Thursday March 29

Is the creation of an alter ego really a lie? What if one is suffering and the only way to escape the suffering, be it sickness, abuse or false hope, is to live life through an alter ego? Instead of living the reality of being raped day in day out, one may be able to live the illusion of being safe and free from harm.

The mind’s ability to lock up and protect one from re-experiencing horrific memories is incredible. Is selectively choosing to hide from the pain of reality and instead living happily in a fantasy really that bad? Don’t we all long for escapes from our problems? Some of us, the lucky ones, can escape them. Our problems may all be work-related but once we head home on a Friday night we can leave them all behind at the office and escape for a weekend.

But what if our problems followed us? What if  our problem was an abusive family member who took advantage of us and whose frightening power prevented us from running away? With only knowing fear and worthlessness and having no escape, wouldn’t you too create a fantasy in which you were in control and live in false hope of one day being truly happy?

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Wednesday March 28

Questioning the significance of our being and the reality of our reality can lead to madness. When one is no long aware of the difference between reality and illusion, normal and abnormal, sane and insane; it can have detrimental effects on their mental state.

When one can no longer snap back to reality after fantasizing or running away with their imagination it blurs the boundaries of and taints their perception reality. This tainting may only partially warp their understanding of reality but in severe cases it can lead to the inability to distinguish between the reality in one’s head and the reality of the world.

Perhaps this inviting of fantasies and illusions to cloud one’s perception may by intentional, a coping mechanism perhaps?

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Tuesday March 27

When we are first brought into this world we are entirely unaware of anything. Our lives are like the beginning of a novel, yet to decide its course; our minds, a blank scrapbook ready to be filled with snapshots of memories and marked with morals, experiences and ideas.

As young infants our minds are like sponges, absorbing and storing information about everything. We learn to distinguish between things like soft and hard, wet and dry and learn to associate things such as fire with pain and darkness with sleep. The development of these simple concepts and the ability to tell them apart form the foundations of our mind bank, a bank from which we extract memories and retrieve ideas. Our continuous and conscious interpretations, impressions and judgements of the ways of the world are then lodged in our mind bank, leading to the development of a more complex understanding of the reality of the world. As our mind bank sophisticates and matures, we acquire the ability to question what we know. An ability that may lead to greatness, such as scientific discoveries but can also lead to tragedy.

Monday March 26

Through art we enter an imaginative space where we accept an alternative reality, or in layman’s terms, we believe the illusion that is being created, be it a character on stage, or a piece of art. In today’s world, losing yourself in a book or a movie and allowing you to associate yourself with a character is acceptable. Living in this fantasy world is widely encouraged, from early childhood through to late adulthood. As children we are thrust into the fantasy world of fairy tales and spend our days re-enacting our favourites, taking on the role of princesses and fairies and dragon slayers. This form of pretending and choosing to create an alternative reality is not frowned upon, it’s encouraged. As we mature and age, we put on uniforms and suits to fulfil the roles of nurses and lawyers, and when one thinks about it, acting the part of the profession we have chosen. Although subtle, this is still a form or pretending, is it not?

Is the fine line of sanity being crossed when we choose to dress ourselves in costumes, be it a suit and tie or a white lab coat? Is this creation of an alter ego acceptable? How can we then rightfully label those who create an alter ego as a coping mechanism to deal with their grim reality as mad?

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Sunday March 25

Our reality is entirely subject to our experiences. It’s not rocket science, its common knowledge, common sense even! But then again, these days common sense is not a gift; it’s a punishment as we, who are supposedly “blessed” with the gift of common sense, must deal with those who lack it. It appears to me that those who are deprived of this so called gift tend to be the ones in positions of authority who falsely believe that they have the God given right to decide what classifies as reality and what doesn’t. They take responsibility of drawing the extremely fine, almost invisible, debatable line between the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. This then raises questions such as ‘Why is it that some individuals, with their altered and unique concept of reality, are institutionalised? And ‘Why should they be punished for living their reality? Their reality is just as real as anybody else’s, yet according to some hot shot, it’s the wrong reality.    

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Saturday March 24

People who consciously construct a world, in which they are in control of or can escape to, are considered mad. They are harshly labelled delusional and looked down upon by society.

As children we are raised to accept and live by the convention that each and every one of us are entitled to our own opinion, yet when it comes to perceiving reality and recalling and recounting past events, suddenly the accuracy of our ability to separate and distinguish between illusion and reality is questioned.

They’re for my English folio and need to be set out in blog format. Major cbf doing it by hand so I’m cheating and using my tumblr.

Never hooking up for the sake of it ever again.