To err, is to be human

Sometimes this little thing in my head never seizes to amaze me. There are times you understand certain things in life that you have no control of, and you shouldn’t delve on it emotionally, but even though your mind might know, you heart leads you the other direction. It even amazes me more of how little control I have over it.

Okay, back to why my brain amazes me – it’s because i can’t believe i still remember the definition of cognitive dissonance is. Cognitive Dissonance, don’t take this as the definitive definition, is the state where our action contradicts our beliefs of ourselves. This makes us emotionally uncomfortable and we either distort the ‘reality’ or our beliefs of ourselves to make us feel better. Remember another one of those days that you may think you’re reasonably clever, and you can’t solve a problem, you might just think that you’re tired or the problem is not in the area of your expertise? Boo hoo, it’s not easy to admit that we’re not as smart as what we think… (have you ever helped a 15 years old with his/her maths??)

What is interesting is in a social situation, where there are people who might have big egos (but not necessarily strong), and have to be the centre, first and foremost. When not all attention falls into them, they get frustrated – instead of thinking what goes wrong with them, they think of what goes wrong with the person who take the attention away.

I am not sure why I was thinking this much about how our mind works, but I’d suggest a large part comes from the recent media/global attention on China and the Olympics. It’s been subliminally frustrating, as a Chinese who lives overseas hearing news about the Olympics, the increasingly polarised stances between ‘the Chinese’ and ‘the West’, split media attention, accusations on various levels from both ‘sides’, the pressure for people to take sides, where focus is no longer on what are we in common, but us-and-them. It is overtly frustrating that increasingly you need to take a stance, you are either with us, or with them. You are either Chinese, or you are not.

Has anyone ever thought that underneath our skin, we might all be a bunch of potatos? Or tomatos? Or apples?

What really matters when we all ultimately seize to exist?

I meant to share a quote a few days ago, after watching a document on Frank Lloyd Wright that beautifully ended with a quote between Wright and Mike Wallace,

‘WRIGHT: Yes. You get so far, as I am immortal. I will be immortal. To me, young has no meaning, it’s something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it, you never lose it. And when they put you into the box that’s your immortality

If only each of us thinks of what kind of emotional, spiritual, intellectual trajectories we can leave to make this world a better place to be.

If only we demand less of others but ourselves.

If only we judge less and feel more.

If only.

Wright’s classic falling water, Flickr image from fred_jang