OUR CROWDED ROOMS

Dear Reader,

The scripture reads,  “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways…”. You can refer to Isaiah 55:8-9 for context but I think it's God saying that his mind is not the same as ours. But we are made in his image so to some degree we may relate intellectually. Conflicting argument but it is beside the point. The Human Mind is the point or rather the basis for all this.

Some scholars defined the mind as, “the part of a person that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons” and I think they forgot the part about how our minds protect us. It is fascinating to me how it works. It has a life of its own. It chooses to play tricks on us, it chooses to forget and also forgets what it has forgotten and that is funny but that does not even scratch the surface of what the mind is.

So, the mind protects. And we might question how it does this and it’s pretty simple. It cares for us. It is us, so it protects but sometimes its mode of protection is divergent. Some of us have the gospel to lean on or rather have their religion to lean on and their mind revolves around this religion as a means to protect them and give them solace when they are forlorn. Some of us turn to drugs and our minds convince us that being in this “high” state makes us forget and we get to deal with the actual problems. Some of us turn to sex or inflicting pain on ourselves and our minds convince us that we need to feel something to be okay. Be it pleasure or pain, we are convinced that we need something to be ‘okay’.

The saddest truth to all this is the fact that the mind just needs people. It is human and people need people but we are often heartbroken by people that our minds are convinced that we can do it all alone. And yes, we can, why do we need people to just prove what our minds already know. They will use us and then leave us. They have a hidden agenda and this makes us unbelieving of genuine care. We get to revolve in these thought patterns that drive us deeper into loss and chaos but all this is an attempt from our minds to ensure that we are “safe” from experiencing these moments that prove how weak we are to the things of this world.

So, how can we try and help our minds seek the human way out? How can we convince the mind that just because we have been betrayed a few too many times, maybe that other way does not lead to pain? Maybe believing in humanity can help us change.

A script reads;

Did you know that the brain has these chemical receptors that light up when we make human connections? It literally turns on to make us feel like we are safe. Only, sometimes others are not safe. There is a whole world of ways people hurt each other. Too much pain causes the mind to break but we find conventional ways of avoiding the pain; like booze, drugs, and sex that light up those receptors. And those things work. And also, being with the wrong person, because at least the pain is familiar to them. If you ask me, I think that if a relationship can break you, then sometimes a relationship can heal you. So, maybe love is the answer.

The fear of pain is worse than pain ever was. We’ve all been hurt. Some more than others. And we can have a tendency to stay in bad relationships. Those receptors are firing, telling us not to risk losing what we have. Even if it's to find something better for us, healthier for us. We stay with the hurt we know, rather than risk being hurt again. But we have a choice. The truth is we always have. We just have to remember to keep making it. To remember that other people can hurt us, but they can also help us. That to reach out, to let someone reach back, is a way out of pain. That doesn’t mean it is easy, it's hard, terrifying. We need to be brave and ask for help. We don’t need to be alone!”

These lines had me viewing the world from a different light. The mind records everything that we have seen and experienced and it makes us view the world according to the lens it has created. I suppose that’s why Paul wrote that our minds should be renewed and it can be interpreted that we should view life through the lens of God’s word and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Romans 12:2) rather than the lens created by our experiences and certainties that we have quantified as true by living our lives.

So, is the mind right or wrong? I personally do not think that any of that matters. The mind loves us and it does what it thinks is best for us and sometimes that can be a good thing or a bad thing but all these are subject to our interpretation; at the end of the day, the mind will serve us as it deems necessary.

Hence the plea from yours truly; Can we or can you as fellow readers of these letters that I write to myself or maybe to you try and be the human connection that proves to the broken mind that it is wrong. Yes, we can love without any hidden agendas, and yes, we can accept people as they are and not try to change them into vessels that we consider right, that we can love each other irrespective of our flaws and our inadequacies and maybe just maybe reach out and reach back to the most vulnerable of us. We can love and protect each other in healthy ways like checking up on our mates and maybe hugging our friends a second longer and maybe telling them all shall be well, that maybe the things they choose to hide do not define them, and maybe all that would break the walls created by their minds in an aim of protecting them from pain.

I know it’s a lot, and I know I am asking you to try but sometimes trying is not enough, so maybe just do it (I am not promoting NIKE) that is funny. Just do it, it’s simple; don’t let your mind tell you it’s hard or rather “it’s too complicated”. Remember, my mind is not your mind, nor my ways your ways but we can try and help each other in this journey called life. We don’t have to do it all alone…

 

Love,

 

Thairu.