Dear Murtaza:

Yes, better add an lol when you are sarcastic, or intending to make a joke. I am known to lack the cognitive sarcasm & humor detection abilities.

You wrote regarding a person diagnosed with a personality disorder: “he know it’s part of him, not an illness… a person who has depression thinks and feels as normal, with depressive symptoms”- I was diagnosed with both: a personality disorder and major depression. Your view is a bit simplistic: I think that it is true for a small portion of depressed people, those who are relatively mentally healthy and suffer from milder occasional depression, that they think of themselves as normal with depressive symptoms.

“he knows it’s a part of him, not an illness”- for as long as a person is distressed over a part of himself, there is an illness: either it is the part one is distressed over, or it is the part perceiving the other part as distressing.

“a person with personality disorder thinks and feels differently from others”- most people think and feel differently from others, that’s why they try so desperately to fit in, to not appear different (the “normies”).

“MDD, it doesn’t explain my behavior… there is a reason why I think and feel and act the way I do… I only think about myself… all on myself… it’s only a theory, to explain why I’m the way I am, I actually wanted to create a whole new name, a new illness”-

– MDD alone does not explain your behavior. You are more than the requirements for fitting the MDD diagnosis/ box. You are more than the requirements for fitting into any of the thousand of available mental diagnoses/ boxes (categories of symptoms that are re-evaluated and re-created by professionals in conferences every few years).

Who is Murtaza then… can you tell me, without referencing to any diagnosis, who you are?

anita

Dear Murtaza:

I read just a part of your recent post and will have to return to it later, probably in a few hours from now. I was thinking earlier, about what you think in regard to being a social being. Coyotes for example are social beings, or social animals, and when one gets separated from its social group, it becomes very distressed. After some time, separated still, it becomes emotionally and physically sick. A social animal needs others of its species so to be emotionally okay. How do you view yourself in this regard?

anita

Interesting dialog Murtaza. You appear have undergone a great deal of self examination leaning towards a philosophical realistic view on life. Perhaps a desire to measure and label life and make it understandable if not manageable.

Life is suffering, some suffering cannot be eased, therefore the compassion action, the logical one would be to end it? (This I believe was your initial question?)

The response to the Question of Life: No, get me off this ride and end this cycle of birth and death all of which is suffering. (Birth and death both literal and as metaphor. Every creation is also a destruction and every destruction a creation. Summer leads to winter which leads to summer. That is the wonder of Life and its Horror.) Life is broken, something that should not be, refusing to conform to my will of what it ought to be, I resist life.

Another response to the question of Life, one that also sees Life as it is, its wonder and horror, and that is with a YES and then a choice to Participate “joyfully” in the sorrows of the world. Such a Yes looks suffering in the eye and does not pretend life to be otherwise while resisting the temptation to turn toward indifference. Engaging in life with a aim of not adding to the suffering when possible, open to laugh in the moments of wonder.

I wonder if perhaps how we answer the question that is Life, isn’t the only choice and act of free will we have. Yes or No. Most wisdom traditions seem to flirt with both, maybe that’s dependent on the eye of the beholder.

My observations is that a ‘Yes’ is the more difficult answer to come to, at least until it is embraced and internalized. This Yes has the potential to lead to a kind of contentment and participating with the flow of life as it is. A No tends to push against the flow, the more painful as we know Life’s will, will in the end be done. But that can be fun and a kind of wonder too…

Perhaps the trick is to be honest with which ever answer and make it yours. Maybe their is a time for each?

The salmon struggles against the current to return home and lay its eggs, perhaps even having a kind of knowing that completing its task will be its end. An end that will be the same for its spawn.  A cycle of suffering, struggle and  wonder? One can imagine the salmon happy. (Did the Salmon answer life with a Yes or No?)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Peter.

Dear Murtaza:

This is a long post (hopefully an exception to the rule), please take your time with it, don’t rush. I want you to give it your patient attention and consideration.

“Why are you doing this? This whole talking and offering help“- to learn about people, myself included, to learn in depth what motivates us, why we behave the way we do, and how we humans messed up so badly. (As I just typed “we humans” I am thinking you might take offense to being grouped in with all other humans). I am curious, I want to learn, it gives meaning to my life.

This early morning I continued my months-long study of three threads in which I do not post- because there is more learning to be done from the interactions between the members who do post there. My motivation is not to interact with members in these threads, or to help anyone there- the motivation is nothing other than learning.

I don’t read books for the purpose of learning about human motivation and behavior (not for years), because they are planned, structured, edited. I learn from threads here because they are often raw, organic- not planned, structured and edited. Plus, here I have the opportunity to interact with original posters and read interactions between members.

My motivation here is not to make personal connections (although it happens, as it happens for me interacting with you), or to socialize (although at times it happens that I enjoy non-learning interactions). In regard to helping members I interact with (or those who otherwise may be reading my posts)- I am very doubtful that I help anyone long-term: sometimes what I write makes a member feel better, sometimes- worse. Sometimes a member posts to me that because of my input, he/ she understands something new,  something that never occurred to the member before- but I know too well that most often, people drop (forget about, neglect, push aside) new understandings that are difficult to hold on to.

Regarding being humans, as in social animals and therefore needing other humans, you wrote: “this  is good on paper, but when it comes to the real world, can you tell me how can I apply this? How can I find a group that can understand me? That accepts me? That can offer the things that won’t make me sick.. or do I have to drop some values of mine? Or destroy the persona I made?“-

– that we are social animals is a scientific fact, one I am 100% confident about because I believe in science. The truth of this fact (and other scientific facts) is not negotiable in my mind any more than the fact that gravity exists. There is another fact, a second fact, and that is that you have been unable to find a (large enough, birdman and I understand you perhaps?) group of people who understands and accepts you. The second fact does not make a dent in the first fact:  you can’t change your social nature so to accommodate your unfavorable social circumstances.

There is a movie that comes to mind called “cast away” about a man who finds himself alone for a long, long time on an island, not a single human around other than himself, and no internet! His way to socialize with another human was to paint a human face on a soccer ball and interact with that “human”. You are a step up from the character in that movie because you have the internet and you are interacting with me. Otherwise, you are interacting with people irl, you mentioned a friend who you refer to as birdman, with whom you have some meeting of the minds.

How to find a larger group that can understand and accept you without exacting the price of you dropping your values and your persona/ individuality? I don’t know.

I wrote to you: “Most people think and feel differently from others, that’s why they try so desperately to fit in, to not appear different”, and you wrote: “I really don’t think so.. not having a normie brain”–

– when I read your disagreement with my sentence yesterday, my first reaction was to defend my sentence against your disagreement. That was my “normie”/ rigid brain defending what’s already there, rejecting change before considering it. Later on, I thought and realized that you may be right and I may be wrong, and therefore, I considered change- that was my non-normie/ non-rigid brain.

I re-evaluated the sentence you disagreed with and I now believe that I was wrong and you are right. Re-stating the sentence in my words: once people become rigid, they do fit in with other rigid people who rigidly hold on to the same ideas, no matter what evidence is presented to them.

“a part of being normie is the desire to fit in, though most people I see, are indeed fitting in, and they like it”- I am not living where you live, but where I lived and where I live now (and here online), I see a lot of misery. I personally don’t know of any person who is not significantly anxious at some time of every single day.

When I was a child and at your age and many years after, I imagined that everyone was mentally healthy and happy, and I was the exception, the only one who was different. A few years ago, I was able to see that I only imagined that everyone else was mentally healthy- it was quite a shock for me to see reality being so different from what I imagined it to be.

“Who is Murtaza then.. no one, a nobody.. I don’t consider myself a human, or someone who follows his programming, I don’t see a desire of love is mine… all the goals and beliefs, just a part of my programming… I always felt a prisoner to my desires and needs, I always detach them from myself.. I just refuse them“-

– I am a firm believer in science, therefore, I believe that (1) you are a human, (2) programming by nature (genetics) and by the environment is responsible for every single thing that we are and can be , (3) human programming makes it possible for humans to do what other animals can not do: to initiate changes in some of the programming we are born with/ learn from the environment, and to carry on these changes. The ability to initiate and carry on changes in human programming is a human programming in itself. Few humans takes a significant advantage  of this particular programming

You wrote that you always felt a prisoner to your programming (desires and needs), that you refuse your programming- it is impossible for any human to refuse one’s programming; it is possible to focus, develop and expand the particular programming I mentioned above.

“I wanted to ask you something.. I don’t think I ever asked you this, how are you? And I’m asking in general, in life, how do you feel? Are you happy?”- earlier in life, I hated it when people asked me if I was happy, I I wanted to scream in their faces: DO I LOOK HAPPY!??? CAN’T YOU SEE HOW MISERABLE I AM? WHY CAN’T YOU SEE ME?

– I was too alone and too lonely for so long, with so much pain inside, and yet.. the world didn’t see, as if I was invisible, as if I did not exist.

I think that lifetime happiness is a myth (the concept of heaven is based on this myth). There are happy moments (contentment and peace of mind and heart are my favorite!) Overall, I feel way better and consistently better than I used to feel, no longer the devastating depression of before, but happy- no.

anita

Dear Murtaza:

“Wish I knew you back then, maybe you wouldn’t feel so lonely.. a young girl alone.. somewhere in the middle east, suffering in silence, not knowing what to do”-

– if you showed up back then.. when I was your age and we talked as we talk now, maybe .. no, not maybe, I know I wouldn’t feel alone anymore, it would have been wonderful.. you would have been enough, for me.

I had one uncle- he is still alive, I believe, just that I didn’t have any contact with him for almost 20 years- he asked me questions one time, when I was a teenager, he looked into my eyes with a smile and curious eyes and asked me questions about what I think, what I feel– I remember it as if it happened just now. It was new and intoxicating to be asked what I thought.. as if what I thought mattered. I wasn’t able to answer any of this questions really, because my mother was sitting there, listening, ready to let me know that she strongly disapproves. My uncle’s smile was nice, she had a different kind of smile, a threatening half-smile.

All the thinking that we do to figure things out, you and I, and the reason I am not able to help you or anyone really- is because we need so much: how can I possibly transfer change to you?. All I can do is change a bit because of you.

anita