Posts Tagged ‘Billboards’
Linking Prozak to Mass Media? How thinking can be so painful?
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 5, 2011
Linking Prozac to Mass Media? How thinking can be so painful?
I read recently that research has demonstrated that the potential of recalling our past is not totally accomplished until we reach maturity. And I am wondering “How come it is the youth category that suffer the most from recalling? Is it because thoughts are very fresh, lively, and tainted with acute imagination?” I am wondering “How come the youth category is the highest consumer of Mass Media products? How come their brain structure is so capable of comprehending new discoveries related to Mass Media products?”
What happens when you forget your headphone at home and you have to go through the day? The pain of living with your thoughts? Do you think that “thought pains” are the best catalyst or motivator to discovering the potential and versatility of the latest Mass Media products?
And here, on September 3, I receive this link on notesby.me. It reads:
” I am in my studio… irritated, frustrated, angry, and bored. I’m constantly agitated, looking to entertain myself. I cook, check my email (without replying), chat with my brother, cook, email, and finally I’m boiling some potatoes.
While waiting for the potatoes, I sit in an isolated room in the house. It’s quiet, without electronics. I’m just sitting. And without delay my thoughts start flowing in. Just like molecules coming together and bonding, my thoughts start creating links. They generate other thoughts, which generate new links, and thus, new thoughts. One of these thoughts happens to be a realization.
I think to myself: “Am I constantly trying to distract myself so that I shut away my thoughts?” Why would I shut away my thoughts? “Because they reveal a painful reality”, my mind answers back. And then it hit me again.
I realize that when I was little, I used to daydream. I realize that there’s a difference between daydreaming and sitting with my thoughts. When I daydream, I invent things. My mind is pre-occupied and focused on one purpose, “My invention”.
In contrast, when I grew a bit older, I used to run away from home because of family problems. I used to go to a forest and sit on a rock for eight hours or more. And now I realize, that even then, I didn’t sit with my thoughts. I didn’t invent either. What I did do is watch the trees move in the wind, the multitude of smells, my dog moving about, the ants laboring, etc.
In short I was living in the present, being aware of the present (Years later, I find out that what I was doing was some sort of meditation, with being present as its ultimate aim.) But even then, sitting on that rock, I wasn’t sitting with my thoughts. Although I did, unknowingly, develop the ability to live in the present. Yet when sitting on that rock, the thoughts of my current life are so painful, that I had to shut them away.
And now sitting in that isolated room in my house, I’m still doing it. Yet now, I realize that even when I distract myself from these thoughts, I’m still aware of them. I still experience their painful effects. And to think that I’m protecting myself from pain by constantly distracting myself.
Now I know that this constant distraction leaves the painful thoughts as is, unresolved, un-diffused, unprocessed. The thoughts are sitting there, in the back of my head, causing constant pain. And until now, I wasn’t aware of the source of this pain.
I’m basically under the false illusion that sitting down with my thoughts is painful. Yet, I’m constantly living with the pain these thoughts bring in. And thinking about them, and resolving them, isn’t more painful. It’s actually liberating. From now on, I’ll try to create the time to sit with my thoughts, go through them, and break out of my pain.
Notesby.me resumes: “More and more people are finding it hard to live with their thoughts. They are constantly looking for ways to distract themselves; from their thoughts.
Maybe it’s because their thoughts bring them pain? Are they hiding from the realization that they are not living the lives they hope to live?
Maybe it’s when we start living with our thoughts —when we accept to experience the pain these thoughts bring us— that we really start to live.
Isn’t it obvious that when we constantly avoid something, it probably means that there must be pain in that something? A lot of people know that this pain could hold the secret to their happiness. Yet they are such cowards, that they refuse to accept this pain. Maybe this secret is simply a realization…
The realization that this is not the life they want to live. The realization that they’d have to start all over.
Maybe the only way out of the pain, to find out is to sit with your thoughts, go through your thoughts.
Why is Mass Media such a success? Everything we’re bombarded with all the time, and everywhere: Television, Movies, Radios, Music, Billboards, and so on… The list is endless. And I realize that Mass Media is such a success because it capitalizes on a most basic human instinct: Our “away-from-pain” instinct. How does Mass Media do that?
Most of the time our thoughts bring us pain. We’re unsatisfied with our lives. We haven’t met the expectations of others. Our lives are crowded with all sorts of problems. We deal with large amounts of stress, anxiety…. All of these are sources of pain — unless we distract ourselves from them. But for this to work, we have to constantly be distracted, because the moment we allow our thoughts to seep in, pain immediately follows. And that’s why Mass Media is such a success. We welcome it, unknowingly, as the best way to treat the symptoms; Just like Prozac.
Why don’t we treat the cause for a change? Listen to your thoughts.” (End of quote)
How modern ascetics go through life? Those 4 billion of mankind who cannot afford to purchase a single Mass Media product? How mankind a century ago managed to navigate through the pain of thoughts bombarding their wretched living? Is it time to re-analyse the life-stories of authors who published their books and memoirs a little over a century ago? Is it why “ancient” manuscript are ever so current and more so when we read them?
Adonis Diaries 