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1. You Are An Entire Country
Posted by
Epictetus
,
17 August 2012
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We seldom think about it, but we are like an entire country. Our bodies are made up of between 10 and 100 trillion individual cells. Ten trillion is equal to ten million million. That's more than the population of China.
Our brain does a good job administering our realm, an amazing job really. . It keep our heart pumping, our lungs breathing, our digestive system running. And it does this for us automatically so that we can be freed up for other things. Our immune system is like the military or police force of a country. Or like a team of millions of little doctors. It protects us from the millions of bacteria and viruses that invade us each day. It's little soldiers even die to save our life.
But sometimes our brain can get weighed down with too many duties. We can place unrealistic expectations on its shoulders: I should be the perfect child to my parents, the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect dating partner, the perfect husband or wife, the perfect male or perfect female, the perfect popular person,the perfect attractive person, the perfect successful person, the perfect employee or employer, even the perfect "normal" person.
Each expectation we place on the back of our brains is an added load. A heavy load. Each expectation for perfection generates thousands of rules for our brains: You must do this. You should do that. You have to do this. Pretty soon our brains, in addition to running the kingdom of our bodies is burdened with living up to all sorts of abstract ideals. We compare ourselves to these ideals, even though they may be unrealistic and perfectionistic. If we fall short, we mentally beat up our brains: "You should have done this."
We may be people of love and compassion, people who have no room for brutality in our value system and yet we can be merciless to our own brain and body. How can we love others as we love ourselves if we don't love ourselves? Is brutality part of our value system? No. So why are we so hard and brutal to ourselves? Why can't we get rid of unrealistic expectations that are detrimental to our health? Why can't we lower perfectionistic ideals and expectations so that our brain's do not have to carry that huge load? We are like rulers of a kingdom that brutalize our subjects and demean those who run our kingdoms. We brutalize our own brains to conform to abstract perfectionistic ideals.
Eventually our brain can break down. It becomes divided between that self we are and that self we want to be. It is pulled in two directions, even torn apart by this split between our ideal self and our despised self. It is no wonder that it can break down. But even when our brain breaks down, it tries its best to keep all the most important things for our survival going: our hearts continue to beat, our lungs continue to breathe and so on. But it has trouble with our sleep, with our appetite. It can no longer give us the joy of life. And we can even beat up our brains for that mentally speaking. Why?
Can we remember when we were children and couldn't wait to wake up every morning? The desire to wake up everyday for a day of play and exploration and fun. We had the joy of life. But now our brain is burdened with a milion and one cares, artificial senses of urgency, small matters that we make big and insist that our brains treat as life or death situations.
Our brain is good to us. But it can get sick from stress. Even so it will continue to struggle on trying desperately to serve us. But it can need medicine to heal. It can need comfort from therapy. It can need friends. If can need us to be its friend finally. It can need a new philosophy for itself based on realistic human and personal development and no longer interjected or perfectionistic abstract ideals. Amazingly it will heal itself if we help it. It wants to heal. It is always trying to heal. It serves us even in our greatest weakness.
We are rulers of a vast kingdom of cells, trillions and trillions. They depend on us and they serve us. They look to the brain for guidance and our brain looks to us for love, for support, for comfort, for compassion, for understanding. Each of us is the most important person in the world to those trillions and trillions of cells. They look to us for compassion and love.
Our brain does a good job administering our realm, an amazing job really. . It keep our heart pumping, our lungs breathing, our digestive system running. And it does this for us automatically so that we can be freed up for other things. Our immune system is like the military or police force of a country. Or like a team of millions of little doctors. It protects us from the millions of bacteria and viruses that invade us each day. It's little soldiers even die to save our life.
But sometimes our brain can get weighed down with too many duties. We can place unrealistic expectations on its shoulders: I should be the perfect child to my parents, the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect dating partner, the perfect husband or wife, the perfect male or perfect female, the perfect popular person,the perfect attractive person, the perfect successful person, the perfect employee or employer, even the perfect "normal" person.
Each expectation we place on the back of our brains is an added load. A heavy load. Each expectation for perfection generates thousands of rules for our brains: You must do this. You should do that. You have to do this. Pretty soon our brains, in addition to running the kingdom of our bodies is burdened with living up to all sorts of abstract ideals. We compare ourselves to these ideals, even though they may be unrealistic and perfectionistic. If we fall short, we mentally beat up our brains: "You should have done this."
We may be people of love and compassion, people who have no room for brutality in our value system and yet we can be merciless to our own brain and body. How can we love others as we love ourselves if we don't love ourselves? Is brutality part of our value system? No. So why are we so hard and brutal to ourselves? Why can't we get rid of unrealistic expectations that are detrimental to our health? Why can't we lower perfectionistic ideals and expectations so that our brain's do not have to carry that huge load? We are like rulers of a kingdom that brutalize our subjects and demean those who run our kingdoms. We brutalize our own brains to conform to abstract perfectionistic ideals.
Eventually our brain can break down. It becomes divided between that self we are and that self we want to be. It is pulled in two directions, even torn apart by this split between our ideal self and our despised self. It is no wonder that it can break down. But even when our brain breaks down, it tries its best to keep all the most important things for our survival going: our hearts continue to beat, our lungs continue to breathe and so on. But it has trouble with our sleep, with our appetite. It can no longer give us the joy of life. And we can even beat up our brains for that mentally speaking. Why?
Can we remember when we were children and couldn't wait to wake up every morning? The desire to wake up everyday for a day of play and exploration and fun. We had the joy of life. But now our brain is burdened with a milion and one cares, artificial senses of urgency, small matters that we make big and insist that our brains treat as life or death situations.
Our brain is good to us. But it can get sick from stress. Even so it will continue to struggle on trying desperately to serve us. But it can need medicine to heal. It can need comfort from therapy. It can need friends. If can need us to be its friend finally. It can need a new philosophy for itself based on realistic human and personal development and no longer interjected or perfectionistic abstract ideals. Amazingly it will heal itself if we help it. It wants to heal. It is always trying to heal. It serves us even in our greatest weakness.
We are rulers of a vast kingdom of cells, trillions and trillions. They depend on us and they serve us. They look to the brain for guidance and our brain looks to us for love, for support, for comfort, for compassion, for understanding. Each of us is the most important person in the world to those trillions and trillions of cells. They look to us for compassion and love.
- Violet31, chucapabra, Self_Evaluation and 1 other like this
