The Illusive Self?

Professor  Bruce M. Hood argues that  there is no self as the self is largely determined by those around us and  that the self is constructed over the course of childhood by the powerful influence of our parents and those around us. Dr Hood wrote in his book, “The Self Illusion” : “Nature has built into humans the capacity to learn and to learn very quickly from others. It is not only doting adults who focus their attention on their offspring; each baby is wired to pay attention to others. It is how our species has evolved a remarkable ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next and no other animal on the planet can do this as well as humans. But do babies know who they are? Babies have conscious awareness but does a baby have a sense of self yet? We cannot know for certain but I suspect not. Beginning the process of creating the self illusion requires early social interactions. ” According to Bruce Hood, not only do we humans learn from others about the world around us, we also learn to become a self and we come to discover who we are through  the process of watching others and trying to understand them.

While we are our brains, which create our sense of self , we readily conform to the will of the group of people we mix with. The people we mix with are usually people we are attracted to and we are attracted to people whom we think we share the same values with . Our brains grow as we learn to cope and negotiate the best path through the social landscape.

These days many of us enjoy being on the Web and actively use the Facebook and Twitter to interact with others. There is a certain degree of narcissism when we post our profiles. There are also many who do not feel the need to surrender precious time, effort and privacy to join online communities. Dr Hood wrote in his book “The Self Illusion”: “ If the self illusion is correct, social networking sites will continue to expand in popularity and will increasingly shape the sense of who we are for the next generation and those that follow. So long as we remain a social animal, social networks in one form or another are here to stay. This is because most of us want to be noticed….”

Whether or not we matter to those who we interact with, it is important that we have a strong sense of self in order to be reasonably happy in this fast moving world. We endeavour to  establish our own identity among our peers yet it is not easy not to succumb to peer pressures. We  like our opinions to be validated by others. But how often we find that our  views and values may not be shared by others or that we are often misunderstood when we try to explain things or that we think we are being objective and open-minded when we are not. After all, everyone is entitled to form their own opinions. There come a time when we will find that humans are basically  self absorbed and all consumed with what they want for themselves and what they choose to believe and not believe in.

During my teenage years, I kept a journal and there was this one time  when I was in my early teens, both a good friend and I took part in an elocution contest held by the school and the winner would represent our school to take part in an inter-school elocution contest.  By a stroke of luck, I won the competition held at the school and this friend came a close second. As we were buddies, I knew how badly my friend had wanted to be the winner and take part in the interschool competition. To much disappointment of my dad, I let this friend take my place. On reflection, the cynic in the present me questions : Did I give up the opportunity because I was too afraid to lose in the bigger sphere or that the competition did not matter to me at all? I conclude that I was basically a slacker and in the face of a rivalry or conflict, I chose to walk away. Maybe it is all of  the above reasons not that any of it matters.

 

When I read 'Tolstoy and the Purple Chair  My Year of Magical Reading' by Nina Sankovitch, I could so relate to her concerns about what examples she was  setting for her children.

One day, Nina went out to the side of the road by her house and dug out a  tiny maple tree growing up in the shade of bigger trees. She dragged the tree and carried it home in a wagon and  planted the tree beside her patio. The tree provided just enough shade in one corner of the patio. Her children had asked her for the reason of her action. Why had she not gone to the nursery to buy a nice tree instead of doing what she had done?

She explained that the tree could get bigger but was not going to get any bigger if it had stayed under the shade of those big maples so she saved a tree that had a potential to grow bigger.

The sons offered different explanations for her action amongst which “ You don’t have money for a new tree?” “ You’re cheap” “ You love to dig” . Nina’s husband offered, “ Your mother is crazy.”

Nina said “All of the above” and “ I wanted shade on the patio.”

I like the little anecdote that shows her mindfulness in bringing up her kids.  Nina Sankovitch was reading to come to terms with  the  pain of losing her sister Anne –Marie who had boundless energy and endless curiosity for new ideas and new ways of looking at things.

Buddhism holds that changes take place all the time and the world is in a state of constant flux thus change is the only constant. Nothing is what it seems. In his book ,“What Do Buddhists Believe? Meaning and Mindfulness in Buddhist Philosophy” Tony Morris wrote “And Nothing is separate. Everything is connected. People love to think of themselves as individuals. The human ego seems to have a vested interest in bolstering the view of a separate existence, a world out there! But nothing happens in isolation. Phenomena that may appear distinct are, in fact, fundamentally connected.” 

Tony Morris also wrote in his book : “ In essence, the Buddha analysed human behaviour in the way a  modern psychologist might, identifying the drives, motives and impulses which shape our perceptions and lead us to respond in particular ways. As one commentator (Elizabeth J Harris)  memorably puts it, ‘Buddhism sees human beings as verbs rather than nouns.’”

We are matrixes of our minds and we define ourselves by our thoughts and perceptions. How often we find ourselves incoherent individuals, our behaviour erratic and our attitudes changing and  even our memories may become unreliable.

The Magic of Words

I am a bibliophile. I buy and collect books with every intention to devour through all of them. This is when I wish I had photographic memory like Mike Ross the character from the television law drama “ Suits”  so that I could have one glance and grasp it all. But then these are writings which are different from datas, legal texts and authorities. The writings that I enjoy reading are works of fiction or writings that come from the heart of their authors.  We need to savour and feel them.

I read fictions, whether they are heavy, dark or light hearted and I also read some  non-fictions about humanity and how our brains and psyche work. I may not understand completely the findings and theories in some of these non-fictions written  by intellectuals and scientists but I do find myself learning a little bit more about humanity as I read them. It takes me  much longer  time to read these non-fictions as compared to reading novels. I enjoy fictions because I love words and the beauty of how some prose and sentences are strung together. Even though the themes I am interested in centre around life events, there is an abundant supply of fascinating stories that are created by the writers all over the world. I am constantly amazed by how insightful all of these writers are about the realities of life and how clever they are to weave a story and  that intrigue around all these words. Sometimes I read to escape from the dryness of my work, sometimes I read to find solace and resolution like what Nina Sankovitch, a lawyer turned housewife did when she started her reading project and wrote her reading memoir : Tolstoy and the Purple Chair My Year of Magical Reading . But mostly I read because I find great pleasure in reading. Nina Sankovitch was committed to reading a book a day after her sister died of cancer as she was seeking reprieve from her pain and possible answers for her loss . Like what Ms Sankovitch wrote, “But all the books I read, the hard ones to work through and the easy ones to devour, were doing me good, lots of good. And bringing me pleasure, lots of pleasure.”

The Elephant House , Edinburgh

Very often I cannot wait to finish reading one book which I had started so as to get on to another. To me many books look like promising reads. The problem is you cannot gobble down words just like you cannot chomp down food no matter how hungry you are. You need to digest what you read just like you need to digest the food you consume. Sometimes when you are so engrossed with the story, it is an anti- climax when it ends and you feel a sense of loss when you come to the end of the book. There are fictions that are intense and I completely immerse myself with the protagonist and the characters and then when the story ends, I feel a little sad that  I  have to leave these characters behind. When that happens, I feel like I need to decompress and take a little breather while my head is still swinging with the stories of  these characters.

I  get particularly excited whenever I come across a passage that resonates with my thoughts. I am naturally drawn to writings that I like so that can happen quite often. I also enjoy writing. I write opinions and advice for my legal work but that is not the kind of writing I like writing. I can only write in spurts the kind of writing I dabble in. Although I do not write the kind of writing I like for a living , I find the following passage from the memoir by Haruki Murakami as translated in English by Philip Gabriel in “ What I talk about when I talk about Running” aptly describes how I  feel about writing.

“ As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination.”

Haruki further writes, “ Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else.”

When one writes, one is in touch with his or hers thoughts and we think about things.  When we express our thoughts in written form, we are putting down in print our stance and  our beliefs if we are truthful. Writing needs concentration. It is also a creative process where one can be transported through one’s imagination when one writes. But thoughts come and go, so often I come across an idea or a concept which I think comical or insightful; I might have thought it was a brilliant idea to write about later and when I tried to recall it later somehow I could no longer feel its magic or humour. I also do not have a good memory so I can no longer recall the exact words or phrase I probably used to formulate the idea. There were times when I had scribbled my thoughts down somewhere  and subsequently  when I took a look at what I had written, they no longer worked as well as I had thought they would. It was probably just a particular state of mind at that particular moment when the idea  seemed to matter.

Writing is a form of play to me; as I write I think about how to construct a sentence to describe a thought, an emotion, a scene or an event.

I attended my first writing workshop in October. It was really embarrassing that I had attended a writing workshop without any writing pad. What kind of aspiring writer are you when you do not carry a note pad ? The problem with me is that I can be planning ahead and somehow miss out the important detail so there I was, turning up at the workshop without any writing sheets. In  the past whenever I scribble a thought that came to mind, I tend to discard it whenever I sit down with a view  to type them out. I had even tried recording when I drove but when I played it they sounded hollow. So these days, I carry my laptop everywhere with me just in case I can find some time to sit down and write. The workshop was an eye opener for me so now I carry notepads around as  it does make sense to carry a notepad to jot down interesting words that I might come across when I read. Inspirations is everywhere if one pays attention to one’s surroundings. What I have learnt from the workshop and talks about writing  is  that you must write everyday so rain or shine, you have to sit down and write in order to hone your writing skills. Writing and reading are solitary activities and you simply need to set aside the time and space to get down to it everyday.

Writing is meditative and you need to be calm to possess a clarity of mind. I find that  if I am  pre-occupied or feel troubled, I will not be able to write. But then again what did I learn from the writing workshop? You must sit down and write everyday even if you are not feeling particularly insightful about anything on that day. Yes troubles and problems can wait, but not reading nor writing. Be inspired everyday and everywhere.

Sozzled Sausage, a pub in Lemington Spa, England

Time Machine

The Astronomical Clock in Prague

About a year ago, my elder daughter asked me, “ Mom, it is said that a woman cannot have it all. That's true right?”  I reckon she and her friends were talking about how a woman must balance her work and family thus it is not possible to have it all. I am not sure if I gave her an answer. Maybe I did not want to discourage her and I wanted to sound optimistic,  I might have mumbled something incoherent that I have no recollection.

A month ago, my younger daughter who is nineteen said to me, “ Mom I want to try so many things.  There are just so many different things I want to do.” That was when she was trying to decide which societies to join in her first year at the university. It is wonderful that she is keen to get involved with the student communities. Her enthusiasm is commendable.

Time is slipping from us. When we are young and robust, we think that we have all the time in the world but if  time travel were possible and  I could go back in time to  tell my young self “ You have to prioritize your goals in life and tackle each one with singularity”, my young self would probably chuckle and dismiss that in a huff.

In his memoir “ What I talk about when I talk about Running”  Haruki Murakami writes about his experience in running and preparing for marathons and how running intersects with writing for him.  He writes about how he has to accept the fact that as he ages, he will not be able to run the way he used to. He writes, “ Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do.”  He observes that physical decline is waiting as you age and though it is not one of your  happier realities, you will have  to get used to that. 

It is a fact that time is ever moving forward without a moment’s rest. Thus it is not important to compete against time but it is important to know one’s limitations and as long as we are physically fit and able, we make the best use of our time to do whatever we enjoy doing. But what happens when there are still so much more to explore and to learn about? The question is how can we prevent ourselves from getting all wired up in order to fit in all the things we must do and also things we like to do?

Whether we are young or old, we do not know what tomorrow awaits us until tomorrow comes. Meanwhile whatever strong desires we have about doing something, we probably should just give it everything we have to set out to do it. So can we try to do it all?

Maybe if we really want something bad enough, if we know for certain what we want, we will somehow make it happen, otherwise we just have to accept that we cannot have or do everything. That is life. It is not just us women who cannot have it all. Nobody can have it all. The author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair My Year of Magical Reading, Nina Sankovitch wrote in her reading memoir about what else she wanted for her children; Ms Sankovitch told her husband about Murakami, “ He doesn’t try to do it all.” Murakami dedicated himself to writing when he decided that writing would be the focus of his life so he gave up socializing and change his lifestyle to suit his new vocation.

Like  Ms Nina Sankovitch,  I would quote Murakami’s words to my daughters:

 “ You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.”

To be able to do something totally well, we should totally and definitely commit to the task and tackle it with singularity and rigour if and when we decide to do it. But  the difficulty for most of us when we are  young is  to know what is it that we would like  to do with such conviction and quite often nothing specific comes to mind. So tick – tock, tick- tock………..