What can fuel the passion of a wandering heart? When you have failed to find support from those closest to you, the heart wanders! The fairy tale was born out of such wandering hearts telling stories to pass along heart-felt desires. For me, I searched for some philosophy that would help me understand the human condition better. It started with psychology, than history, than philosophy. I read for the pure interest in discovering a way to help me reconcile some of these vexing questions when my hearts’ compass was spinning.
It seems to me that many of us all have different sets of rules that we follow. In general I think we are best when we are in supportive and nurturing relationships, and we are worst when we have failed to receive these imperative bonding mechanisms that eventually passes on to future generations. The cultural differences can teach us much in this domain of study, as well as our understanding of human behavior and ethics.
I somehow found most of my direction purely by pragmatic motivation. Simply asking very fundamental questions I refined my search queries over time and countless social observations. I know that many people will derive alternative solutions for themselves and I can not speak for them, only my relationship with the world.
Much of our relationships are driven by our perceptions, emotional connections, and beliefs about how we are to fit into this earthly existence. We are creatures that have needs, we have dreams, and we operate best when we have connections with others that have our best interests in mind. The wandering heart is a profoundly observed phenomena in the human biosphere. Mythology, Poetry, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Et. al., all have common themes in their discussion about such occurrences. Keeping the heart from wandering is the trick if you are in a relationship, because of the correlation to find some satisfaction elsewhere if you are not having some need(s) met with the person you are in a relationship with. Human relationships are not the only reasons for a wandering heart I might add. Wanting to change your current situation whatsoever it is such as; educational, artistic, geographical, and many other instances are reasons for someone to wander in the realms of the heart.
When The Heart Wanders
I sit alone yet I’m next to you
How did we drift apart?
When did we lose ourselves my dear?
How did I lose my heart?
As a young man I vowed
To find my hearts’ desire
After a few rounds in this world
Found myself in and out of the mire
Relationships i found can be tough
But I’d rather fight to keep it
Teach us to learn better ways
Teach us not to say quit
When the heart wanders
We put ourselves in a different place
Wishing for a better deal
Wishing for someone to embrace
Jon met Joanie
Joanie met Tom
Another future lover
Another relationship gone
Why can’t we keep it together?
Why do we lust and fear?
Human’s are so fragile
Human’s are so dear
So I’ll just wish upon a falling star
And keep myself in check
I owe myself to be the best
And not to be a wreck
I’m not the type of guy that likes to wander around
I’m not the type of guy that roams from town to town
When the soul cries, our personal tolerance has weathered another trial. I voice a deeper form of expression that is not just an ordinary form of bereavement, nor is it just another melancholy place or a despondent desolation that is common to many people dealing with a depressed state of mind; The cries of the soul are unique to each and every one of us because we all have different ways of dealing with this inner pain. The human condition gives us an infinite number of examples in which we bring ourselves down to a primal form of mortification. There are many reasons for the soul’s demarcation of this circumstance. Every single human being has experienced something that they can all share among the community because we are all part of a feeling, emoting, thinking, people. We are reactive beings.
When we do not receive the essential and fundamental communicative expressions of human needs from others, our inner selves want to burst out and scream to the world even if we close ourselves off and say or do nothing. If you look closely enough, “we cannot not communicate.” The first principle I learned in a speech communications class which profoundly changed my life was that we as humans are expressive and our inner selves will always show signs (even if it is the micro-expressions on our faces that many people do not notice). This first principle deliberated by Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communications theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California.
One cannot not communicate: Every behavior is a form of communication. Because behavior does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behavior), it is impossible not to communicate. Even if communication is being avoided (such as the unconscious use of non-verbals or symptom strategy), that is a form of communication. “Symptom strategy” is ascribing our silence to something beyond our control and makes no communication impossible. Examples of symptom strategy are sleepiness, headaches, and drunkenness. Even facial expressions, digital communication, and being silent can be analyzed as communication by a receiver.
If we give credence to this principle, than I would like to direct the reader next to Abraham Maslow and his model of Human Hierarchy of Needs.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
We are expressive creatures. We create artistic expression and have a complex language that allows us to communicate in intricate ways. Maslow contended that we cannot reach a higher level on the needs hierarchy if are lower needs are not being met. It is my belief that when we do not have enough support in some of our psychological struggles, we will stir until we express ourselves in some way; a signal to the world that we are in some vexing situation that will lead us to cry out and emote this hardship. Our cognitive skill in negotiating this dilemma is ours to take ownership of. Sometimes we just cannot think or feel our way out of it. The cognitive dissonance will drive us to emote a message.
We find many examples of expression through music and the arts. Just some of the many instances where we can voice an inner dimension that can touch people on deeper levels. We can see when the soul cries out in a blues song and when the soul sings rejoicing in a happy ephemeral moment! Both polar dimensions that can have powerful expressive abilities but by in large they originate from the inner sanctions of the soul.
I use the soul as defined including our emotive expressive abilities along with our rational thinking abilities. We cannot treat the human being on just the logical rationale because we are more than just rational beings. We are feeling and expressive beings that have multi-variables in determining our conditioning and outcomes of behavior.
Each of us has an expressive nature that is determined by our level of skill in communicating the outcome. It may seem that some of us are just quiet people who do not flex these expressive emotional and cognitive muscles which may seem true, but on deeper levels I theorize that we all have this expressive nature, and some are better at concealing it than others. If Paul Watzlawick’s principle is true, than only people close to the less expressive people may be able to find their subtler forms of expressive communications.
Abandoned lighthouse at Point of Ayre, Talacre Beach, Flintshire, North Wales, UK.
Are we truly talking anymore in honest and open debates? We hear the many voices raining down on us from all sides but we have somehow stopped listening and stopped using our own better judgements to decipher and encode these messages we receive. The human mind is being assaulted by media and public relation pundits that is embedding through our cognitive logic pathways into our family, friends, and working associations. The age of the collective is upon us.
The handheld devices we all have used; bringing us closer to media feeds: television, radio, and internet feeds can support a cumulative logic programming that is shaping public opinion. This in itself is not a bad technology, but I would state that our own ability to think for ourselves is greatly impaired by mass amounts of this kind of programing. Our reliance of having an internet connection, or having a handheld smartphone device is distracting from how we once used to think; without the aide of such devices!
I’d wager that we have become a bit too dependent on such devices, and that our ability to think clearly without the vast amounts of inter-connectivity is changing our lives. How we formulate ideas, how we problem-solve, and how we interact on our own recognizance is a diminishing ability especially for the Millennials.
Did you know the average person spends 4 years of his life looking down at his cell phone?
Kind of ironic, ain’t it?
How these touch-screens can make us lose touch
But it’s no wonder in a world filled with iMac’s, iPads and iPhones
So many “i”’s, so many selfies, not enough “us”‘s and “we”’s
See, technology
Has made us more selfish and separate than ever
Cause while it claims to connect us, connection has gotten no better
And let me must express first
Mr. Zuckerberg, not to be rude but you should re-classify Facebook to what it is:
An anti-social network
Cause while we may have big friend lists
So many of us are friendless
All alone
Cause friendships and more broken than the screens on our very phones
We sit at home on our computers measuring self-worth by numbers of followers and likes
Ignoring those who actually love us
It seems we’d rather write
An angry post than talk to someone who might actually hug us
Am I bugging? You tell me
Cause I asked a friend the other day, “Let’s meet up face to face.”
And said, “Alright. What time you wanna Skype?”
I responded with omg, srs, and then a bunch of smh’s
And realized what about me?
Do I not have the patience to have conversation without abbreviation?
This is the generation of media over stimulation
Chats have been reduced to snaps
The news is 140 characters
Videos are 6 seconds at high speed
And you wonder why ADD is on the rise faster than 4G LTE
But, get a load of this
Studies show the attention span of the average adult today
Is one second lower than that of a gold fish
So if, you’re one of the few people or aquatic animals that have yet to click off or close this video, congratulations
Let me finish by saying you do have a choice, yes
But this one my friends we cannot Auto-Correct – we must do it ourselves
Take control or be controlled, Make a decision
Me?
No longer do I want to spoil a precious moment by recording it with a phone
I’m just gonna keep them
I don’t wanna take a picture of all my meals anymore – I ‘m just gonna eat them
I don’t want the new app, the new software, or the new update
And If I wanna post an old photo, who says I have to wait until Thursday
I’m so tired of performing in the pageantry of vanity
And conforming to this accepted form of digital insanity
Call me crazy but, I imagine a world where we smile when we have low batteries
Cause that will mean we’ll be one bar closer – to humanity
~~Prince Ea
I am not a proponent of reversing technology, only one of etiquette! How we use what is available to us is up to us. I remember having the conversation with a friend during the reign of advances in file sharing technology.
When people downloaded copyright protected files without thinking anything was wrong because it was possible to do, was during a time when such legal issues were in its infancy. File sharing did not ask the proprietary question from possibility! Yes, there is an ethical question involved here. The possibility for making a transaction over a computer begs the question…just because we can do it, does it make it right? Before any legislation disrupted Napster’s file sharing universe, Napster did change the way we do business. The digital revolution single-handedly put tower records and other retailers out of business.
Thus so providing copyright protected proprietaries to further the advances in digital marketing such as Apple’s iTunes platform, we were launched into the full-blown digital music, and movies age.
The point is that just because we can do something technologically, does not always make allowances for legalities, or other ethical issues. I believe the same argument can be applied to the “torrent” file sharing system still going on today. The collective stream of technology will always produce something before decisions are made for its agreed upon use in society. I would also think it appropriate to make the controversy of the F.C.C.’s direction in “net-neutrality”. This is another frighteningly Orwellian prediction that is shaping before our eyes. Despite the Edward Snowden disclosures and the Julian Assange Wiki-leaks information we have our work cut out for us to do.
If the government is not here to help us, then the only conclusion is that we are on our own with whatever remaining tenants of the constitution that are still alive.
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