* Perception is Everything
Back in April, I was very focused on viruses: their behaviour, the analogies in popular culture regarding the virus, and how temperamental most viruses truly are. For instance, the AIDS virus is a remarkably fragile construct;unbroken skin is an adequate barrier to prevent infection, and bleach and alcohol both eradicate it.(http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/qa35.htm, query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A0DE0DC1239F93AA35757C0A960948260). SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) on the other hand was deemed to be much hardier, surviving for days in refrigerators, and any human who's ever had a common cold can tell you how resilient those little buggers are.(Viruses are not "bugs," though, in the bacterial sense. Don't be confused! www.mayoclinic.com/health/infectious-disease/AN00652)At the time I'd drawn a crowd of parallels between the "mind" of a virus and my own mind, and how precariously vulnerable either could be -- the virus and my mental state. Too often my mental control (and ergo emotional control) feels beset by the slightest shifts in temperature (hot summers, stress), moisture (emotional sojourns, anything that jerks tears), and light or lack thereof (dark winters).But with rumination, I realized that with a little prophylactic treatement, both a crappy mindset and a host of viruses (even the hardy kind) can easily be shifted/obliterated. Mentally, a change in thought or perspective is often all that's needed to shift reality. I offer a dear friend as anecdotal proof: she used to be terrified of snakes. She was paralyzed by them, completely controlled by an irrational fear she had that she'd be attacked by any snake she happened upon. After a single candid conversation with a therapist, she realized that she was completely ignorant about actual snake behaviour, and ironically concluded that just like most snakes, which will run when surprised, she too was not into confrontation. Now she's obsessed with snakes -- in a much more positive way.A shift in perspective. A little education. Voila.Since I've worried I am dabbling with my own unique version of a mid-life crisis, I decided to apply this theory to that existential mindset, and I'm having pretty extensive success with it. It makes me want to send surveys out to my friends who are in the 35-45 year old age range, to see if they have the same success with shoving a mental perspective over just a hair or two, to see if that alters any dispossessed ennui. Not happy with how life looks right now? Try looking at your life through you coworker's eyes. Or your mother's. It's the old adage of "someone has it harder than you," and by-cracky, it works.This also dovetails nicely with my Primary Life Rule: Check in Regularly with Yourself. I am changing all the time. Every interaction I have with someone new, every meal I eat that has something new, every thought that I have that's a new way of thinking ... all of these change me in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. I may have hated asparagus when I was a teenager, but sometime in my 20's, I started liking it, and now it's one of my favourite vegetables. If I had not kept trying it, how would I have known? I used to be very agitated by Republicans, but I've found talking to a few reasonable ones (yes, they do exist) has tempered my view of them. If I didn't check in with myself frequently, I mean DAILY, there are a lot of assumptions I'd be making about myself and what I think and feel that are just no longer true.One of my coworkers told me recently that when he was 20 (he's 43 now), he got very angry over a betrayal, and he decided to unleash his rage on a pile of pallets (he worked in a warehouse). He said he thrashed at the pile of wood for over an hour, never expending his rage, until all he left was a mound of splinters. Based on that one, lone moment in his life, he's concluded that he cannot vent his anger physically because "it just feeds his rage." Maybe it still does, but maybe it doesn't. If he doesn't test that theory, how will he know? I just want to admonish him to open his mind, free it -- ask himself more often is he still who he thinks he is? I suspect he's changed and doesn't realize it. How sad -- to operate under a false impression of who you are. Don't do it, people!The image of a bumper sticker suddenly pops into my mind, those pithy little funnies:
