Whereas animals have no little to no control over their raw instincts, humans have the ability to censor and restrain. At the same time, I believe we also have the power to pump the gas.
How often do you let your monkey mind out of its cage? How often do you let the words fly, abandon control, and let ego transpire? I think there is immense value in understanding one’s ability to go full throttle. Not that I have perfected this craft, but I think that being able to unleash these types of raw energy is a superpower. Empowering our mind, giving it freedom to chase our curiosities is a very valuable skill.
Though, often, when we open the mind, we let our guards down. We let our monkey roam as it pleases…this takes us to random places…sometimes we end up in deep, dark situations. Sometimes we end up talking to demons.
I do not mean demons in the goth cypher movie sense. I mean dark places…thinking about hard to think about thoughts…This can be scary at first. At least it was to me. But over time, you get used to thinking about the uncomfortable. Over time, we actually begin to enjoy it. We begin to enjoy thinking about the dark side, the contrarian side, ah, the overlooked side.
So we become friends with the monsters.
We become one with them. We abandon our individual identity and join the collective, the troupe fighting for the truth. We put the truth before our own well-being.
Sure, we smile and wave to others, but at heart we know we have thought about things that most people do not think about. We have found treasure.
The treasure, though, is a set of uncomfortable questions?
“What happens when we die?”
“How did we get here?”
“Is love real?”
Most people live their entire lives without tackling these questions. Well, to qualify, it is probably impossible to tackle questions without answers. But that is for another essay. For now, I’ll say that most go through life without being comfortable with and having individual answers to these types of questions.
And that is okay…it is not a “better” situation. it is not a “right situation.”
It is just a situation.
One that does have effects on our mentality.
Also published on Medium.