Food for Thought

     I recently revisited a well known figure in the psychological and philosophical disciplines.  I so happened to run across one of his quotes in a book I was recently reading, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. The quote goes, 

      

     "Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has replaced genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth." - Erich Fromm

     The quote intrigued me so much I decided to find other quotes by the late Erich Fromm. All his quotes seemed to make complete sense to me. You know how you just have those moments in life where the situation, your train of thought, your sense of being is just in the right spot to be open to such profound information? Well, that was me, in fact that is me, currently.

      I meditated on this quote and the other quotes I found. My mind started to wonder and gears began shifting and before I knew it, I felt like I had everything figured out. I felt as if my eyes had opened for the very first time. Everything he said and what I was thinking, just felt right. 

     This is what I realized. We are all shaped or conditioned by many things in life; media, beliefs, morals, traditions, culture, etc. These things depict the way in which we view the world. Put it this way, lets say that we view the world through a pair of glasses. Those glasses are made up of the traditions, beliefs, biases, stereotypes, and your culture. When viewing the world through these spectacles you see the world according to these things. If you dare take those glasses off and see the world without them.. You see the world for what it really is, no biases, no prejudices, no projection of your own thoughts and beliefs that are conditioned in your being. 

      The problem here is that we are all irrational creatures. Lets take a subject that is dear to my heart, Love. If you’ve followed my posting here you will see that I am what many would call, “A hopeless romantic”. Yes, I believe that we all have soul mates, in everlasting love, and happily ever afters. If you take the time and think about it. These are all completely irrational thoughts. We view romantic love as this magical substance that is found by chance, if you happen to be lucky or that only exist in fairytales. You fall in love with a person and they mean the world to you, you cant live without that person, they are the air you breathe. In essence you feel as if you need that person to live. A person that just a few months ago was a complete stranger to you. Does this not sound a bit irrational to you? The only rational point to be made here is that you choose to fall in love. It is a choice and it doesn't just happen. Yes, there are many variables and special circumstances that allow this phenomena, but in the end it was a choice.

     We see this form of love and then we see the love for people that we did not choose. Your mom, your dad, your brothers, sisters...etc. You had no choice in choosing wether to love these people. You were born into a family and over time experienced the good and the bad, tragedies, happy moments, and you were conditioned to feel intimately close to these people. We just so happened decided to call that love. How is that we can meet someone and a few months later say we love them and in the same token grow up with someone our entire lives and still have the same love? My theory is that love is the product of time and experience. Put into practice, if we spend enough time with a person, indulge in multiple experiences with this individual, we will grow to love them. After all if we look at the premise of marriage in its beginnings this is what happened. Two people were married under certain family obligations, not love, and in time they grew to love one another. 

     Somehow love changed and the whole premise behind marriage evolved into this romantic fairytale. There is no mystery what changed it because the truth is in the media. Fairytales and Disney movies introduced us to this new romantic love and happily ever afters. Then Hollywood adopts this and goes wild with it. Don’t get me wrong I am not against love. I again, am a “Hopeless Romantic” by nature. I just feel that we should take the time and examine the irrationalities of the concept of love. We should take the time to examine the irrationalities in life. Love, such as life, is what you make it. Then again this entire article may just be a phase...

     Lets discuss this further, if this caught your interest and you want to continue this discussion.. Check me out on Facebook... Hemory Phifer or comment right under here... Until next time... Keep it rational people!!