To all the physics lovers out there, I have nothing against the subject. But I believe it has certain limitations that will restrict it from seeing the bigger picture. Compared to the field of physics, which started wearing the science gown early in the 4th century BCE, Psychology as a science has only taken a few baby steps, being introduced in the scientific arena in the late 70s. Still, the impact it had on the world of science has been truly remarkable.
Unlike other species, Homo sapiens are so different from each other- so much so that an extensive data on different individuals could mislead an analyst to believe that they are from different species. And that is not at all on account of our looks- but our thoughts and ideas. Still, in this whole mess of different souls, we are in a constant search to find the ones that most closely resemble ours.
LOVE isn’t a foreign concept to me, as many of my acquaintances assume. Love comes naturally to me, just not for humans usually. I fall in love with ideas and thoughts, certain gestures and perspectives. Humans, being as unstable as the internet connection at my home, is quite frankly a little hard to be loved. Love is in many ways a complex concept to digest, and I can’t for the love of God understand how exactly we teach our children what it means. I suppose, our brain is designed to come to terms with such weird words as love and luck. However, I had this conversation with a man, practically a stranger, recently- and I think that was the closest I’ve come to understand the meaning of love.
We may all look alike, have identical organ systems, and have comparable thought processes. But you shut your room, wear noise-cancelling headphones, and close your eyes- and you know that there is a whole UNIVERSE inside of you and there is no way that it is not unique. You might have been sleeping alongside your husband in the same room for 35 years but there is no assurance that you’ve got any clue as to what is going on inside his very own UNIVERSE. You could arguably be the world’s best mom, and yet there is no way of telling whether you’d be able to rightly predict anything that is coming to life inside your five-year-old son’s UNIVERSE. You could have a bestie who has been with you through thick and thin as far as you can remember, but I’m sure you are in no position to inform me of the affairs of her personal UNIVERSE.
A lot of people ask me why I’m so fond of taking a stroll so early in the morning. And I reply, “I truly believe that the world would be a better place without us Homo sapiens and you get to see a glimpse of that world at five in the morning”. Even though the first part I mean as a joke (or do I? 🙃), I certainly stand by the second. I know it sounds a bit rude to ask people to ‘spend time alone’ after almost two years in lockdown- but that just might be the only way to save this world, or what’s left of it.
I’ve lived the life of an emperor who desired not power nor money but the admiration of his people. I’ve lived the life of a psychopathic serial killer with an urge to kill anyone whose heart is still ticking. I’ve lived the life of an eighty year old widow hoping to find love again. I’ve lived the life of a humanoid robot with the knowledge about this whole wide world but no true way to express it. I’ve lived the life of an athlete ever ready to exchange his blood and sweat for the sense of victory. I’ve lived the life of a paraplegic orphan fighting for a policy change regarding euthanasia. I’ve lived a thousand lives but I’m still in my twenties and I am not from the future (nor from a Christopher Nolan movie😅).
I think it is equally important, especially for the younger generation, to master the not so subtle art of actually giving a f*ck about something. We lead life in these bubbles that we construct on our own. But these bubbles - they do not restrict our physical or even informational movements, what it restricts is the communication of emotions. We see a ten-year-old begging in the street, and we walk straight ahead with a poker face - we do sympathize with the widower who lost half of himself at the prime of his life, but only until the next coffee break - We find it hard to listen and stay listening to someone ready to pour their heart out to us; we are losing the values we learned from kids’ stories as children. We are so deep into this idea of not actually caring about the things that aren’t important to us, or what we think aren’t important to us; so much so that we have lost the passion to pursue anything, anything at all as a matter of fact.
Sanity is overrated. To really be able to understand that, you probably have to experience insanity as well - this needn’t necessarily lead to a trip to the nearest mental hospital, or to the nearest prison or even to your own distorted porridge contraption as in my case. And it is not that uncommon. I feel like anyone who has entered into their adult life and still breathing certainly might have experienced a loss of grip on sanity at some point, at least for a very brief time. Comparing the two, I don’t think the distinction is that pronounced to categorize people purely based on that criterion. For the unlucky few, who haven’t had the good fortune of experiencing insanity in their life, here is what it feels like to take a plunge from the cliff of sanity, down to the depths of the unknown.
The astonishing hypothesis in Psychology is focused on our materialistic brain giving rise to the kind of complex lives we live inside ourselves. What I’m more astonished by is how an instrumental arrangement by a musician, or the verbal whips of a poet, or a well-made film, outperform our brains in enhancing the intensity of these million incarnations we have inside.