I am going through this process at the moment… at 30. It started when I was younger with art film*, but was stinted for years by a bad relationship. The process started again with an amazing relationship (aren’t wives wonderful?).
I still slip into viewing the world in “comfortable” black and white logic with clear cause and effect when stressed, often without realising. I lose my humanity and enjoyment of life in the process.
I absolutely agree with being consciously blind, but subconsciously 100% unaffected by our surroundings. It felt (and often feels) like everyone is experiencing the world so very differently and yet they’re so often happier! The people I thought had no clue about how the world works… it turns out that often these people understood so much more than I at the time.
We seem so poor at teaching children how to live, how to manage emotions, and ultimately what it is to be human - in the west at least. Too busy spinning the daily hamster wheel to show our children what exists outside of it. Perhaps this is just my experience though.
Thank you for putting this into words so succinctly. It helps.
* I agree with Kermode’s view of film being an “empathy machine”, as he calls it. Spending an hour and a half of your time viewing the world through someone else’s eyes really can change a person and enhance one’s empathy for our fellow humans. Ultimately, as you say, the world takes on colours that you never imagined could even exist. For me, at least.
I still slip into viewing the world in “comfortable” black and white logic with clear cause and effect when stressed, often without realising. I lose my humanity and enjoyment of life in the process.
I absolutely agree with being consciously blind, but subconsciously 100% unaffected by our surroundings. It felt (and often feels) like everyone is experiencing the world so very differently and yet they’re so often happier! The people I thought had no clue about how the world works… it turns out that often these people understood so much more than I at the time.
We seem so poor at teaching children how to live, how to manage emotions, and ultimately what it is to be human - in the west at least. Too busy spinning the daily hamster wheel to show our children what exists outside of it. Perhaps this is just my experience though.
Thank you for putting this into words so succinctly. It helps.
* I agree with Kermode’s view of film being an “empathy machine”, as he calls it. Spending an hour and a half of your time viewing the world through someone else’s eyes really can change a person and enhance one’s empathy for our fellow humans. Ultimately, as you say, the world takes on colours that you never imagined could even exist. For me, at least.