The maths: We live a brief life. By the time you are 20 years old you have already begun the 3rd decade of it and there is only 11 years between 29 and 40. That is if you ever get that far in the first place. The chance of you being born at all has not been computerised or the math on that one been verbalised yet or fully understood. For example: if your mother or father never met, you obviously would not have become you; comparatively so, if one Dad or Mam was not up to any particular romantic interlude at anytime, there was a likelihood that you were on your way on a napkin to somewhere else and not ever coming back. The variations of you not being here in the first place can be wildly varied, humourous and very true. What matters in the end is that you are here despite practically insurmountable odds. You are already a winner and as individual as your fingerprints.
The science: The dawn of man descended from the common ancestors of apes. We are in fact 98.4% ape and almost 99% chimpanzee. We are also 97.5% mouse and there is more to the adage that “The best laid- plans of mice and men often go awry” (Robert Burns 1759-1796). The behaviours in man, either in consequence or prediction, is not too far removed from this lot. Don’t blame me about the science, blame all those pesky scientists and Charles Darwin. What happens and matters next in forming you, first and foremost, is what is commonly called the formative years. These are the years that social scientists, psychologists and other academics generally agree is the first seven years of anyone’s life. It is in the end what becomes, in the round, YOU!
You are essentially a social construct, shaped in those formative years by geography, others belief systems and all things local, and by the family, an extended one, or the lack of both, that your were reared from. Being told what to learn rather than how to learn only solidified any confusion that passed as an education for life's challenges.
You were born with a natural propensity and expectation of being loved, and from that, a natural gratitude for giving love in return. When these former expectations were not met in your social construct, or indeed, were not there at all in any form, defensive mechanisms kick in. These are embedded deep and can prove to be the chip on your shoulder that you do not know is there or the disease that you do not know you have and sometimes called ‘a dangerous mis-understanding’. Facing down these unrealised expectations, making meaning, to understand with acceptance, in order to remove the chip is the key to living a more contented if not fulfilling life. Your choices, askew or on the button, are guided by these understandings, or the lack of them being understood at all. It can mean the difference between a life sleepwalking where you never wake up or one where a new meaning can mean several dawns just in one day. De-construction here starts before the re-construction begins on a different foundation and one that is definitely yours in the making.
You were born with a natural propensity and expectation of being loved, and from that, a natural gratitude for giving love in return. When these former expectations were not met in your social construct, or indeed, were not there at all in any form, defensive mechanisms kick in. These are embedded deep and can prove to be the chip on your shoulder that you do not know is there or the disease that you do not know you have and sometimes called ‘a dangerous mis-understanding’. Facing down these unrealised expectations, making meaning, to understand with acceptance, in order to remove the chip is the key to living a more contented if not fulfilling life. Your choices, askew or on the button, are guided by these understandings, or the lack of them being understood at all. It can mean the difference between a life sleepwalking where you never wake up or one where a new meaning can mean several dawns just in one day. De-construction here starts before the re-construction begins on a different foundation and one that is definitely yours in the making.
Where does anyone start looking for understanding is the easy part. Looking at how and why you think the way you do. The blame game is a good beginning; your perceptions grounded on what: the notion that you are, despite evidence to the contrary, a mind reader and a judge all rolled into one? The expectations that people do the right thing by you or should have done and the crushing feeling almost all of the time when they do not; a moral crusader with an immoral compass, that despite your best efforts, keeps pointing at yourself and deserve has nothing to do with it or ever will. We do not make random choices and this is the good news, only a computer does that, so choose well when all the evidence is in. Stripping away all of your tired and old mindsets and a lot more is most definitely a good place to start indeed and starting today is the best time to begin. It is not winning that counts as you have already won that by being born, but the living and taking part of life after that IS; and leaving the baggage way behind that you carried long enough without really reasoning too well as to why.
Barry Clifford
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