Every person has their own interpretation of the events that happen in life. What is excruciatingly painful for one person might be only a mildly bad thing to someone else. Each experience is our own and unique. Nobody else will ever feel exactly the same thing about the same event.
That's why it's so common to feel alone when a negative experience happens. You are alone in your own little world surrounded by pain and suffering. Nobody else is having YOUR experience. When this happens we want to shut everyone out and not let them in. We feel that nobody can help us or give us useful advice. No one can have our experience so how can they help us?
Maybe it hasn't happened to you personally. Maybe you have only seen this type of thing in the movies or in books. But, I am sure you know what I'm talking about.
They make that "mistake" of saying I know how you feel and suddenly you explode. You rail out at the other person screaming and kicking and punching, bellowing forth at the top of your lungs how there is no way they could every possible understand what you are going through.
At different points in my life, I have been both the person who was suffering and the person who was offering their condolences.When I was suffering, I was unreasonable and would not let others in. And when I was offering my assistance it was rebuffed by people acting the same way I had in the past.
I learned at some point how stupid it was to push other people away when all they wanted to do was to help me feel better. My lashing out, cursing and swearing at the people that wanted to make things better was childish and illogical.
Often, when we are in the moment, logic is not present. It is all about what is happening right at that second and how we feel about it.We can't see past that moment. But eventually that moment ends. Life goes on. You either find a way to heal, you go crazy(the dangerous kind) or you die.
I'm not fond of being dead or that other kind of crazy, so after my seriously bad moments I had to find a way to heal. I learned through experience that it doesn't matter that our experiences are different.
The bottom line is no life is without pain and suffering at some point. Just because a person has not gone through the exact same experience does not mean they have no knowledge of what it is to suffer. People that care about you are going to offer their sympathy simply because they see someone they care about in pain.
It really doesn't matter that your particular situation isn't as bad for them as it is for you. It doesn't matter if they have never been through a similar situation. They have been in pain and they see that you are in pain.
So, yeah. How could they possibly know what it is that you are going through? They don't. But they don't need to. Just accept that your friends and family, one do know what pain is like and two want to do their very best to make yours go away. Let them in. Let them assist you in starting to heal.
because the other options just aren't worth it.
Showing posts with label know. Show all posts
Showing posts with label know. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Sunday, December 8, 2013
What is really real?
People go through their lives interacting with one another and calling each other out for one reason or another. This thing was good or that person was bad. All are convinced that they know the truth of what did or didn't happen and that they are right and others are wrong.
There is all this stuff that goes on in a person's head. Thoughts, feelings and emotions. Judgements on our experiences. Beliefs on how a thing should have happened. There is the spinning of the tale to make us look like the hero, or the victim.
None of that stuff is real. It is all what we make up about what happened. Everything that happens inside our head is imaginary, literally created from our imagination. Even our interpretation of what happens is not real.
Only what happens in the world, outside of our mind, is real. Our understanding of it is not real and neither is our memory or feelings based on it.
Any given thing is neither good nor bad. It is simply a thing. What is is. It is what you make up about that thing that is either good or bad. You personally, subconsciously, apply a value judgement tag to each thing that you see, think, hear or feel. Then you use thousands of these tags together to make up a framework about how life should or should not be. Once this has been done you compare your life with the way life "should" be and become either happy or discontented with things based on how closely things match your vision of what should be.
What you think remember or feel about your neighbor's dog is not actually the reality of the dog. It is only what you think remember or feel. The dog is the dog. Just as your value judgement of a person is not the person. Is is merely your judgement. And it is completely unfair to hold either a dog or any person to your feeling,thought, belief or memory of them.
We are not our neighbor's dog so we cannot truly know it. Our experience of the dog limits our understanding of it. With greater experience we can make more accurate predictions about how it will behave in a given circumstance, but never with absolute certainty. And just as we are not the dog, we are not any other person but ourselves. We cannot know or even properly understand any other being.
Nearly everything that we think, feel, and remember is, to some degree, incorrect. Because these things are based on our interpretation of what we experience.
Everything that we think, feel and remember is made up. It is something that we made up, based on something that happened in the real world. Everything is a story. It is all part of our story. The tale of who and what we are. The filter that we choose to apply to everything that we experience determines whether a thing is good or bad. Let me say that again. We choose the filter. It is a choice.
If this is so why not make your story beautiful and positive instead of negative and nightmarish?
There is all this stuff that goes on in a person's head. Thoughts, feelings and emotions. Judgements on our experiences. Beliefs on how a thing should have happened. There is the spinning of the tale to make us look like the hero, or the victim.
None of that stuff is real. It is all what we make up about what happened. Everything that happens inside our head is imaginary, literally created from our imagination. Even our interpretation of what happens is not real.
Only what happens in the world, outside of our mind, is real. Our understanding of it is not real and neither is our memory or feelings based on it.
Any given thing is neither good nor bad. It is simply a thing. What is is. It is what you make up about that thing that is either good or bad. You personally, subconsciously, apply a value judgement tag to each thing that you see, think, hear or feel. Then you use thousands of these tags together to make up a framework about how life should or should not be. Once this has been done you compare your life with the way life "should" be and become either happy or discontented with things based on how closely things match your vision of what should be.
What you think remember or feel about your neighbor's dog is not actually the reality of the dog. It is only what you think remember or feel. The dog is the dog. Just as your value judgement of a person is not the person. Is is merely your judgement. And it is completely unfair to hold either a dog or any person to your feeling,thought, belief or memory of them.
We are not our neighbor's dog so we cannot truly know it. Our experience of the dog limits our understanding of it. With greater experience we can make more accurate predictions about how it will behave in a given circumstance, but never with absolute certainty. And just as we are not the dog, we are not any other person but ourselves. We cannot know or even properly understand any other being.
Nearly everything that we think, feel, and remember is, to some degree, incorrect. Because these things are based on our interpretation of what we experience.
Everything that we think, feel and remember is made up. It is something that we made up, based on something that happened in the real world. Everything is a story. It is all part of our story. The tale of who and what we are. The filter that we choose to apply to everything that we experience determines whether a thing is good or bad. Let me say that again. We choose the filter. It is a choice.
If this is so why not make your story beautiful and positive instead of negative and nightmarish?
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
What do you know?
What I have for you today isn't so much a lesson as it is food for thought.
Most people think that the universe is divided into two categories when it comes to knowledge. First there are the things that we are aware of, which we call the things that we know. And then there are the things that we realize the existence of but about which we have little or no information about, which we call the things that we do not know.
There is a third much larger category though. It contains all of the things that we do not know that we do not know. In truth, the entirety of the first two categories would fit inside but a single drop of what is the ocean of things that we do not know that we do not know.
It is very common to look around at your surroundings and after once becoming comfortable with them to believe that you know what there is to know about them. But this simply is not true. The more we learn and study our natural environment the more things we learn about. Our horizons expand as we include new information into our knowledge base and new things become possible for us.
The truth is these "new" things were always possible, we just did not know it. Our understanding of all the facts at hand is what limits what we can and can not do. Often when we learn something new, old theories and beliefs automatically become invalidated. Things that we "knew" beyond a shadow of a doubt were true turn out to be false.
It used to be a "fact" that the world was flat. We know now that the world is round. It used to be a fact that if you wanted a message to travel thousands of miles it would take weeks. We can now have a message travel the globe in mere seconds. It used to be a fact that the sun the moon and the stars all rotated around the earth. We know now that the earth is but a small part of a solar system that travels through a much larger galaxy.
Man has been on this planet and recording history for but a few thousand years. During that time our knowledge base has multiplied itself many times over. This happened very slowly at first. But as ways of sharing knowledge have become more and more rapid the increase has been at near geometric rates.
Yet, scientists believe that more than 99 percent of everything that we believe to be true is false. We simply have not learned enough about the universe to know what really is and what is not.
How arrogant the average person is in his belief that what he knows is a large fragment of what there is to know. If you were to take any man from any era and show him the wonders of life five hundred years in his future you would likely blow his mind, with all of the "impossible" things that are just part of everyday living.
So, I challenge you. Set some time a side, a few minutes, maybe half an hour. Think about all the things you know. Think about all the things you don't know. Then do your very best to imagine looking into that ocean of things that you do not know you do not know. Think of all the things that might be if the first two categories of knowledge were expanded, if you knew more and were more aware of the things you know you do not know. In your mind's eye see if you can shift some of the things from that third category into the other two.
Most people think that the universe is divided into two categories when it comes to knowledge. First there are the things that we are aware of, which we call the things that we know. And then there are the things that we realize the existence of but about which we have little or no information about, which we call the things that we do not know.
There is a third much larger category though. It contains all of the things that we do not know that we do not know. In truth, the entirety of the first two categories would fit inside but a single drop of what is the ocean of things that we do not know that we do not know.
It is very common to look around at your surroundings and after once becoming comfortable with them to believe that you know what there is to know about them. But this simply is not true. The more we learn and study our natural environment the more things we learn about. Our horizons expand as we include new information into our knowledge base and new things become possible for us.
The truth is these "new" things were always possible, we just did not know it. Our understanding of all the facts at hand is what limits what we can and can not do. Often when we learn something new, old theories and beliefs automatically become invalidated. Things that we "knew" beyond a shadow of a doubt were true turn out to be false.
It used to be a "fact" that the world was flat. We know now that the world is round. It used to be a fact that if you wanted a message to travel thousands of miles it would take weeks. We can now have a message travel the globe in mere seconds. It used to be a fact that the sun the moon and the stars all rotated around the earth. We know now that the earth is but a small part of a solar system that travels through a much larger galaxy.
Man has been on this planet and recording history for but a few thousand years. During that time our knowledge base has multiplied itself many times over. This happened very slowly at first. But as ways of sharing knowledge have become more and more rapid the increase has been at near geometric rates.
Yet, scientists believe that more than 99 percent of everything that we believe to be true is false. We simply have not learned enough about the universe to know what really is and what is not.
How arrogant the average person is in his belief that what he knows is a large fragment of what there is to know. If you were to take any man from any era and show him the wonders of life five hundred years in his future you would likely blow his mind, with all of the "impossible" things that are just part of everyday living.
So, I challenge you. Set some time a side, a few minutes, maybe half an hour. Think about all the things you know. Think about all the things you don't know. Then do your very best to imagine looking into that ocean of things that you do not know you do not know. Think of all the things that might be if the first two categories of knowledge were expanded, if you knew more and were more aware of the things you know you do not know. In your mind's eye see if you can shift some of the things from that third category into the other two.
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