Sunday, November 14, 2004

People Complex

People are so complex, yet we usually interact only on the surface. In your average day, you might run into a lot of people, but very rarely do you ever actually get deep and really communicate feelings and emotions. Why is this?

Back at home, Jordan, Steve, Cimmino and I frequently had "discussions" where we'd talk about all kinds of stuff and I use that as sort of my scale for judging interactions. I really got an idea of how they viewed the universe and what their priorities were. It's interesting to understand the intellectual backing that makes up a person's world view. I think we were all really influenced by The Invisibles, and even people I knew back home who didn't read it, heard so much about the concepts. The series formed sort of a base we used for exploration of metaphysics concepts.

So, it's interesting to talk about similar concepts with people here at Wesleyan, and get a completely different perspective on things. I just sort of took for granted the idea that we were moving towards some kind of major growht in consciousness, some event in which we would leap forward, transcend the physical and become purely mental beings. It might not be at 2012, but this was the direction of humanity. However, I found that idea challenged, and was forced to consider whether it really is where we're going.

Like, I talked about lucid dreaming with Jenna, and she called me a destroyer of dreams, basically implying that what dreams are supposed to do is let your mind work through the issues of the day, and lucid dreaming would instead further tax you, and prevent you from getting the rest that sleep is supposed to give you. I can see this point. Lucid dreaming is so much a dialogue with yourself, it can get you spun up in really intense self analysis, and some people probably don't want to go there. I find dream analysis really interesting because it's the closest thing you can get to an objective view of your own mind, but it's still just talking to yourself, and sometimes, it's better to get in touch with the outside world.

I guess for a lot of people the outside world is the only thing they have so that they don't, to quote Yes, "Don't surround yourself with yourself." The more you look at people, the more you see the things that have made them up, and the mental things that determine who they are. People feel obligations to do things, different things depending on what they've come from. Ultimately, I feel living life is like making a movie. Sure, you want it to be popular and critically acclaimed, and make the people you know happy, but if you're not happy with the finished product, it doesn't matter what other people think of it. It's your movie to make, your life to live.

Related Posts
What's the Deal With Being Depressed? (11/23/2004)
Writing People (12/6/2004)
So This is the New Year (And I Don't Feel Any Different) (1/1/2005)

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