Over the course of my four years at High School, I have developed a very strong group of close friends. For as long as the idea of High School has been in my head, so has College. I've always known that at some point everyone would have to go there separate ways. I never had any sort of moment of true realization where it eventually hits me that I'll be seeing these people very little over the course of likely the rest of my life. That idea has always been in the back of my head, percolating. I wanted to keep things realistic, so I did. What was to happen was to happen, and there's no use of repressing it out of your head because it's something that's just going to come up. It's just a fact of the way that society here in the United States works.
However, this morning, I woke up with an odd feeling regarding these close friends of mine. Already, even though most hadn't left yet, I felt a bit of a tension in my chest, because I miss them. It was an interesting moment for me, as I began to realize that no matter how much you can be aware of the fact that something like this is going to occur, there is nothing that will be able to stop your emotions. I value my friends greatly and have had so many great experiences over the past few years, and to finally let go of that is something that I currently have found to be of unanticipated difficulty. I wasn't expecting this. I thought I had it all down, I thought I could make this transition as easy as could be if I just had the right mindset, but today I found that I was proved wrong. You may know that your friends are all going to go away, but it still affects you just as much.
As likely known by many of the people who are choosing to read this blog, I am a very analytical math/science oriented person. Often, I'll seek to break concepts down into their most fundamental bits, and seeing how those bits interplay in the bigger picture. The study of thoughts themselves is a science. Thoughts, as I see them at least, and in the most simplest of terms, are the process of transferring input into output. A human personality itself is simply the culmination of all of its desires. Some desires may outweigh others in certain situations, but all in all, every human decision and reaction creates itself based on what the subject most truly desires. There are no exceptions to that rule.
In this way, and extremely roughly, thoughts can be considered as functions. Of course, they are much more complex than a simple f(x) two-dimensional curve, but the underlying concept is still the same. For years and years, humans have toiled with the concept of mathematically conceptualizing individual and group behavior, the vast majority of which have turned out to be very accurate. Equations and relationships, most certainly, are perfectly capable of describing behavior, but the one thing they'll never be able to do is be able to feel.
Emotions themselves in that way are tricky. They can no longer be considered a science, nor analyzed in such mathematical terms. Of course one could argue their origins in release of hormones and such and such, but to analyze what it means to feel something, such as I have begun to as I feel myself longing for my friends, is simply impossible.
There's a lot about human emotions we can't completely explain, but realistically, that's okay. We learn to work with them as we age, even though we may not truly understand them. The human brain is incredibly adaptable like that. This much, we know.
But what does that mean in the context of this blog? Why have I chosen to put in my opening posts a discussion about emotions? Well the answer lies in something else I realized. Through the art form that is contemporary circus, the main goal, as I see it, is not solely to perform tricks, it is to portray human emotion. I have chosen to enter myself into this world of performance, and as a result, it is to represent for me a departure from all of my thoughts and ways of thinking of the past. It is not to say that I am to give up my scientific and mathematical ways, but it is to say that within this journey there will be change. There will be a change in the way I think, the way I breathe, and the way I live. I feel it is time.
Trevor
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| Some of my close High School friends and I. |
However, this morning, I woke up with an odd feeling regarding these close friends of mine. Already, even though most hadn't left yet, I felt a bit of a tension in my chest, because I miss them. It was an interesting moment for me, as I began to realize that no matter how much you can be aware of the fact that something like this is going to occur, there is nothing that will be able to stop your emotions. I value my friends greatly and have had so many great experiences over the past few years, and to finally let go of that is something that I currently have found to be of unanticipated difficulty. I wasn't expecting this. I thought I had it all down, I thought I could make this transition as easy as could be if I just had the right mindset, but today I found that I was proved wrong. You may know that your friends are all going to go away, but it still affects you just as much.
As likely known by many of the people who are choosing to read this blog, I am a very analytical math/science oriented person. Often, I'll seek to break concepts down into their most fundamental bits, and seeing how those bits interplay in the bigger picture. The study of thoughts themselves is a science. Thoughts, as I see them at least, and in the most simplest of terms, are the process of transferring input into output. A human personality itself is simply the culmination of all of its desires. Some desires may outweigh others in certain situations, but all in all, every human decision and reaction creates itself based on what the subject most truly desires. There are no exceptions to that rule.
In this way, and extremely roughly, thoughts can be considered as functions. Of course, they are much more complex than a simple f(x) two-dimensional curve, but the underlying concept is still the same. For years and years, humans have toiled with the concept of mathematically conceptualizing individual and group behavior, the vast majority of which have turned out to be very accurate. Equations and relationships, most certainly, are perfectly capable of describing behavior, but the one thing they'll never be able to do is be able to feel.
Emotions themselves in that way are tricky. They can no longer be considered a science, nor analyzed in such mathematical terms. Of course one could argue their origins in release of hormones and such and such, but to analyze what it means to feel something, such as I have begun to as I feel myself longing for my friends, is simply impossible.
There's a lot about human emotions we can't completely explain, but realistically, that's okay. We learn to work with them as we age, even though we may not truly understand them. The human brain is incredibly adaptable like that. This much, we know.
But what does that mean in the context of this blog? Why have I chosen to put in my opening posts a discussion about emotions? Well the answer lies in something else I realized. Through the art form that is contemporary circus, the main goal, as I see it, is not solely to perform tricks, it is to portray human emotion. I have chosen to enter myself into this world of performance, and as a result, it is to represent for me a departure from all of my thoughts and ways of thinking of the past. It is not to say that I am to give up my scientific and mathematical ways, but it is to say that within this journey there will be change. There will be a change in the way I think, the way I breathe, and the way I live. I feel it is time.
Trevor
Trev, I miss you too. And I have never read anything so thoughtful about emotion :)
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you, Nina! :D
ReplyDelete