As a kid, I used to have theories about life, and some I even put to use to my everyday life. Now I don’t remember most of them. However, yesterday, in the evening, out of nowhere I remembered one of them, thought about it a few more time, did some research, discussed with others, and now ready to share it, just for fun🎈.
Here it goes, the theory of “Simple People"👨👩👧👧.
The body reacts to incoming events more rapidly than the mind, and those reactions can be predictive. People whom you know, are naturally grouped. When a new person is met, based on the first impression they are classified into one of these groups.
This process usually happens in the background, and we judge and make various predictions about strangers mostly based on the result of this grouping. Naturally the more you get to know a person the harder it becomes to find a suitable group for them. You can’t even easily group infants and children, in fact it may be much harder the group children rather than adults. A simple explanation for this would be the fact that, infants are not born with tabula rasa, but rather they are unique, at least based on the genes combined with the womb environment they were in. Adults on the other hand, are fitted in a society, which makes them, predictable, in everyday situations.
being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
- Hear a crack - blink your eyes.
- Feeling good - smile.
- Hungry - eat, tired - sleep. …
Let’s try something. Think about a person you know all too well, all the weirdness they have. Now try to remember first time you met them, what your first impressions were. Take your time, notice, how complicated personalities are, how much there is to know just about any person. You will probably remember your first impression rather well, and your recent impressions about them. Compare the first and last impressions, are they even the same people?
Yes, you can group the instinctive base of a person, you can group the educated topping of a person, but you will find it particularly hard, or even impossible to put two Personalities in the same bucket. If you succeed in doing that, you probably don’t know them well enough.
From the day we are born we are constantly taught and directed the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, then comes the times when we are alone in the wild, until we ourselves start to teach and direct more or less the same things, with little toppings from our own experiences. That little topping that we gained in the wild, is one of the main ingredients of our Personality.
One of the most crucial teachings would be independence. It is vital to come to independence (even with the help of others), to feel the great power and responsibility of making decisions alone. For some of us it is easy to gain independence from a very young age, others find it very difficult even while entering adulthood, and becoming parents.
I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
― Audrey Hepburn
Being left alone from time to time, does not mean that we are lonely, and everyone left us, as some might feel, but rather it is an opportunity to be still. Everyone who ever had the chance to be alone, and not suffer from it, most likely had felt the freedom and stillness it gifts. And they will probably from time to time, strive to it.
Even if one seeks prolonged physical solitude for the right reasons one still needs to monitor oneself carefully and intelligently. The joy of aloneness (pavivekasukka, A.IV,341) can subtly deteriorate into a shirking of one’s responsibilities. Likewise, one can overdo it, over-reach oneself and end up straining the mind. Hence the Buddha’s caution: `One who goes into solitude will either sink to the bottom or rise to the top’(A.V,202).
In my younger years I was forced into unknown for two years, and was separated from almost everything in my life. That’s called serving in army.
The one thing that I’ve learned in those two years, is
Once you take mindful solitude as one of your companions (or the only one), you’ll be able to recover from anything.
The more companions you have, the more responsibilities and problems you are confronted with, the harder your life is. Pick them wisely. No companion is bad, too many, is worse.