe that’s the primary reason nature (the universe, God, or whatever you believe in) made us mortal. We die and born again (if you believe in rebirth, I do) to relearn the world, constantly. To start anew.
We die to make room for others. If there’s rebirth (we’ll never know anyway), this natural mechanism erases our memories.
Maybe not for all, again, we’ll never know. Some mentally dysfunctional individuals might be those who kept their previous memories, but unable to communicate them to others. That could be just some bug in the mechanism’s code (basically DNA). Some things, we’ll never know them.
But while we’re alive, I think we have to adapt to reevaluating things systematically.
I’m yet to invent my own (or learn someone else’s) mental model for that.
I think … it’s somewhere in the way of how we perceive ourselves. I try to think of the world as of some ever moving substance that flies (or flows) through me. While I’m mostly static, in the sense staying at one position. The world does not turns around me, but my world — the one I perceive — it’s only around me. Even if there’s some distant event, unrelated and irrelevant event. If I know of it, it went through me.
Maybe it — this world, this substance — flows not through me, but into me. And once it’s in me, it exists no longer.
I may extract something of it. Or even — and this thing is more common, I believe — I may not extract anything. It may flow into me, through me, giving me no value. But harm. Or no harm, but no value too. It must be super complicated. But maybe super simple too.
I guess it might be like food. It flows through me too. I extract some value out of it. Or no value at all. Or even just harm. It may damage me, it may heal me, or just help me survive a couple of extra hours. Or days.
I eat something, but I discard most of it. After it travelled through me. Does the same go with the universe? In a way, it tracks through me too.
But tomorrow it will be different from today. And, actually, just in a second it is different from what it was. So most of the things we learned the hard way, they may change to their opposites, or even develop into in a completely different paradigm with no just two dimensions.
Some things never change 🎶
Oftentimes, I think of myself as ‘I’m so and so, went through this and that.’
Nationality
Off the top of my head, some people here may see me as Belarusian who emigrated to Ukraine. But I never felt being Belarusian. And even if I did, from this point in life I’m rather Ukrainian who has some life experience of living in Belarus. If you took my first years of life, you could say I’m Russian who migrated to Belarus (by changing no location, since I’ve been born in USSR, which is Russia occupying other sovereign nations). Who migrated to Ukraine then. But I’m no fucking Russian either! There’s no way I am. If I’ll move back to Sweden, and stay there till the rest of my life — which hopefully would be very long — it would be an absurd to continue calling myself Ukrainian, not to say Belarusian. Maybe it’s a silly example, this national identity. Right now, living in Ukraine for over a decade now, I still identify myself as a Swede. Their mentality is just much closer to what’s in my head.
Profession
Maybe profession would be a better example. I’m designer, manager, developer. A deliberate outcast.
I have experience in them all. But who am I today? Neither. Not because I have no knowledge, or it’s too limited. This lies in different paradigm, outside of it. I’m a much more complex creature. And I think even the most hardcore programmer, the one who thinks of oneself as one since their early days (e.g. since teens till elderly age), I think they cannot truly call themselves just a programmer. It’s all is an over simplification. It may be useful to dumb down things in our resumes, but it’s of no use to dumb down us for ourselves. It’s a bad service.
I think freeing up from these limits makes sense. But it feels difficult to let go. To stop perceiving myself as such and such, to try something completely new.
Pain
I’m afraid of pain since my early childhood.
I’m a dark something karate belt owner. It’s violet or green, whatever is better, I won’t recall. I spent 5 or so years of endless practice, missing a couple of trainings over all these years. I attended only one competition, because we had no money for that, and I never asked my mum about this privilege. She kept telling me I don’t need it, and I should stop. I quit after some serious trauma (100 push-ups within one attempt). I couldn’t bend my primary right hand for months. But I quit because she finally broke me. It’s her money who paid for me, after all. Who am I to ask this woman for something?
I could make this conclusion hundreds of push-ups is something dangerous to do. But It’s not. It’s dangerous to do only if you had no training. Some ten years later I did hundreds of push-ups within one training session, without any trainer, completely on my own. I had over hundred of push-ups within one attempt, and I had five or six of them with two minutes rests. It’s half a thousand of push-ups within 15 minutes. It’s pretty impressive! But I never thought of it up to this very moment. It’s over ten years since then by now.
Back then, I embraced physical pain. It’s been so difficult mentally, I thought if I’d die doing this, I don’t mind. I wanted to feel physical pain, and for it to be louder than my other pain. It wasn’t, but I was at the peak of my physical health. Hell, I was strong!
That one competition. I was so terrified of that fat guy I duelled with! I was fat too, but I was the lightest of my mass. He was very slow to move. Yet, I lost because I had no experience in competitions. And I was afraid. Of him, of pain. Of myself too, probably.
But back in school, there were guys who tried to beat me. And hell, I could crippled them! In a real fight, I wasn’t even afraid, I was so angry, I knew I could kill. I had no stoppers in me. I did my very best to not end up in fucking Russian prison. Otherwise, I’d surely kill some Russians during my school years. I won’t even regret it by now. (Not that it’s too late to start killing Russians, you know. They are attacking us here, after all. Fucking slaves.)
But my point is. I’ve been afraid of pain as long as I can remember myself. My pain tolerance is very low, even the smallest amount of pain feels very intense. (I won’t be able to give birth, you women may despise me for it. But you know what! I’m not going to go through labours, sorry!)
However, I like pain. Not in a masochistic way, that’s not what I mean. Well, not sexually, I mean. Rather, I like muscle pain. I’m not a body builder, and my 35 yo body is rather disgusting at this point. Even by my body positive low standards.
Yet, I think that’s something stemming from not knowing thyself well enough.
So, again. With this clumsy attempt at thinking, I think, I’d like to find some algorithm, to build some system of discarding old beliefs, and rebuild.
Sometimes, I just feel it within hands reach—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Took me an hour to write this from my iPhone. Should have taken my MacBook, and be done with this within 15 minutes instead.