(no subject)
Free will, and ability to make conscious decisions only goes so far as your conscious, intellectual understanding of your subconscious. We all have underlying motivations. If you don't know what those motivations are, aren't aware that they exist, you're going to make decisions because they feel good, and you won't know why they feel good, but make them anyway. Little decisions, too, about who you spend time with and what you do after you get out of work. If you don't intellectually understand what makes you want what you want, you're going to rationalize your bad decisions.
I don't know if that came out right. I hope you understand.
People need to understand themselves. They need to know where they come from. Most people don't.
Prime example: for a long, long time, I had a serious aversion to eating. If someone got worried about me and tried to get me to eat when I needed to but didn't want to, I would become extremely defensive. This went on for years, until one day, it occured to me all of a sudden that food had always been a power struggle for me. As a small child, I was forced to eat. I was forced to sit there and put things into my body that I didn't want there. I was made to feel guilty and miserable for not liking a food, for being full, for not wanting anymore. In one particular memory, I tried to swallow something and was having so much trouble, and was so upset by the tension in my environment, that I nearly threw up. I was told it happened because I was fooling around. I was told that it was my fault, that i should feel guilty about it. Eating is about keeping yourself healthy. Feeding your children is about keeping them healthy. It is not, and never should be, about power. If a child has tried a food and really dislikes it, he shouldn't be forced to eat it. He should instead be given a healthy food he can enjoy, so he can create positive associations with being healthy.
I had so many negative associations with food. I started to notice that I would get disproportionately upset when someone tried to convince me to eat. It felt to me like they were trying to take control of my own life out of my hands.
While my issues with food are not entirely resolved, it's much, much easier to deal with them knowing that this aversion to food was put there. It is not my fault. I have to deal with it anyway, of course, have to try to work past all those emotions to eat. But now that I know where that aversion comes from, I can go straight to the source. When I'm having trouble eating, I can say to myself, "It's time to take control back into my own hands. It's time to eat to make myself healthy. No one's forcing me anymore; it's my own decision."
This is kind of an extreme example, in the sense that it's fairly cut-and-dry, and eventually became very obvious to me. But there are so many little things, more subtle things that influence our desires and our decisions every single day, and we don't even realize what a role they play. And so people come into conflict with one another, and they don't take the time to think rationally, they just go by what they feel. Or, they believe they're being rational, but what they're doing is "rationalizing" - creating reasons for them to be right.
One of my biggest annoyances is when it's so important to someone that they be right on whatever the issues is, that they don't stop and think about what they're saying or doing. They refuse to apologize, because they're so happy being self-righteous and angry at what everyone else is doing wrong, that they don't realize they're hurting the people around them by handling it poorly. They think just because the other people are wrong, they can handle the issue in any way they want - being rude, presumptuous, or mean.
Just because someone else is wrong doesn't give the person the right to be an asshole. No one has the right to be an asshole.
But all of these issues arise because the person doesn't understand themselves well enough to know that what their real motivation is, is being right, feeling vindicated, and having an excuse to take their frustration out on other people.
I'm not saying I'm perfect - no one is. I'm just kind of bitter today. I'm tired of watching people be mean, scared, guilty, lonely, angry, when some introspection, self-acceptance, empathy, and rationality would show them that it's entirely unnecessary.
This isn't all entirely clear from this entry, probably. I'm having trouble expressing myself. But I'll eventually find the right way to say it.