The first of Jason Nazar's "35 Questions That Will Change Your Life."
That's a great question. Nazar is 35 years old, and I remember becoming aware, when I was about that age, that I had many perceptions that felt as as if they belonged to another person. This other entity had a different vantage point, seemingly from above, looking on at everything, including at me, and the me that felt like me, the character who participated in life, somehow did not know all these things.
That sounds absurd (if not crazy), but once you become aware of this absurdity, you can integrate yourself and become as wise and knowing as you really are and stop playing the somewhat naive character you've allowed yourself to be in your various decisions and interactions.
September 7, 2013
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13 comments:
Now, who sounds like a character out of Anna Karenina?
It was the same for me, Ann, but I first became aware of it in high school. Mostly I feel like all one person nowadays, but once in a while Sober Voice intrudes when he feels he needs too. (I call him Sober Voice because I heard him a lot when I was in college and had drunk too much, he kept me out of trouble.)
When I was a teenager, my butt would tingle every time I willfully exercised poor judgment.
That's a different perspective that belonged to my father.....isn't it??
Holy mother of God! Isn't this the kind of prying, nagging and badgering that the hippies freed us from? I have a couple of questions for Mr. Nazar: Who the fuck are you and why do you want to know so much? Get off my case, man. You do your thing, I'll do mine. Chill.
I think more teenagers butts need to tingle today when they do stupid stuff, but's just me.
I'm pretending not to know that Mr. Nazar has "issues".
The thoughts Professor Althouse seems, to my 36 year-old self, a bit like advice. Advice that might or might not be true, but that--in any case--is the kind of advice that one only recognizes as true in retrospect. The kind of advice that, for me at least, is often hard to take advantage of from the outset.
Be who you are! Be as you know! Well, ya, but...?
And yet, somehow, I can still appreciate it.
I remember becoming aware, when I was about that age, that I had many perceptions that felt as as if they belonged to another person. This other entity had a different vantage point, seemingly from above, looking on at everything, including at me, and the me that felt like me, the character who participated in life, somehow did not know all these things.
Fisheye lens
<3 Althouse.
A hospice nurse recently wrote a book in which she listed the top five regrets of those she had cared for.
They were:
1) I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself.
2) I wish I didn't work so hard. (Men universally regretted having not spent more time with their children.)
3) I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4) I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends.
5) I wish I'd let myself be happier.
"Health brings a freedom very few realize."
To me, this asks us to examine our denial. For myself (and this may be a little TMI), this brings in a spiritual component - a higher self or higher power, as fear is usually at the root of my purposefulavoidances and incorporating this hs/hp reminds me that I'm not alone and will be taken care of.
I don't know how to pretend not to know what I know. (That is actually a serious statement, not snark.)
"Why don’t you do the things you know you should be doing?" Original sin. What I shouldn't be doing is the easy shortcut. Like Obama bombing Syria to make himself feel like he did something.
"In what ways are you being perceived, that you’re not aware of?" Only God and the NSA can answer that.
Many of these questions read, to me, as variations on the theme of "Why do you fear your greatness?"
As in the exercised to achieve greatness in many self-help books, these mildly koan-like questions all have the same answer, summarized by Stuart Smiley as "Because I'm good enough, and smart enough, and doggone it, people like me."
Works best when stated every morning into your bathroom mirror, and again several times throughout the day.
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