Thought is an Illusory thing

Thought is responsible for most of our suffering.

We think on things of the past, how we were wronged, betrayed, how we wronged others, how we betrayed them. For life is not one sided. I am not a victim of my life, I choose it. I choose positivity and I choose negativity.

There is a survive at all cost part of us that dwells in our reptilian brain/primal brain/basal ganglia, all names for the same part of our brain.

We will stay away from the “did they develop simultaneously or sequentially” conversation and stick to the point at hand.

There is a part of us that has a “survive at all cost” mentality and the job of this reptilian brain is to ensure an animals basic needs are met, up to and including not dying.

This part of us, when enacted, takes drastic measures to reach its goals. When we are in this survival mode, logic and reason are often not available. A great depiction of this is how people react when startled. One must just google surprise pranks on the internet to see a myriad of reactions that after many videos inscribe a pattern of flight, fight, or freeze. Most of the popular videos are of flight or fight for they are the most entertaining.

Someone freezing in place doesn’t make a good internet video but it does make a great scene in a hero movie. Picture someone freezing in place when they realize they are about to be hit by a car and then from nowhere the hero grabs them and removes them from the path of the car. That also is a great image of the downside of freezing. Used at the wrong moment it will get you killed. Used to stay motionless when wild predator looks your way may prevent them from seeing you and save your life.

Fight and flight are what most of the surprise prank videos are about. Someone springs the lid off of a trash can and surprises another human, that human punches the prankster in the face. The other common reaction is running away at a panic pace when the prankster pops the trash can lid open.

Panic is what happens when that reptilian part of our brain overloads our body with “action responses.” There is a currently popular video of a man sleeping outside in an chair and someone drops an alien dummy in his lap, he awakens and then, his body filled with action responses cannot remove himself from the chair or fling the dummy off of himself. The comic relief comes from his inability to take action to save himself until his reptilian brain settles a bit and tells him to stand up.

At this point it may feel like I’ve digressed or otherwise squirreled from the subject, bear with me here.

This part of us has this ultimate desire to keep us safe and after a few life traumas, experiences when our reptilian brain did not keep us safe, that part of us goes into an overdrive of constant thought in preparedness to take action. This constant thought creates anxiety, which then causes us to overreact in fear, anger or isolation. The brain learns to spend time pre-experiencing scenarios that might be harrowing, just so it can have a plan in place. Or is that just my brain?

Confidence is an anxiety killer, if I know I can handle just about anything then I can remind myself of that. So when the anxiety monster climbs on the hamster wheel of negative thought I can tell it to jump off and find something productive to do.

Where does confidence come from? To me, it comes from going out and living life. Traveling, experiencing the local versions of things as you do. Learning that we are not all narcissistic sociopaths and learning to identify the ones that are.

I traveled a lot during the pandemic, traveling around working vegetation maintenance at broadcast tower sites. For obvious reasons, it was the best paid work I could find at the time. I mean who wasn’t afraid to travel in that time? The thing I experienced the most during that time was looks of fear on a majority of faces. No-one knew what was going to happen next.

That travel took me to isolated mountain tops and all parts of developed areas. From high end suburbia to skid row. I’m extremely introverted, yet even I during those two times a year, three solid months of travel, would find myself desiring a conversation or two. Sometimes those conversations happened with property owners, sometimes business owners, security guards, homeless people, drug addicts, the list goes on. The top thing I learned from all those conversations is that hate is not as prevalent as it is pitched in culture, it takes work to get people to hate each other, which has me wondering why hate is pitched that way.

Perhaps hate is a bi-product of that overly imaginative reptilian brain that says everyone is competition or deadly. One that it fed to keep those thoughts prevalent. What if cultures were able to move on from this fear based decision making and make decisions from a logical and mentally balanced place, what then?

It is taking conscious effort to not lead from a place of fear and to instead step into that confidence and make decisions from there. I know the more and more I do, the more I get the positive things that I tell myself I want in my life. For thinking is a self manifesting prophecy and I might as well focus on what I want instead of what I don’t want. It works both ways whether I like it or not. And honestly, I like it. Now that I’ve tested both schools of thought, positive is the way to go and negative thoughts are the way to die. You choose you.