Time: Better Perspective?/ Greater Distortion?

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BRAINTENANCE borrows from the TAKING COMMAND! Blog...

Dear Braintenanciers [which is how they should be spelling and pronouncing it en Francais]: It appears that we have opposing views regarding the effects of the passage of time during the course of one's life. On the one hand, many believe that the passage of time gives one a clearer perspective; on the other, many believe that the passage of time creates distortions.

What do you think?

The answer, I believe, is a combination of both. Neither view is false, but neither view is complete of itself.

Regarding the first view, with the passage of time comes the acquisition of experience and knowledge, and a broader data base upon which to construct comparisons, qualitatively and quantitatively. As this base increases with time, our ability to measure, to understand, to see against a greater backdrop of different and similar experiences heightens.

This is a gift of perspective. A person who has lived only five years has a much smaller base from which to draw a more precise perspective than the same person an additional five years hence. A first experience of the intoxicating and totally absorbing rush of youthful first love (perhaps "infatuation" would be a better term), is very different after one has experienced loving interaction in several relationships over a course of time. Love may be love, but it feels different given our wealth of love's history, if we are fortunate.

Regarding the second view, time does allow us, with failings of mental capacity, defensive reconstruction of personal history, protective patches of selective amnesia, the compounding of emotional weight (much like interest accumulating on invested principal), the inadvertent interweaving of dreams with experiences and upon certain particularly positive or negative recollections [where we build epics, legends and romantic tragedies in our imaginations, reconstructions and re-thinkings] to develop great distortions in our recall of many things.

The most interesting thing is that these two effects do not offset or counterbalance each other -- they co-exist within the same mind. A person can actually experience distorted childhood memories and yet have a clear situational perspective at the exact same time.

Think about this. Go back to a book, or poem or picture that effected you profoundly some time ago. Does it elicit the same sentiment now?

Your mind is a conflictory bundle of abilities and levels or types of consciousness. Why do you think that NLP, hypnotherapy, EMDR, EFT and cognitive therapy can effect us? It is because of the amazing compartmentalization of the Human Mind.

And as if things were not sufficiently complicated, sometimes these compartments work cooperatively and synergistically, and in other cases, they are either completely unaware of each other, or they actually work at crossed purposes in direct contradiction or conflict.

The mind is the most mysterious muscle of the collection that comprises us.

Keep exploring and experimenting -- (I'm grinning), both within your mind and without your mind. The sentence seems to make sense [structurally], but you can never do anything without your mind. More comforting perhaps, is that no matter how far you wander, you can never literally be out of your mind.

I'm somewhat relieved.

Douglas E Castle for The Braintenance Blog