A day in October

From the windows I saw her,
On a rare, clear blue sunny day.
Vapours condensed where lashes touched;
Pouring from the windows of her soul.

From the pain of his selfish act,
On a rare, clear blue sunny day;
Grief of her heart materialised to transparent tears,
Drenching her cheeks clutched by wet hands.

And then, the skies, they joined in.

Love

Love. Baffling, no? Divine love of God - simple and pure, so easy to understand once He helps you grasp the concept and truth. But when it comes to humanly love, be it between a mother and her child, a father and his son, a guy and a girl, between sisters, brothers, it does get messy sometimes one point or the other in everyone’s lives. When you’re a kid, you have dreams that someday you’ll fall in love and have a magical relationship, or like me you might have had a totally different dream (which need not be revealed). But then ok, so I admit the whole love thing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, what with all the butterflies and goose bumps not to mention those feelings of small-doses-of-adrenaline-shot-into-you-making-your-head-spin-and-prevent-you-from-trying-to-stop-grinning. We all know what happens after, it’s so clear it automatically spells itself out, H-U-R-T. 

Fortunately, or not for some, I’m not planning to talk about relationships and the related topics of what you should do or not do, what makes him/her smile. Blog-posts on the subjects of dating, emotions, relationships rules, flirting, are already ubiquitous in the blogging world as it is. 

Rather, what intrigues me is exactly how love affects us human beings (with superior brains and opposable thumbs, to be exact). It has been proved in previous researches that it involves all the physiognomies, behavioural influences and general nuances of substance abuse, i.e., love addiction. Love passion, though it offers much pleasure and oestrogen-infused goggle eyes, proves a constant neighbour to much pain every so often (Gibson, 2010). Curiously enough, love passion is not being acknowledged as a clinical disorder in modern medical sciences (Reynaud, et al., 2010). Be that as it may, it can’t be denied that human beings fall in love over and over again only to get hurt again and again. The question would be ‘why’ we continue to do so, i.e., fall in love in spite of the looming risk of hurt. I have three theories here; two borrowed. 

The borrowed: The first theory is that we fall in love to fill the gap in our personality, i.e., we may be attracted to others who seem exceptionally strong in an area where we are weak. This resonates with the much used phrase, ‘Opposites attract.’ As it is, human beings do not have only one weakness and even if we overcome one of those weaknesses, many others remain which would let us to be attracted to people who exude the contrary. The second theory is related to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow, 1943). Despite the presence of criticisms of Maslow’s Hierarchy, the Needs – physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation – causes motivation and trigger the brain’s reward system when that motivation is achieved. Case in point, the need to find love and feel fulfilled by that other person’s presence in one’s life. 

My theory: While watching the movie A Dangerous Method by David Cronenberg, one quote by Sabina Spielrein (played by Keira Knightley) caught my attention, ‘Only the clash of destructive forces can create something new.’ Now I know that opposites can attract, but according to me ‘destructive forces’ here refer to more than just opposite personalities. Two people can have same personalities and tastes, have so much in common, both very positive person or vice versa and still be destructive forces. In other words, to be two destructive forces, the need to be different or opposite or contradictory is not a prerequisite. Referring to the need to ‘clash’, as humans, we are easily bored; it may or may not have been academically proved but I know it. The need to feel something new, i.e., new love (since we’re on the subject of love), is fed by clashes between two people (with destructive forces each). Although love may have already been experienced, the need to create something new escalates again and again, giving rise to a cycle of clashes between destructive forces. Now of course I’m not referring to clashes between two new people all the time, the clashes could be between the same two people but with different destructive forces which could have been pre-possessed or newly minted!

Love passion followed by hurt and then love passion again is a vicious cycle which most of the time is unavoidable, but then the hurt is also ‘something new’ that contributes to making us feel alive, no?

References:

Gibson, J., 2010. Addicted to Love. [Online] 

Available at: http://brainblogger.com/2010/08/22/addicted-to-love/

[Accessed 24 September 2012].

Maslow, A., 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, Volume 50, pp. 370-396.

Reynaud, M., Karila, L., Blecha, L. & Benyamina, A., 2010. Is love passion an addictive disorder?. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 36(5), pp. 261-7.

If Only

[Last month, I entered a Poetry Competition organised by my University. I participated just for the love of writing. I don't think I won though since they haven't got back to me yet and the prize giving is supposed to be only in May. So anyway, I guess I'll at least post it here.]

If I could grab the world spinning on its axis,
If I could twist it backwards with all my might,
If only for a desperate grasp to wisp of moments I waived away;
If to cradle those fragile ticks of a clock I thought would last.

But who did prove that time would turn back.
But for a decree not made to stoppage of time,
But ‘twas denied spare trickles of sand though my breath was held for long.
But if only warps and black holes existed, for my holding of the orbits still.

A deafened ear to the earth, a sightless touch of rain-
A wizard's wand, a pixie dust, a shooting star to wish,
A spell or charm, a curse or blessing, an incantation or chant, a wish or prayer,
A phoenix reborn ablaze none renders me, O silent cry of anguish!

Then I sit in the present in a sanctuary of thoughts,
Then now this place it offers a peace to ponder,
Then ever so oft I muse upon - unbroken hazy morns, incessant lazy noons.
Then again does reflection of bygones unlearn the art of procrastination?

The Unconscious Mind

I saw the bus coming towards me just as I was planning to cross the road and unconsciously calculated in my head how fast I have to walk before the bus reaches the area of road I was crossing so as to avoid collision and my ending up in a hospital bed. I used here ‘unconsciously’ because I only realised how efficient the human mind is in calculating after I got to the other side. I thought on about how our mind processes things; it somehow assesses situations unconsciously and gives out logical conclusions still unconsciously, and the most wonderful thing about this process is that it can be performed unconsciously by even the stupidest person! [Whoa, that's three 'unconsciously' in one sentence!] So basically, doesn’t that mean we are all born experts in Statistics? If so, then wouldn’t that be contradictory to the fact that Statistics doesn’t come easy to majority of people and is at most times considered a very tough subject to master. The high pay of Actuaries kind of proves this point.

My train of thought was on a roll; another insight I had was how powerful the unconscious mind actually is! Powerful enough to alter human behaviour as conceived by Freud in his work on psychoanalysis. And the fact that I’d just recently watched the very interesting film adaptation A Dangerous Method fuelled my curiosity for the psychology field of study, so yes I ended up downloading iBooks and audiobooks on it. I’m presently going through them one at a time and they have proved to be interesting reads so far. Hopefully I will be able to answer my own whimsical questions someday in a silent self-conversation so as not to further publicly embarrass myself! 

These self-indulgent musings I had on human’s natural abilities and unconscious powers did not go very far at that moment due to lack of knowledge in said fields but it did interest me enough to make me take action on new learning, so I suppose it was productive in one way. Randomness has a way of seeping into everything in my inconspicuous unassuming life and it doesn't spare my posts either; I realised these few days how everyone is so overly snobbish and was going to write a whole dedicated post about it but then, the reflective habit which the British education system has now seemed to imbibe in me took over. It was a good thing I reflected because of two reasons: first, it discouraged me to write that whole post about it and secondly, it belatedly dawned on me how hypocritical I was being since there is a high probability I would be no different if I walked past myself and saw my face in my off-mood days! Ah great, another revelation of weakness I will need to change ;)

End of Masters

Granted that I’m an energetic person but I didn’t know just how much until this February when I stayed up two nights and two days in a row working on my dissertation, didn’t eat anything the previous night, printed and submitted my work the next day (my twin babies!), danced in a Flashmob for charity, sorted a huge pile of laundry, and still have energy left for some retail therapy alone at City Centre. The hand-in of my Masters course’s final piece of work which I’ve been brooding on for the past few months left me feeling somewhat hollow; I felt free yes, but exchanging those two beautifully bounded copies for a piece of paper (which was my receipt) left me a bit undignified!

That was last month. And now, I am so very happy to admit that results were out last week and by His grace I got a really good one - a Distinction in a Masters course! Praise be to God who blesses me always more than I deserve. I remember the time I was collecting data through my survey and how I had to rope in literally everyone I know around the globe; I did so much networking I felt like I was connecting almost the whole world! I will be forever grateful to all who helped.

On the down side, I have to start looking for a job now which evidently is very hard to get these days with the Euro crisis affecting the job market across Europe. Then again, I have Him and I’ll keep praying.

I know people say this all the time but it really seemed just like yesterday when I first walked into the classroom last year, head full of questions about whether I'm going to like it here or if I'll ever make lifetime friends. Now I know. I did meet so many wonderful people and made such good friends, and I actually do like it here which is going to make it harder for me to leave when I will have to move on. But yes, we all have to close chapters in order to open new ones and frankly, no matter how much I'll miss this place called Sheffield, I can't wait to start a new one.