Channeling William James

William James

It’s going to be a very late night.

The usual reasons apply – studying, coffee, and the need to write.

The latest PWRP post is going to be up on Wednesday, because I tossed the one I was going to publish due to the fact that I was incredibly bored with it.

Going through some old entries in my little black book, I realized that I had forgotten one of my ‘rules’ that I created because of William James. When James was bored with a subject (he was originally going to be a painter, which his father positively resented), he would just drop it and move on to something that interested him. The art of giving oneself permission to give up. So, while I will always place information in my PWRP posts that I think you should know, I am no longer going to write just because I have to, but because it’s fun.

I think one of the reasons I fell for William James (if you’re one of the new subscribers – William James was a philosopher and psychologist that I have officially declared ‘the unofficial love of my life’) was because I saw myself in him. Or rather, everything I want to be. And in the process of trying to become William James, I’ve noticed that it requires many moments of giving oneself permission to do certain things, as well as reminding oneself to do other things, such as:

1. Ask stupid questions and don’t mind the stares that follow.

2. Just get up and leave things that no longer lighten the heart and cause one to pursue something with happiness.

3. Never get up and leave the people who matter.

4. Procrastinate and whine a bit when one doesn’t feel like doing work, and goof off when you’re supposed to be serious (James actually frustrated some of his students because he would frequently joke in his lectures and avoid grading papers as long as possible).

5. Chase after what makes you happy. Nevermind that people on the outside will think you’re naive. (The key word being ‘think’.)

6. Think.

Sometimes I feel like I should go after things that I want to do right now, but, thanks to you folks, I pause and ask if that would be wise in the long run.

I wish sometimes that I could live two different lives. So I could see how it would all pan out and which way would make me happy. That word keeps popping up lately, because that’s all that I’m looking for, that’s the cornerstone of many actions.

The good news, I suppose, is that I don’t have to stay anywhere forever, I can get up and leave. I’ve said it before and I say it again, I don’t want to be left wondering ‘what-if?’

Maybe I’m just meant to forever run around and look for ways to feel like I belong. As much as I dislike my personality type (INFP), I can’t deny that it’s true that I always feel like I’m looking for my purpose in life. When I was ten years old I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling that I had to find my purpose, because I’m supposed to be ‘different’, so I jumped wholeheartedly from one career choice to the next until I found forensic psychiatry at age twelve. Endlessly frustrated that I couldn’t find efficient ways of accomplishing great things. I still feel this way everyday, because I’m young and I know what I can do if given the chance. But I can’t, I can only try and continue feeling like I’m fighting quicksand. Like an anchor is chained to my ankle while I’m trying to reach the surface of the water.

I don’t want to go to med school, but I know I need to in order to become a forensic psychiatrist, in order to get people to listen when I talk, in order to have what I say hold weight and actually be able to move a mountain or two.  The next fifteen years of my life will be in a classroom or standing beside a preceptor in a hospital somewhere. I’ll find a way to fall in love with it, but I’ll be silently whining and easily procrastinating the whole way through, the way James would, and I’m going to be good at it… the way James would.

Back To Studying I Go,

–Hannah-Elizabeth/Classic

On Emotional Psychology…Sort Of

Just a note before I publish this little post. The fancy struck this morning (well, by now, yesterday morning) to write a post on psychology. For my PWRP post series I try very hard to remain on topic. But for this post, while I will try to stay on one little rail of thought, I’m not going to limit myself to any rules. That is, don’t expect decent writing or really any order to this post. As for this little bit here that I’ve just written, think of it as a friendly warning of pure disorder and dull recollection.

Enjoy.

~Hannah-Elizabeth

I’ve been known to drink a few pots of coffee in one day.

Yep, not a few cups, a few pots. These days I tend to do it more out of routine than anything else. The familiar motions of making a cup of coffee, opening an old newspaper and trying to forget about what I need to do. To heck with it. I think, A moment of peace now will go a long way later.

And even if my daily routine means that I’ve lost time that could have been used to be productive, I don’t even try to eliminate those moments. Sometimes I think that I stick to it just so I can tell the story of drinking too much coffee and reading old newspapers. It’s something comfortable and set in its ways. It’s something that I do, that I always want to do. It may not be productive, it may not be healthy (though, one could argue, there are multiple benefits to drinking coffee,) but it does place me in a positive state of mind.

Recently while reading a few articles on Psychology Today, I suddenly came to the conclusion of several weeks worth of contemplation: Negativity and self-delusion can be healthy.

Allow me to explain:

Self-Analysis

I recently started rereading material on personality profiling after seeing a reference to the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator in a post of a fellow blogger. During a recent trip to the library, the post came to mind and, out of boredom and curiosity I picked up a popular book on the subject of the MBTI that I first read  several years ago, Do What You Are, and reevaluated my personality type according to the MBTI (still INFP…dangit,) along with my type according to the Hartman Color Code, the Five Elements personality test found in The Face Reader, my brief self-analysis from my Rorschach inkblot test (I couldn’t bring myself to do a full analysis because the Rorschach is touchy enough without extreme bias from the tester getting in the way,) as well as several classic tests, and very quickly I realized an undeniable truth:

Self-delusion is very much in my nature. According to the five elements test, I tend to make excuses for the bad behavior of people I care about. The Meyers-Briggs informed me that when I’m in a relationship I tend to fabricate positive traits in the person I’m with, and even in the face of strong evidence I will still keep them on the pedestal I’ve created. According to the color code I tend to ignore negative traits in people and instead admire their values because of my inherent need to keep peace and avoid conflict. All other tests said generally the same thing, that I tend to view the world through rose-colored glasses, my mind remains oblivious to the potentially negative outcome of a relationship until it’s much too late, and on and on and on…

At first this revelation made me want to track down the creators of each test and give them a talking-to (which would be rather difficult with the MBTI, because the true creator of the test was Carl Jung…he died in 1961), but then apparently my passive nature made me rethink that idea. And I realized that I couldn’t deny what the tests told me, because I purposely lie to myself everyday.

In late September of last year I started a personal happiness experiment. Everyday I focus on one thing to be happy about and, as I’ve mentioned before, this significantly changes the mood of the day. When I can’t come up with anything, I settle on ‘Today is going to be a good day.” Even if I know it’s going to be stressful and hectic I say it anyway. I asked myself once ‘what exactly should one do when there is absolutely no silver lining to be seen?’

I replied to myself instantly, Well, just make one up.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I was negatively affecting my view of reality, and perhaps delaying my psychological maturation by doing this to myself. After all, if I’m viewing my relationships incorrectly, my friends incorrectly, my family incorrectly and myself incorrectly, I must be missing a lot of what other people are seeing throughout their lives.

I suppose the easy answer is yes, yes I am. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mind Over Body

The mind controls the body. This is seen everywhere from a strong emotion giving you goose bumps, to a biofeedback machine helping a patient learn how to ‘think’ away their headache and lower their blood pressure. There are even mind-over-body techniques used in cancer treatment, in a field called psychoneuroimmunology.

John Gottman (my favorite relationship psychologist) discovered a darker way that mind affects the body. Specifically, that the presence of contempt in a relationship spells out not only the end of the relationship, but also problems with the health of the person on the receiving end of the contempt. “…we can predict how many infectious illnesses that person receiving the contempt will have in the next four years. People in those kinds of relationships really live significantly less…they die earlier.” He said in an interview with 60 Minutes.

And, sort of a fun fact, multiple studies done in the 1990’s revealed a loss of hippocampal volume (8% in war veterans) in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (your hippocampus is a part of your brain that mainly handles memory storage.)

Optimism = More Likely To Pop The Red Pill

A blog post on the Psychology Today website in December brought a new spin on what looking on the bright side means when it comes to being level-headed.

Raj Raghunathan, Ph.D. executed an experiment at the University of Texas that involved polling the students to discover if the majority of individuals would decide to be happy even at the cost of being aware of the whole truth, or if they would instead decide to be completely aware of the truth, even at the cost of cheer. Long story short, Raghunathan and his research partner, Yaacov Trope, put subjects in either a bad mood or a good mood, had them read an essay on coffee that contained both positive (caffeine promotes mental alertness) and negative (caffeine can cause cancer) factoids about coffee, and then tested their memory of the essay. Turns out, individuals who felt more upbeat were more likely to remember negative effects of caffeine, while sad participants were much more likely to remember the positive facts from the essay. Raghunathan believes that this is because the sad subjects subconsciously “chose” a reality in which coffee is all good, “Because they were sad, they were inclined to repair their mood through positive knowledge – or felt too down to handle a dose of negativity.” While the happy folks proved that more upbeat feelings make us more receptive to the truth and all of its downsides. “A hierarchy emerges: First we seek happiness. Only after we’ve tipped toward contentment are we open to hard facts.”

This article surprised me because when I think pure and simple happiness I think illogical. Trusting. Endlessly peppy. A child in the middle of a war that climbs on some giant rock, holds a little fist in the air and yells “Can’t we all just get along?” The idea of happiness lending us the ability to accept more difficult facts is unheard of (or rather, was unheard of to me).

The Upside To Negativity

Honestly, fourteen hours ago when I started writing this whole shindig  (yep. I have been writing and rewriting and deleting entire paragraphs in this post for the past fourteen hours straight. I was determined to write a post and I don’t mind that it’s nearing 2:30AM, I am not leaving my computer until this post is published,) the title of this post was “Making The Case For Rose-Colored Glasses”, and I was going to attempt to convince you of the upsides of a little self-delusion here and there. But, the positive side to negativity kept trying to elbow its way into my post and I just kept shoving and pushing and aiming and firing at the idea of negative thinking being helpful, when I realized that I was being too negative about negativity.

To quote a popular Eli Young Band song, “Start out depressed, everything comes as a pleasant surprise.” It seems rather obvious: If you apply for a job and have high hopes of getting it, you’ll have to deal with the intense disappointment if you’re rejected. On the other hand, if you have low expectations and end up not getting the job, you won’t have to deal with strong negative emotions. (But you’ll be that much more excited if you have low expectations and get the job anyway.)

“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.” – George F. Will

A pessimist will also see things that an optimist might miss if said optimist is too busy being angry at personality tests for declaring them an optimist…Also if said optimist is making an important decision and may not be thinking as clearly as someone with a bit more doom and gloom and less smiles and sunshine. Pessimists lend a new and possibly clearer perspective.

In closing, though, we need to remember why pessimism has gotten such a bad rap. The bad news about being a pessimist and why every article on mood in every psychiatric and psychological journal and magazine and report tells us to aim for happiness. Let us look at two simple facts:

1. Happy People Live Longer! A study in the UK involving 3,800 people aged 52 to 79 has yielded results informing the world that happy people live an average of 35% longer than people who claim to be unhappy. And the happier you are, the longer you live (which means, terrifyingly enough, Barney and Spongebob are probably going to outlive all of us.)

2. Happy People Are Happier! Yep! Happy people get more serotonin, dopamine, endorphines…all of our favorite feel-good neurotransmitters that give us a natural high. Meanwhile pessimists get cytokines (blood proteins that have been linked to major depression, Alzheimer’s and cancer) and an increased risk of many a horrid disease.

Alright then, it is nearing five in the morning, and I leave you with…ah, whatever it is that I was writing and editing the past seventeen hours.

Before I leave you be I’m going tell you something that I learned five years ago from a book that a behaviorist by the name of John Watson wrote (something that I misunderstood entirely at the time, but a misunderstanding that shaped who I am), it is impossible to fully understand the outer workings of a human being unless one first comprehends the inner mechanisms. Understanding psychology is an incredible foundation for reading people at a glance. If you want to read people through body language and facial expression and you want to learn to do it right, begin with the mind and work your way out. It gives us empathy and understanding and an ability to better predict the behavior of those around us. Psychology is the science of mental life, as William James once said. And mental life is reflected on our faces.

Until I Write Again,

–Hannah-Elizabeth/Classic

Explaining ‘Dazzled’…

William James (aka, the unofficial love of my life.)

Hello All,

I am currently at The Center.

I just realized how difficult it is to work up a post whenever I’m here. Usually when I write a post I’m in my room with the partition shut, hunched over my desk with green tea or a cappuccino nearby. It’s personal, comfortable, closed in, certain. But being here I completely access my school ‘social self’.

I suppose I should explain what I mean:

William James (a man who is considered to be the greatest American philosopher and psychologist. Longtime readers of The Last Classic will know that I am very much smitten with this particular dead guy,) believed that we have a different ‘self’ for every situation, beyond just one self that is ourselves, that is, myself. Have you ever noticed that you act and think differently with your family than you do with your friends? You could say that one is your ‘family social self’, and the other would be your ‘friends social self’. James believed that we have a self for every person and situation we encounter. James once said:

“Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind.” (If memory serves, this is from The Principles of Psychology. I wrote down the quote in my little black book but apparently didn’t see fit to write exactly where it is from.)

Also, it has been proven that certain memories are more easily retrieved when certain stimuli is present. Like when a scent or song gives you a flashback from childhood. All of that to say – the state of mind that I am normally in while I write my posts is not easily accessed while I’m at The Center, which would explain why my writing seems a tad odd (at least to me.)

____________________________________

I am back home, sitting at my desk, with my green tea…ah, all is right with the world.

I had a brief conversation with Kyle. I really hope that we stay friends after I leave Texas, I can’t quite put a finger on why I feel an odd admiration for him. Not a romantic sort of admiration, just…I’m not certain how to describe it, I feel respect for him and, I suppose, very intrigued. He seemed much more comfortable around me today, hopefully I’m growing on him. He wore a blazer – a navy blue blazer with gold buttons on the cuffs, it looked like a smaller version of one that I had bought at a church yard sale last year ( the one I bought is very large, probably meant for a rather, ah, wide, grown man, it’s just the fabric is very lovely –  like the sort of fabric that can be found on the 1950’s blazers at Whistle Stop or Memories & Treasures, the world’s greatest antique stores and two of my favorite places in the potential multiverse…anyway, I used a seam ripper and removed the shoulder pads so it would look a bit better on me, turns out I just look like a child who decided to play dress-up.)

I was sitting in the study hall reading through my notes for anatomy and physiology when my blazer-radar (I’m convinced that by now I have a blazer-radar, don’t try to convince me otherwise!) caught the smooth movement of fabric in my peripheral. I looked up to see Kyle starting up the steps to the cafe.

“Hello, Kyle.” I said casually. He whipped his head around and grinned when he saw me. “How have you been?” I asked, watching for any signs of discomfort.

“Very well, how are you?” He said in his usual composed manner. My impulse was to be blatantly honest and say You look very charming today! And particularly handsome! But something (common sense, perhaps) made me feel that it would be a bad idea…

“Great.”

He turned back to the door for a moment as one of the managers asked him a question, and I thought the conversation was over. Next thing I knew he was leaning over the table, shockingly close to me, scanning my notes and asking, “And what is it you’re studying today?”

I had forgotten exactly how piercingly blue his eyes were. He must have been raised in an area with a large population, he just has a smaller space bubble than you. I told myself. Still, it was more than a bit unnerving having that smile and those eyes and, most importantly, that impressive blazer suddenly a mere five inches away. (I was sort of extremely jealous, his blazer was obviously of superior quality to mine.)

“Oh,” I said, “Just something I should have studied last week.”

I looked up at him again, feeling not intimidated, but somehow nearing overwhelmed (perhaps ‘dazzled’ is a better word.) The tables had been entirely turned! My shoulders were raised and I could feel a sheepish smile on my face the entire time. I continued the sentence when I had already completed it, “For anatomy and physiology today. How is the day so far?”

He smiled with his incredibly white teeth, “It has been great,” he said. Cue intense eye contact and suddenly extremely sincere sounding voice, “how about yours?”

“Fine.” I said pleasantly, I could tell I was blushing. Before I could say anything else someone asked for his help in the bookstore.

“Do excuse me.” He said before promptly leaving.

I looked over at the only other person in the room, a girl who I had never seen before. She was watching me and grinning. I chuckled uncomfortably and tried to focus on my notes with little success.

After his sort of shy behavior the past few weeks the last thing I had anticipated was his response today. Perhaps what struck me was how incredibly sincere and unguarded he was. I have a feeling I’m forgetting part of the conversation, usually I’m much better at recalling things people have said. I suppose the only way I can possibly accurately describe that minute or two, is, put simply, intense. I pride myself on predicting behavior. When I’m out in public I always eavesdrop on conversations and I’m able to predict where the tone of the conversation will go. So Kyle completely breaking from his pattern of behavior was completely unexpected. This brings to mind something Heather Madame said to me when we were talking several years ago about me being unable to wrap my head around why Ryleigh left:

“I guess people aren’t as easy to figure out as you like to think they are.”

I was offended at the time, because I still thought that no one was unreadable to me. I now know that everyone is unreadable sometimes, and some people are just unreadable to me.

Sometimes I have so much to say that I can’t seem to start on a topic before another one is much too eager to make itself known, so I find myself in a rut with a headache… I have a feeling I’m going to be up late writing a massive post. Because this one doesn’t feel even nearly complete.

Until I Write Again,

–Hannah-Elizabeth/Classic

People Who Read People

Image via Wikipedia

Alright, this is getting sad.

Typically I write because something is on my mind – at the moment I’m writing because nothing is.

William James believed that there is really no such thing as introspection (viewing one’s own mental processes), there is only immediate retrospection. Because of course, I can’t think of what process I’m reasoning in, or exactly what reason I’m feeling something at the exact moment I’m feeling it. Because once I start breaking down my thoughts and feelings, those thoughts and feelings are contaminated viewing material, botched by my own view of them as they occur. All we can do is talk things over or instantly replay our thoughts and review them in this way. But, William James stated, there is no such thing as introspection in the pure form as it is defined – we can’t be logical about an illogical thought at the precise moment we are having the illogical thought, not without the illogical thought being tainted and becoming logical.

Have I mentioned I’m in love with William James?

My favorite book on the face of the planet – the one whose author I have named my blog URL after (good heavens that’s choppy grammar…) has arrived at my doorstep after all of my impatient waiting for three weeks:

Handwriting Analysis As A Psychodiagnostic Tool by Ulrich Sonnemann, Ph.D (published in 1950)!!

Every word is pure poetry, he was brilliant, fantastic, wonderful. Here’s one of my favorite bits ( parts of which I quote often when discussing handwriting analysis):

…all movements carried out by any organism at any time or place can be said to be expressive for the simple reason that their particular manner of execution, even if the purpose and environmental circumstances of the movement are “constant,” varies not only from individual organism to individual organism but, within the scope of activity of a single organism, varies from one occurence of the movement to any other. As no mathematically exact, automatic repetition of the same movement on the part of any organism is biologically possible, the element of uniqueness in every movement cannot be attributed to either the purpose or environmental circumstances of the movement but only to a structural principle within the organism which expresses itself in this very uniqueness.

In other words: you can tell the difference between your mom’s handwriting and your friend’s handwriting. And if this isn’t due to personality and present emotional state, then what? Handwriting, then, must reveal something defining about each individual.

I think there is an awful good reason why handwriting analysis books are found next door to mythology and superstitious material. Because I’ve read every handwriting analysis book out there, and all of the authors are so biased and picky and inconsistent and every single example interpretation just drips of intuitive analysis (when someone just grabs a magnifying glass and off of the gut feelings they get while looking at certain loops and twists, determine the author’s personality – something Sonnemann speaks out against in the first few pages of his book) that of course no one would (or should) take the books seriously. Sonnemann doesn’t nit-pick every sharp corner or garland of any letter. He starts off by looking at the letter as a structure, how strong it is, how bold the ink, if it leans or breaks. Very basic material. Obviously a legible, well-rounded sample of writing is created by someone in a bit more of a patient mood than bent, broken chicken scrawl.

For the longest time I was obsessed with profiling people in any way I could. Through their behavior (I’m still in love with criminal profiling) through their expressions (with the help of Paul Ekman’s Unmasking the Face, Emotions Revealed, What the Face Reveals and Telling Lies I’ve learned to read facial expressions and microexpressions), through their body language (thank you Barbara and Allen Pease!) and through their appearance overall (thank you, Ian Rowland for writing The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading) I was convinced I was going to be part of the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit. Speed-reading people and showing off like Sherlock Holmes or Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray. Speaking of people who read people – never read Joe Navarro’s book What Every Body Is Saying, Navarro may be a former FBI agent – but from his book, he knows this fact a tad too well. Also, he is incorrect about 70% of the time in his book. Odds are I’ve mentioned this before. If you mention the name Joe Navarro to Heather Madame she will tell you up-front that I do not like him in the least. I think he’s arrogant, closed-minded and for all that FBI experience he sure shows little for it except for common-sense facts regarding the human brain and body posture. It drives me mad knowing that people are reading that book and being so severely misinformed, when I first read it, I had requested it from the library (a general rule of mine: never buy a book that costs over $10 unless you get a trial-run with it first) it took forever and a day for it to come in because there were so many people ahead of my request in the queue. Now when I recall this I think of the people who have read it (and are reading it), believing that it’s all fact. Bah… I really, really don’t like Joe Navarro. (Especially since he keeps popping up in issues of Psychology Today magazine the past year.)

Alright, I have completed a ramble or two, and ’tis getting late. This would be a rather good place for me to perhaps halt my typing.

Goodnight all,

-Hannah-Elizabeth/Classic

The Day I Chose To Be Happy

Dissociation has taught me something. Something it has been teaching me every day, every hour, building up to the realization of today.

I don’t want to be happy.

When I think of intelligent human beings, of innovators and people of brilliant ideas, I never see their faces in my mind as smiling. Surely to be a hard worker one must consistently sport a downturned mouth, especially when in deep thought, as though they thoroughly disapprove of their own ideas.

To quote a fellow blogger (taken out of context from *this* post, but the phrase has stuck with me):

…interesting people are never taken seriously.

–Ian Williams

I’ve thought (and said) many times about how I would love to be like the man whom the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead summed up as: “That adorable genius, William James.” James was a philosopher and one of the greatest American psychologists, but that isn’t why I attempt to portray him. He was a deep thinker, compassionate, determined and always full of curious energy, ecstatic to discover the new, evaluate the unfamiliar, and second guess common sense ideas. They say he took the steps two at a time until old age stopped him, but even then he remained an empathetic, clever, quick-witted, honorable man.

I am what the Taoist monks would call a metal person – the polar opposite of a fire person who can be so energetic and lively (like a flame) that they tend to get bored easily and forget about their priorities. Metal people are perceptive and focused, and tend to focus so much on their priorities that their catchphrase can become “There are more important things in life than being happy.”

Perhaps logic isn’t logical in a world that isn’t fair. When we adapt with life and change our course with the tides. When every. Single. Individual believes different things, feels different things about different situations and scenarios. When really everything is up in the air and unpredictable and uncontrollable that even when we delude ourselves into believing we have the world on a string, something comes along to rip the cord our of our hands – heck, sometimes taking our hands along with it. Why should I be so calculating and critical and logical and distant when in the long run it won’t change a single significant thing?

I have been fearing regretting my choices, wincing when I recall a conversation long ago or last week when I felt like a fool, the memory stinging to the point of physical pain. Uwittingly conditioning myself to loathe with the taste of acid every tiny mistake I make.

Today is the today I chose to be happy.

This will be a project, no doubt. An experiment that I intend to have last the rest of my life (and being 17, I’ve got me a long way to go.) I want to be honest, fair, curious, unafraid of looking like a fool, wholeheartedly pursue what I love, ask stupid questions, and find one reason every day to be happy.

Odds are this is not what William James did, but I like to think he would have been pleased with my plan nonetheless.

–Hannah-Elizabeth/Classic

You Only Go Around Once

I’ve been thinking a lot. Which is a good sign, from what I hear. Other breaking news: my heart is beating, lymphatics are draining, and the Hindenburg went down in case you haven’t heard.

I’m scared about the next year. My mom has avoided the topic of the impending date of our separation when I turn 18 next year. I’ll be going further south to the University of Texas Pan American, and she and my father (and most likely my older brother) will become neighbors with Canada on Mackinac Island in Michigan. I’ve tried hugging her more and telling her how much I love her and expressing how proud I am of her success as an aesthetician, but I want to talk about goodbye.

Ever since I was 13 I began counting down the days to life on my own, making one scheme after another to get out quick. Some days because the fights were just that bad, and others because I was aching to try my hand at the dreams I had formulated while staring at those purple walls that I’m grateful I never had to paint over when we left.

You only go around once – that’s the line I’ve heard from toddlerhood onward, and only recently has it hit me head on what it means. You have choices to make every day, and once it’s gone, it can never be so again. My favorite philosopher and psychologist, William James, said that we never feel the exact same emotion twice. That’s because we feel different emotions for different reasons every time, so we can never feel the precise way we did the last time we felt it. In other words: you’ll only feel that brand of happiness once, you’ll only get kicked with that guilt in one swing.

I want to sit and talk with her a while about what inevitably will come to pass. A part of me is scared of when she does allow me, because now when she talks about her future, it’s no longer about dreams and ambitions and ending sentences with “One day I’ll get there.” Now, instead, they end with, “I may do that the rest of my life.” As though the day is so impending. But then, one cannot deny, it is. With my best friend’s wedding on the horizon, I’ll no longer have my Watson to rip the lenses off of my rose-colored glasses. When I’m at Pan-Am I will know no one, and be entirely alone for a companion who I can so entirely trust as I do with Heather, and the last thing I will do is call up my newly wed best friend in the wee small hours for one of my petty rants or paranoia episodes when things go bump in the night. No, I have to learn to always look reality in the face and consider all options and explanations, for once, learn to do such a thing alone.

At least I know I’ll only feel this brand of dread once, only get kicked with this regret in one swing.

It has been said before me, and so it will be said after. The reason stories of UFOs give us nightmares, goosebumps rise at the sound of invisible feet upon the floor, suspicion and fear arise when we think too long about the many monsters in the darkness, heck, why shaking hands give people with OCD a spike of terror, is because we do not understand. We fear the unknown. Where are the shoes that cause the echoing click? Where are the lights in the sky coming from? What could there possibly be in the darkness? Could this outstretched hand give me something deadly with a swift movement of greeting?

When we feel a dreading ache in our stomach, hearts and bones it’s that overprotective part of our mind sending signals that say very obviously “I don’t recognize this, I don’t understand this, therefore, I do not like this.” The past year I’ve come to see such an ache as a good thing: it tells us that we care about the outcome. But sometimes I feel this ache and overawareness of time and it’s passing make it difficult for me to enjoy the time I have left. Yesterday I suddenly asked my mom if she would like to go to Blueberries (a modern-styled frozen yogurt and boba tea place) if I paid for it. And as we sat and laughed I kept noticing lines on her face that I didn’t remember being there, I furrowed my brow in frustration that I didn’t perceive it earlier. Lines marking her cupids-bow upper lip and stretching from the sides of her nose and framing her mouth. Etchings near her eyes and on her forehead. When did my mother turn into a person? I wondered. A wise woman once said that there is a key point in life, where we stop seeing our parents as parents, and see them instead as people. My bubbly, Disneyloving, hardworking mother turned into a bubbly, Disneyloving, hardworking human being before my very eyes. And my heart broke a little.

Life is but a vapor, so says countless philosophers and the Bible itself. And what a beautiful vapor my mother is. I know I will wake up one day and she will be long gone, but, goodness, I can look into her eyes and hold onto her as long as I wish, it’s nothing but gripping falling sand in one’s fist. How can any human being properly love and cherish another in a way that stops time? I feel like this should exist. I feel like if I were to fight hard enough with nothing but my raw will that perhaps I can bend the cosmos in this way, that I might hold time in my hand and demand that it cease, and that it would. But the human will can only extend one’s reach so far, it can only do so much to hold the sun in one’s hand or the stars with one’s gaze. I can’t be the only one who has felt like this. Or perhaps William James would say I am. But then, what does he know? He’s dead. Where did his wisdom and ambition and raw will get him? All that is left of him is ink on a page. All that stands of Mr. James are quotes and requotes until sometimes words are said so often we don’t even care about what they mean anymore.

I wish that I could suspend the lives of the people I love for a while, but I know this would never be enough, it could never be enough. Because I am human, and so I fear the unknown of a world without them. But yet I still look into their eyes and hold them as tightly as I may, the sand continues to fall, the lines in the sand and the lines around her mouth are drawn by time, and nothing can be done to capture such vapors, what is done is done, what has passed has passed, and I am comforted only by the fact that I will only feel this brand of grief once, only get kicked with this fear in one swing.

Live On,

–Hannah-Elizabeth

William James (1842-1910) A Quote

Image by Psychology Pictures via Flickr

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight- as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.

–William James