The Great Imbalance

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. 

We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

-Albert Einstein

As preposterous as this may sound, each of us are in fact two. The presence of this division of human experience may become one of the greatest psychological discoveries of our time.

The pop-psych understanding that one part of our brain handles "reason" while the other part handles "emotion," is not entirely accurate to reality, but it is pretty damn close. For simplicity's sake, let's call reason the "left side" and emotion, the "right side." Again, remember that these labels are oversimplifications of the truth. Allow me to add a little more meat to the bones of reason and emotion.

On Kindness and Worms

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

- Shakespeare

Lately I have been curiously attending to my interpretation of experiences. The phrase "things aren't always as they seem" is wrong; for things are indeed always as they seem. Things are always something other than what they seem, as well. All interpretations are valid... as well as none. Kindness to others, and interestingly also to ourselves, depends on our ability to relieve our own perspectives from their place atop golden pedestals.

I'd like to share the following story recently recounted by a Harvard professor.

Happiness on Fire

I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs

the nearer he does approach divinity

Socrates

Happiness. I have reoriented my life towards understanding it and what have I learned? The desire to be happy does not lead to happiness; and in this paradox lies the key.

Although some of the following concepts are also found throughout literature and philosophy, they may not be understood easily or quickly as they require some unweaving of established perspectives. Let's unweave.

The Broad Road Through

If you would be a real seeker after truth, 

it is necessary that at least once in your life 

you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

-Descartes

I had a difficult time accepting this aspect of myself, but compared to the average person, I am really bad with details. I’m not sure if it’s because I find them boring or because I’m simply bad at paying attention to them. Due to this, I’m not good at recalling facts or dealing with practical matters. I’m beginning to accept however, that I have substituted that skill with a different one.

The Inferiority Radar

Girl at the Mirror, courtesy of Ken Worley

Better is the enemy of good

Voltaire

We all strive to be better. We are continuously encouraged to improve, and sometimes even pressured to do so against our will. We've embraced the idea of lifelong enhancement as an unquestionable aspect of what it means to be human. And why shouldn't we? It seems noble enough, and largely preferable to the alternative, for a person that quits this struggle for betterment is peppered with negative adjectives such as lazy, unambitious, useless, good for nothing, etc. If we read between the lines however, we encounter a surprising paradox.

Wisdom of the Wrinkled

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years, 

how man would marvel and stare.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've always been fascinated by the sometimes "strange" life advice that older people give. It hasn't been until this semester - studying psychology as a second career - that I've learned why that is. A profound change occurs in how we perceive the world as we grow older (60 years and up), and I think most of us intuitively know this in some way or another, whether or not we've studied psychology. So what changes exactly? Simply put, we turn our attention to things that REALLY matter in life. Why do we do this? Because at some point a certain fact of life hits us full force -- our time is limited.

Evolved to Chill

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

- Benjamin Franklin

Train for a marathon and your endurance increases. Go on a diet and your body learns to consume fewer calories. Ride a bicycle everyday and your legs become stronger. The human body adapts to the environments we subject it to... and so does the mind. It's easy to pay attention to the environment we subject our bodies to because we can visibly see the effects -- i.e. sitting in a cubicle every day and gaining weight; doing yardwork for 3 weeks and your back begins to hurt; working out everyday and witnessing your muscles grow or waistline diminish. On the other hand, it's much harder to observe the effects of the environment on the mind. I would suggest that these effects, although less apparent, are even more critical to our wellbeing. It is then important to consider which types of environments lead to greater well-being. In other words, what environments should we subject our minds to if we want to be happy? The answer may be surprising.