Perturbation

So, you're stumbling through life and everything seems to be going fairly well, and then you get hit by news or change, and your being is... perturbed. And then everything seems to fall to pieces all around you. It's a curious thing when it happens, isn't it? It's happened to me a few times, that feeling of almost total disaster falling upon you and forgetting how to sleep, or how to know what to do all through the day, and a sudden loss of appetite for what is to come. A grand sense of dislocation as your place in the universe get shifted a little back and to the left.

The life of a solitary bachelor holds little perturbations of its own so mostly one gets hit by the changes in others, in the loss of things once thought possible, and the happinesses and tragedies of others secondhand. But this is merely self-indulgent folly. Back to the broader theme.

There are various ways to get through perturbations to your reality, but in general it's best to express your shock as fully and non-destructively as possible. Draw a picture, air conduct, distract your mind enough so that it doesn't get in the way of your heart and let the elation or the tears flow in great torrents of emotion. Mentality is a great tool for dealing with physical and political problems but it has no place in the mending of hearts or reconciliations with altered realities. So many people have tried that way, and so few have succeeded. Just let it out.

The association of the heart with emotion is one of those semi-puzzling links that have persisted through the ages. It actually seems quite clear in retrospect that the heart is associated with emotion because it pounds so much faster and harder when we're happy or upset, and so much more sluggishly when depressed or in some cases of shock. As a result peoples have assumed the heart to be one with the origin of emotion rather that its behaviour to be a symptom of those emotions. The brain as the seat of all consciousness is an idea that has been endlessly contested over history as it seemingly clashes with religious teachings, specifically that idea that the soul is an indefinable but separate entity from the more refined intellectual person, independent and living on after the brain has passed to a moribund state. What would Jung say?

The brain will win you through puzzles, professions and doctorates galore but it is the heart that sets you free to persevere against the perceived hardships and those endless perturbations in life when what you think is becomes what you thought was and everything to come takes on a slightly darker and more ominous cast.

Yes, this is a creepy looking week ahead already. Prepare the storm drains, and splice the mainsail, we're going in.

O.