"He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he [Gatsby] revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes."
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
You know sometimes there are people who you define your day by? As in, if you get a good response from them it's a good day, bad, bad etc. I've known that this is usually a bad idea to have this going on for a while now. But what I've just realised - or more like, understood is why.
When you keep thinking about one person, when your day depends on them, you can often idolise them in your mind, making them perfect. The truth is we are not perfect. None of us. So when you actually see that person and they fall short of your expectations, either in who they are in reality or in their interaction with you, it kinda sucks.
(this can be extended to anything, ideologies, dreams, tv shows, books...)
Identifying this as unhealthy is only one part of the problem though, it can sometimes be very hard to stop (especially in Gatsby's case).
What then is the solution?
-One could fixate on someone or something else, not ultimately effective for obvious reasons
-One could try and change your views on that person or thing, by consciously changing your attitude towards them - for what are we but the sum of our thoughts?
-One could try separating oneself from them/it - this could however making things worse
I don't have a solution, but if I figure one out I'll let you know
What do you think?
When you keep thinking about one person, when your day depends on them, you can often idolise them in your mind, making them perfect. The truth is we are not perfect. None of us. So when you actually see that person and they fall short of your expectations, either in who they are in reality or in their interaction with you, it kinda sucks.
(this can be extended to anything, ideologies, dreams, tv shows, books...)
Identifying this as unhealthy is only one part of the problem though, it can sometimes be very hard to stop (especially in Gatsby's case).
What then is the solution?
-One could fixate on someone or something else, not ultimately effective for obvious reasons
-One could try and change your views on that person or thing, by consciously changing your attitude towards them - for what are we but the sum of our thoughts?
-One could try separating oneself from them/it - this could however making things worse
I don't have a solution, but if I figure one out I'll let you know
What do you think?
Like you, I have no solution. But also, I recognise the importance of asking those questions, and of attempting to remove ourselves from those unhealthy cycles. In a way (cheesy though it may sound), cognitively recognising a fixation as such, and questioning how to escape must be somewhere along on the road out of fixationville.
ReplyDeleteI think the next question to ask would be whether and to what extent can we change ourselves? A question to which we can never know the answer, because we can't live two lives, we can't eliminate the effect of the social surroundings upon ourselves and even if we could, we'd be changing ourselves by doing it.
ReplyDeleteThus I move that the closest we can come to an answer is an approximation in which we try and change something - in which case it is a matter of will-power. From this I wonder, 'can we change our will-power'?
The issue here, in my opinion, is that the person or thing which one is idolising is not really the problem. They are in effect secondary to the construct of that person or thing that exists within our mind. As humans we suffer from (as far as we know) unique problem in occupying both a physical and meta-physical plane of existence and thus not sitting comfortably in either. The world we create is our own but we are not the sole influences upon that world and we are tied into the physical world and thus prevented from taking full ownership of our own imaginative constructions. I think that, as has been said, recognition of this fact is crucial. As to 'curing' or changing oneself I am not sure that it is desirable; the world changes us, or rather gives us new materials to work with, but to attempt to attain total control would leave one with a horrifying responsibility to perpetuate one's own self. We must have our ideals, our fixations, or else life becomes hollow. What is important is to recognise our own limitations when it comes to those people or things that have come to represent more to us than perhaps they are objectively worth.
ReplyDelete