3 Magical Things We Could Learn to Live With
Sometimes, we just need to stop trying to make sense of things to discover the magic.
Survival instinct is primal to all living things with brains. For human, it’s the subconscious need to always make sense of things because doing so makes us feel safe. We automatically categorise and rationalise things so we know what to expect, therefore, don’t have to worry about it. We like to understand things so we can trust them.
However, “Words reduce reality to something a human mind can grasp. The quicker [we] are in attaching mental labels to things, the more shallow [our] reality becomes” Eckhart Tolle mentioned in his book A New Earth.
Let’s take a look at the three examples of how this is the case.
1. Language & Emotions
This is obvious when it comes to using adjectives to define things and emotions. The author Lisa Feldman Barrett suggested in her book How Emotions are Made that emotions are concepts built by our language through vocabularies, therefore, can vary between different culture.
People’s state of mind and mood really depend on what vocabularies they have available to define it. In some cultures, there may be only one word to describe something as ‘good’, while others like English may have different spectrums of ‘good’ such as ‘great’, ‘well’, ‘fantastic’, ‘sensational’, ‘splendid’ or just ‘fine’.
When we answer the question ‘How are you?’, we conform our state of mind to whichever answer we give. That’s how our emotions are built.
Knowing this now, would you still let other people define your emotion or would you rather learn to construct it yourself? Or would you rather sometimes just ‘feel’ it instead of describing it?
2. Personality
In addition, there are several methods for categorising people’s identity and personality. It’s easier for our minds to categorise people, including ourselves, into their labelled boxes to understand who they are, so we don’t need to waste any more brian energy trying to understand them.
However, it’s also suggested that our personality can also be fluid depending on the context and who we are with. We may be funnier when we are with close friends than when we’re with our boss at work.
When we categorise ourselves to being an ‘extrovert’ or ‘introvert’, we conform to it and use it as an excuse not to go outside our comfort zone. We refuse to network and meet people because we’re an introvert, or we refuse to stay in solitude to think and deal with our thoughts because we need to be with people all the time as an extrovert. As a result, we limit our potential to gain the benefits of the two spectrums.
In fact, the idea that our personality is fixed is an naive. How we behave may change depending on the context and environment. An extrovert can still feel drained when they surround themselves with negative people and an introvert can feel energised when surrounding themselves with the right people.
Stereotyping
What’s more, at the society level, we also tend to subconsciously categorise people because it saves our brain power to try to understand them. Asians must behave like how the other Asians behave and men act a certain way because they’re men.
By doing so, we didn’t give others an opportunity to truly get to know them. We make sense of them based on our confirmation bias. We only see the world how we want to see it. After all, our perception is our reality.
It’s in our primal nature to subconsciously categorise and discriminate against the out-group members, to protect the in-group. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Unlike wild animals, human man have the ability to be aware of our own mind and behaviour to make a change.
The first step to stopping any racism or discrimination is to become aware of our subconscious biases. We can then stop putting people into a box and start treating them as who they are, when and where we are with them.
Rory Sutherland also mentioned in his ground-breaking book ‘Alchemy’ that the problem with logic is it kills of magic. Human behaviours aren’t always rational, therefore, it can be a mistake to always apply logic to it.
3. Reality
Indeed, everyone’s reality can be different. And in order to protect our ego, we sometimes feel the need to be right, because if we were wrong, our reality is shattered. Conversely, when we’re right, someone else needs to be wrong. We shatter someone else’s reality to preserve our beliefs and serve our ego.
Nonetheless, it’s okay to be wrong, or to let other people believe that they’re right. Some people are opened to listening but some may not. The Stoics know that what other people think and believe is outside our control, therefore, it can be pointless sometimes to change them. Everyone always has a choice to believe and choose.
For us, we can learn to detach our ideas from our identity, ego, and accept things from other perspective in order to understand and appreciate the value of things from a different view.
Let’s look an example of sunset and sunrise. Humans write poem and essays about it when the sun never really sets or rises. It’s always shining and just orbiting around the earth. The concept of rising and setting is what human on earth has given to it based on our collective experience. Nonetheless, the discovery that the earth isn’t flat didn’t stop us from appreciating and writing stories about it.
When I was young, I was always tricked by the magic trick when someone just made the coin disappear and pulled it out of my ear. As a young child not being aware of my ego, thinking that my reality was universal, I thought the trick was real. How did they do that!?
Then my ego felt the need to rationalise and find explanation, just so I don’t feel like a fool. And yes, when I found out how it really worked, I felt better about myself but no longer am amazed by the trick.
Deep down, we all appreciate novel things that don’t make sense
Imagine going to a circus where a ‘magic’ is performed, most people go there to enjoy the show but if someone reveals how the tricks work, the audience may no longer be able to enjoy the performance as much. This is why the magician never reveals his trick, because if he does, he’ll give away his magic.
If we always have to make sense of things, how could we enjoy Harry Potter or other movies?
Can we just go with the flow?
Ego can be harmful to us if we don’t learn to understand and control it. It’s okay to not label, make sense of things and be right all the time. The more we are comfortable with the uncertainty and not knowing, the more we learn and appreciate the hidden magic of things.
Even scientific facts are proven wrong from time to time, and we can’t hold ourselves back by getting attached to an idea just because it may shatter our reality, identity and ego.
Life gets magical when we try to not make sense of things.
