Tag: psychology

It is very difficult to accustom the mind to the stoic precept of not worrying about the conditions about which nothing can be done, because these are often the most torturous and the ones that one would most like to overcome. However, it can be seen that the resulting tension is almost always due to the contrast between reality and a desired situation, the latter being the work of desire and this being the child of self-love. Thus, it is clear that to destroy self-love is to break down this whole chain of suffering, but how difficult it is to do so without slipping into unproductive inertia! It takes a long time for the mind to get used to acting without expectations, and when this beatific state is reached, one realizes that it is also unstable, and requires a lot of effort to make it last.

It is interesting to note that some personalities are based on an irrational element which, although it may seem absurd at times, acts as a unifier. Just imagining it absent, the whole being falls apart. However, the attribute of mad people that they often receive is, if not false, extremely simplistic. Because the same irrationality that throws up the most outrageous contradictions, that leads to incredible errors, that clouds reason and gets out of control, is also responsible for a cohesion, an energy and a resilience that seem superhuman. Personalities like this, unusual but existing, invalidate behavioral manuals and, in the end, enrich the concept of man.

It’s curious how the mind, despite not knowing the limits to the intensity with which it experiences its states, can hardly reconstitute them accurately. It is much easier to recall acts committed, even if these have generated less intense psychological effects, or even none at all. This seems to show that psychological states only make a mark insofar as they induce some real action; and it is this, after all, that makes them recallable. A very useful precept can be drawn from this: when we want a state of mind to last, we have to act under its influence; when we want to forget it, we just have to entrust its dissipation to inaction.

The positive function of dreams is usually nothing more than a stimulus to the imagination. One can dream a lot without doing anything; one can even live in one’s dreams, enjoying oneself and truly feeling when dreaming. However, in the most common type of conscious dream, there is something that, if not exactly playful, is certainly free of the weight of real action. All this changes when the dream takes the form of a design, a purpose, which usually occurs when one gives up something for it. Here, the dream densifies, the dream already influences life and, to a certain extent, begins to materialize. It’s true, it’s true: it often remains unrealizable, or at least does not come true. That may not matter; the seriousness it takes on is enough to differentiate it from ordinary dreams and, above all, to decide.