To me, a question is the one of the most beautiful devices created by humankind. A request, on the other hand, might just be one of the trickiest. To ask a question is to open and step boldly out the door; to make a request is to stand at the threshold not knowing which way the door will swing.
I recently learned how to hide yourself on Zoom. No, I’m not talking about turning off your camera – that’s something we all learned to do many months ago, whether to save bandwidth or to spare others the sight of our morning hair or living rooms. Rather, I’m talking about turning off the video of ourselves that we see by default whenever our camera is switched on. In other words, I’m talking about letting others see you without having to see a constant reflection of yourself. Like, you know, how meetings used to be.
We think we think our thoughts. We think we’re starting each moment in the driver’s seat. But when you really reflect on where all of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and choices come from. you start to see that this belief has no foundation. Our thoughts, as it were, think us. What if we were able to accept that control is an illusion - and that not only are we not really in the driver's seat, but nobody is?
From others’ perspective, you are a person. What are you from your own perspective? We live in our heads, but are we our minds? And what might we be without - or beyond - our imagined and embodied selves?
For me, and I’m sure for many, gathering information is a coping mechanism. It’s a distraction. It’s a strategy to create the impression of being productive and in control. It’s a way to avoid discomfort. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always allay anxiety – in fact, quite the opposite is often true. But after much research and reflection (my other obsession), I’ve started to consider whether perhaps I need to reframe the way I think about these compulsions, instead of trying to fight or fix or apologise for them. Instead of seeing them as the strategies of an incurable neurotic, maybe I need to tell myself a different story.
I had a realisation recently: "It’s all in your head” doesn’t necessarily mean “It’s not real”. This is a personal stance with feeling behind it, and my feeling is essentially that being told that something is “all in your head”, or suspecting the same, can feel for the most part invalidating, isolating and even a bit cruel. The specific example I had in mind was when people use this to explain when somebody experiences physiological symptoms which seem to have no obvious physical origin – typical examples being chronic pain, fatigue or fibromyalgia. In this case, “It’s all in your head” usually implies “There’s something wrong in your head”, which, true or not, may be interpreted as “There’s something wrong with YOU” “It’s all in your head”, in other words, to me usually suggests “It’s not real”, which is to invalidate someone’s personal experience – or at least to tell them they’re on their own.
Perhaps one of the reasons mental health is so hard for us to talk about, let alone deal with, is that it’s mostly almost invisible to us. That is, not only is it not spoken about at a social and societal level, it’s often not even really noticed at an individual level. Our mental problems are less visible to us than our other physical problems precisely because we’re in them. Put differently: we don’t look at them, we look from them. This is Part 1 of a series on the topic of the nature of mind and the concept of self.
When someone looks you in the eyes, you become a person to that other person. At the same time, you become more aware of how you see yourself, of your projected mirror-face. In other words, you become self-conscious. Is self-consciousness what's really behind our inability to see others? Is the ability to choose between being a self and being a group, and even forgetting oneself, a privilege? And is it possible to replace self-consciousness with self-awareness, or just ordinary presence – possibly even without a self in the mix?
All & None of the Above 