The Wall

We meet up against them everyday. Barriers that limit our perception. You can tell a lot about a person based on the framework of their Beliefs. What is incumbent on us is to figure out the appropriate way to engage the people around us based on their Framework of Beliefs. There are complex thoughts out there and the average person isn’t tapped into that wavelength. But then you run up against people who believe they are more advanced in their thinking and realize, they too are limited by this ‘Framework of Beliefs.’ The sum total of their understanding, founded on the expression of their environment and attitude. Behaviors can be modeled and Behavioral Scientists spend their professional careers on the task of mapping out the different combinations of Personalities and how Environment and Attitude shape a persons understanding, behavior and expressions. They mostly do it to diagnose people with ‘Mental Illnesses’ and find treatments to help these people with mental illness to cope with their lives – but the science itself is expanded into the every-day.

I have a hard time relating with people – always have – even as an infant. My mother would tell me often that the only time I cried as an infant was when I was interrupted or in actual distress. My mother just wanted to cuddle me – I’m the first born and a new expression in her life and she was filled with the ‘Mother Hormones’ that drove her to want to pick me up for any reason. But I wouldn’t have it… 46 years on and she laments how I was never her Cuddle Bunny… It took her another 6 years, and 3 children later to get her Cuddle Bunny… Oddly, as a side note, it is the most ornery of her children that continues to live with her, and it’s the grandchildren now who fill in as the Cuddle Bunnies for her – But now that I think of it – they’re getting older now too.

Back to my thought process – sorry for the detour – I often find myself with a need to express myself – work out loud the thoughts I’ve worked out and map out the meanings. When I try to engage others, I’m always met by their Framework of Beliefs – which is for me a limiter, because the process of revelation is halted to deal with the gap in understanding, language, history and obviously experience. The wall is often what keeps me from engaging others in thought experiments. But it robs me of the opportunity to learn more from others – from their experiences, which can be amazing teachers. Some people are versed in expressing themselves and though I don’t agree with them on pretty much anything – the way they convey their thoughts to me, and often the content, is of great value. One of the most important pieces of advice I have been given in my youth was that I ‘Didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.’ There’s no need to jump to conclusions on something just because my experience and/or knowledge is limited. After all, I have my own barriers too.

Relating to people is for me something that hasn’t gotten easier, and I’ve spoken often in front of crowds of dozens to hundreds of people. I have no problem presenting information or moderating… Public speaking is not an issue… But speaking with a crowd of people, or even in a group of two or more people for me… I’m prone to go too deep into the weeds which often pushes up against people’s ire – the ire being the Framework of the Beliefs. When you challenge people’s Beliefs (not wittingly of course – some people just want to stir the pot – I’m just expressing myself in these instances) they become defensive, and in these moments I’m not channeling the energy of my audience, I’m simply channeling the threads of my thought experiment. Over the years I’ve become more savvy and realized that I should just keep these things to myself. But we are back to the main crux of my issue – I enjoy learning the personal lessons people have experienced that were ‘Teachable Moments” for them. And to get that out of people is no easy feat – and I don’t expect it to be. But that is where, for me, the heart of any connection with another person lies.

The Framework of our Beliefs act as a Defensive Wall against emotional vulnerability. But these walls harden the heart and isolate us from making meaningful connections with the people around us. Not everyone is worth connecting with – but growth isn’t only a self-expression, it is also a collective expression. We are all swimming in this ocean of expression together – it is the atoms of our collective consciousness that build the framework of our reality. It is through the lens of our Attitude that condenses the unique expression for the self that reveals to us our own individual perspective. Just like the sun attracts and absorbs the invisible particles from the cosmos, digests it all under its massive gravity and expels the by-product of that fission – we too as people (animals and plants too in their own way) demonstrate the resultant of our experiences through our actions as a by-product. The mind is a powerful expression that digests invisible thought particles and radiates the compressed resultant. As we learn to hone and attune our mind, the caliber and quality of the compressed resultant becomes more accurate and expressive.

The Art Form is learning how to express these summations more accurately and expressively, a skill that improves as it is exercised and practiced. The walls therefore act as limiters that hold us back from improving upon the Art Form. The trick then is learning how to identify the right people upon which to express our Thought Experiments.