Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.” ~ Rumi
One of the most difficult places to swim is in the insides of someone else’s head. However, it is quite common. Just look around to see widespread signs of this habit.
“She’s like that!”
“He won’t compromise on that!”
“They’ll disapprove and bad mouth us!”
Is there anything wrong with making such assertions? Can it cause harm to you?
What you see is what you get!
“Getting” things as they are rather than using word soup to frame things that are out of whack prevents blindness. The above kinds of summary assertions say more about emotional tangles inside than about the people that are ostensibly the subject of these pronouncements It is not just that we incorrectly calibrate the reality. These kinds of statements will become self-fulfilling prophecies. There will be results and consequences that are in line with the imagined reality because of incorrect judgments and decisions. We might unconsciously behave in ways that may influence the people we hold these theories about to actually behave in line with such theories. The predictable, “see, I told you so!” is likely to follow.
All this stems from a philosophical error called “the fallacy of reification” in which Dr. Frankenstein makes his nonsensical assertions come to life. And we get, in the real world, what we “got” inside the mind. As we “thought” we would.
But what if we could somehow stifle our imaginative and linguistic prowess, and choke down the ability to brew strange-tasting word soup? Even if we fail to “get” the reality, we will at least know that we don’t get it. That could be a better place than if we think that we understand something but actually have it completely wrong. In other words, would it not be better to be in a conscious state of not-knowing versus in an illusionary one of “knowing”?
But there is something else to keep in mind too, besides self-awareness about our word-world discordance: reality is not always knowable to the extent that we would like.
Many things cannot be “got”
Going back to the commonly observed penchant to swim inside the recesses of someone else’s head, if we had a little humility, we’d realize that this is not a place that is as easy to plumb the depths of as we might have fancied it to be. This inscrutability is not hard to see even in one’s own self. Do we always fire on all cylinders? Do we never feel emotional pulls that may cause difficulties? Do we wish that we didn’t do certain things we do? All of this hints at a lack of complete grasp over oneself. If one cannot understand, predict or manage oneself fully, how then could we ever hope to accomplish this extraordinary feat inside others?
These pursuits of getting into people’s heads is not just unrewarding. There is significant opportunity cost. We divert our mental resources away from the things that actually matter because our minds are grappling with a potentially useless and hopeless feat.
But it’s even worse than that. If our minds get muddled with theories about what someone might think, feel, etc. based on false beliefs about who they are, or what they are capable of handling, these things intrude into the options we have at our disposal. We may find ourselves doing things that stray from our original purpose. We may find ourselves making compromises that prioritize unnecessary and trivial things at the expense of much more important things.
Fortunately, none of this is necessary. But only if we have the mindset of “good ‘nuff” for these kinds of slithery and slippery things.
Many things don’t need to be “got”
In many things, we do need to be aware of the people around us. But only to an extent. We operate in this manner only if we realize that people have agency!
“Agency”, per the Oxford dictionary, is “the ability to make decisions and act independently”. What this effectively means is that we cannot control what other people think or what they do. They are independent. They have a range of options at their disposal that may be much more than we unilaterally deign to bless them with, aided and abetted by our ever-promiscuous imagination. They can handle more things than we may think them capable of. And, all hell will not break loose, in general, despite what our expansive imaginings portend.
Of course, all this does not mean that we do whatever we please and fail to be considerate or thoughtful. But thoughtful is not the same thing as “thought-full”, the affliction that is, unfortunately, not too uncommon.
What matters is that we focus our resources on singing our song, and that we put our heart and soul into it, and that we avoid getting distracted by our thoughts going to places that they shouldn’t go to, such as swimming in other people’s heads.
Sing sweet, in key, and with the rhythm and drumbeat of life. Your life. Avoid the deep and murky waters of other people’s heads.
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. Contact: balaji.prasad@newcranium.com.
