Nature of Contrast

It is said that the human brain is hard wired to remember the negativity and pains more than the positive memories. Like, we remember the mistakes we have committed in our exams more than the correct answers we've had. Simply putting it, the brain can't cut the crap because it remembers the crap more than the happy moments.

I’ve been reading an article about neuroscience (and positivism) and a recent discovery suggests that a person with high cognitive capability can actually use his higher brain regions to control emotions and shut off (or subdue) the lower regions that make people remember traumatic instances that happened in their lives. In a way, it’s like rewiring the already hardwired brain to shift perspectives and focus by using In-tention and attention to overcome the negative bias. 

Just imagine how powerful that brain must be. It would be really cool to have that kind of ability and have the skill and power to manipulate the thoughts you want to remember. Philosophically, it’s like phenomenology at work – but in a less emotional and more on the cognitive-psycho-neuro-scientific-and-practical application kinda way (and without the need for a term paper! BOOOOM! How good is that?!?!) 

In other words, the article expresses the point that unless we are clinically depressed, our pain is indeed a choice. Our unhappiness is a choice - well…. (who in their right mind would choose pain? Right?)

People often say that life is easy as long as we change the way we perceive things, but I am somewhat doubtful of this. In as much as I want to view life as simple, beautiful and happy, my life is proving it otherwise. Well maybe I am clinically depressed, but let me put that thought aside. I don’t want to be labeled as such and I want to see myself as normal. (and since i haven't seen any professional for diagnosis, I am technically not 'clinically' depressed... yet.)

I can still tolerate and control my depression. In my constant search for beauty and happiness, I engage in lots of things that somewhat serves as my outlet. When people suck up my remaining patience, I tend to write. Writing is my way of talking to my inner self and in an ineffable way of putting it, this is where I find answers by accessing deep thoughts I never thought were there. 

I have written countless ideas, accumulated lots of trash (I write on tissue papers, receipts, notebooks, walls, tables, candy wrappers [paper-ish wrapper] and anything as long as my pen can write on it.) up to this date, I find myself having more questions without any concrete answers to my queries. I am failing big-time and as a matter of fact, some of my writings were already long forgotten that when I try re-reading them, I don’t remember the scarlet secrets I was referring to anymore.

Regardless, I still treasure some of it and those special memories will always be vividly remembered. Like how hope was breathed on me, the mad person who wrote those esoteric writings is still within me. Right now, my fingertips are aching for typing lots of thoughts then deleting just to type again. 

Type delete type delete…. I lack organization and I have too much side thoughts…. I doubt someone will understand the way I write. There is swirling tempest within me and the expanding fluidities of cognition and emotions are freely moving my not-so-idle hands.

Patterns of typing and deleting keeps on recurring, wanting to write everything but at the same time deleting everything coz paranoia is hitting- like, what if someone read this and knew me personally?

DELETE DELETE DELETE

eventually….

I ended up with a blank word-pad. (while the wondrous moon is laughing at how my attempt to write this afternoon ended). I deleted more words than those that I typed because I am getting tired of writing about my pain, and perhaps… just perhaps, this madness and sadness I’m feeling must be really my choice. 

I want to go over this already, REALLY! 

I just can’t be like this anymore (and I am sounding desperate now!). 

I haven’t finalized a single thought in my writing although deep within me, I still bleed an ocean. It’s like facing the mirror in the morning and you practice a pretentious smile but you darn know that it’s all fake. Hiding the real with metaphors and personifications so you can remember how it felt like (and how it still feels like). 

Time will eventually heal wounds as they say, but months have already passed and I still feel it. It sucks how people in my past still talks about how messed up I am. Met several of them actually in different places and in as much as I am trying to move on from it, they still cling to that image they have of you. 

Haven’t people judged others enough and that a souls punishment be paired with hatred as well? when someone suffered enough (and was punished enough), won't karma work for their favor eventually?

An old English nursery rhyme says that: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. (Which is a bunch load of crap...)

Pain is pain.

Emotional pain hurts as much as physical pain does. Some areas of the brain gets activated whenever one experiences rejection, betrayal, or when one drinks coffee without fully realizing how hot it is, or when we fall down while we’re running. The point of it all is that it originates from the brain and regardless if these were punches we received straight to our faces or sharp words from people, the pain will always originate from the brain.

In running, people take drugs (pain relievers), in depression people take prozac, when headache strikes they take aspirin and etc… But to this date, I still prefer natural means. I just don’t agree with the idea of eliminating our pains (physical/emotional) through un-natural means. If we numb our pain, it’s like postponing something inevitable – and after all the effects of these drugs wear off, the pain will just be amplified.  I bask in my pain because the more I experience it, the more I understand how it works (which i hope will eventually lead to ME and MY PAIN uniting in an imperfect harmony). It is the nature of contrast. If we haven’t hit rock bottom, we wouldn’t fully appreciate what we have now. How good is happiness if we haven’t tasted the bitterness of defeat and how can we admire fighting spirit if we haven’t lost a fight? So I guess to find the beauty that I so longingly seek, I must first acknowledge and embrace my pain….

Side comment: (---and for me to write more as well. With all the madness, disorganization and side comments!)

And from a blank canvas, I write about my pain...

again...

and again....