… individual find their own asynchronous rhythm, the tempo of their own personal existence of being. The more we synchronize with others, their time — say, the 24 hours of the world — the more meaning we can potentially expose ourselves to. But the more we lose ourselves in these constructs rather than in the meaning itself, the more we lose our personal individuality. Authentically synchronizing with a loved one as you lay in bed together at night is one thing, but …
If someone judges you negatively for your gender, or your skin color, or your disability, what does that matter? Are you scared that they are right in their judgment? Is that why it evokes anger? How is that anything other than an opportunity to prove them wrong? Is it fair that you have to do so and that it makes things harder for you than they are for others? Of course not. But nothing is fair. In fact, if anything, this is a gift. You were dealt a complex hand, a hand that gives you something to overcome to become more of who you are and that pays dividends for the rest of your days because life is long and the ability to fight and to let go and to persist is what matters most. You don’t change things by submitting to other people’s judgments; you change things by re-framing their model of reality by proving them wrong.
Either way, at around a low to medium dose, one thing I find these drugs do is that they essentially remove most of the rational, linguistic scaffolding that we use to hold both our inner self and the outer world together. Reality, in a sense, then, becomes waves of moods and emotions. Details take on a life of their own. Things are no longer static.