Life is Transformative

The Ink House, St Helena, California, USA

Like potters' clay, we're thrown to be distracted by and to brood over our internal states. That thrown-ness by definition keeps transformation at bay. By "internal states" I'm alluding to (for want of better words) our emotions, our feelings, our opinions.

We place inordinate stock in, we're invested heavily in what we feel, in what we emote, in what we opine. There's nothing wrong with that. Of all the components that comprise what it is to be human, what we feel, what we emote, and what we opine defines, in a certain sense, what we are. Yet when I look intently in this regard at what I've invested in, it's with a sinking, embarrassed sensation I realize if I've regarded my feelings, my emotions, and my opinions as the coin of the realm of being human, then I've been dealing in counterfeit currency for most of my life.

We're gladly willing to own as their author feelings and emotions which produce pleasure, which result in feeling good. We have it that our opinions are the right ones. As human beings, we resist and even try to alleviate (with beliefs, philosophies, therapies, and even with suppressants like drugs and alcohol) feelings and emotions which produce angst, which result in feeling bad. And no one in their right mind considers holding opinions they themselves regard as wrong.

Furthermore, when we assert what we feel, when we assert our emotions, when we assert our opinions (which we invariably blend into and neglect to distinguish from "the truth"), we have it that we're acting consciously, that we're making deliberate choices to be certain ways. We have it that the feelings and emotions which produce pleasure and which result in feeling good are the ones we control. We have it that we've no control over the feelings and emotions which produce angst and which result in feeling bad. We say those ones run us. Yet looking closer I see they're all on automatic.

I have about as much control over my internal states, both those which produce pleasure and those which produce angst, as I have over the Hawai'ian weather. If I don't like the way the Hawai'ian weather is right now, I can either choose to wait a few moments and it'll change, or I can choose to simply have it be the way it is. You can choose to wait for it to change. You can choose for it to be the way it is. Only a fool chooses for it to be the way it isn't.

I assert as human beings we're thrown to fixing our internal states, to futzing with them, to alleviating them, to voting for the ones we like, to impeaching the ones we don't like. I assert when we interact with our internal states this way, it's simply the machine trying to avoid being a machine.

There's no way out. The machine can't avoid being a machine.

One particular way of life with its own particular ramifications for living is available in a world in which the machine futilely tries to avoid being a machine, a world in which the machine, believing it can, tries to regulate it's own internal states.

Another possibility is revealed when I grant my internal states freedom to be what they are, whatever they are, like the Hawai'ian weather. That's not easy. It calls for a higher degree of responsibility, a higher degree of intentionality. It requires I be with, embrace, and work with what's so senior to my internal states.