A crisis is when you don’t want anything, and then you start wanting to want something.
That’s fine, but when you don’t even want to want something, that’s a crisis.
This is not a crisis. This is a disaster.
Film “What Men Talk About”
You look at Frida, the little bundle of energy, as she darts her eyes around, fusses, jumps, or runs, and you think about how her very existence here and now is a direct consequence of Hedi’s death. Frida isn’t even aware that the foundation of her life is built on the loss of another dog. She is a result, a continuation of a chain of events. Her breed was chosen with Hedi in mind, and where and how we got her was also influenced by our experience with Hedi. Even her bowl, collar, bedding, and poop bags are remnants from Hedi. Frida is a monument to Hedi. A monument, not an antithesis.
But if you dig a little deeper, you realize that Hedi’s death was a direct consequence of our desire to have a chocolate dachshund. In other words, we are the ones who indirectly caused her death. We specifically wanted a chocolate dachshund. We bought her from resellers because there was no other way. Living in a cage with those resellers left Hedi traumatized, leading to a panic fear of everything around her. We loved her, we took her for walks, and one day, frightened by either a passerby approaching from behind or a car horn, she jumped in panic into the road and got hit by a car. It didn’t even help that she was on a leash. Who is to blame and in what way is a pointless question. It’s all just an inevitable chain of events. Causes and effects. We acted no better than children who picked up a fledgling sparrow that had fallen from its nest and tortured it with their affection, unaware of where our desires would lead.
And so, in the end, Frida is the embodiment of our desire to have a chocolate dachshund. But how is that possible? Well, it always is.
There are carnival attractions based on the idea that our movements don’t lead to the desired outcome. Take the rope ladder, which is set up at an angle, with a prize for whoever can climb it. It’s not going to happen. We lack adequate feedback. We can’t predict the result of our actions, we get unexpected outcomes, try to adjust our movements, and end up with even worse results. It’s like trying to control a puppet without knowing how the strings are connected; sometimes you have to pull a string to make the puppet’s arms drop. It’s like having a tremor in your hands. The source of the tremor is inadequate feedback. The brain sends a command to go “a little to the left,” but it ends up going further left than intended. Then the brain commands “a little to the right.” It’s like learning to ride a bike with a handlebar that turns the front wheel in the opposite direction. Here— Video. Текст для перевода: ..
The lack of adequate feedback between our desires and their direct and unambiguous manifestation, which we are unable to predict, leads us to “go off the rails.” We experience stress, anxiety, and even more intense movements of desire. And an even more “drunken” result. Perhaps all the discomfort in life that we experience comes from the fact that we “want a chocolate dachshund but end up with a black-and-tan miniature pinscher.”
We have enough intelligence to understand that a dog’s desire to catch a bumblebee will definitely not lead to the outcome the dog wants. We can see that clearly. The dog cannot. But when it comes to more complex matters related to us and our more intricate desires and the behaviors aimed at fulfilling them, we are unable to see and predict the entire chain of cause and effect. Maybe someone smarter could, but we cannot.
Part of this phenomenon is described as “wishes always come true, but often not in the way you want.” Another aspect of this phenomenon is referred to as “fighting the symptom doesn’t fix the cause.” Some call it the “log paradox,” where you fall off a log because you’re afraid of falling. Others refer to it as “self-fulfilling prophecies,” while some call it “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish,” and yet another part is described in this. посте. …and so on. But overall, there are many more options, and they may not have a direct associative connection to the source of the situation we’ve found ourselves in—our original desires. Once again, chocolate dachshund → black-and-tan pinscher. And we are the reason for that.
And what to do when life “goes off the rails” is now completely clear. You need to want to stop wanting to want something (and even that is not so straightforward, not too eagerly, so as not to make things worse). By calming our impulses, we will also calm the reality that surrounds us. Everything will stabilize again, and we can gradually, one thread at a time, instead of all at once and in a panic, start to carefully understand the causes and effects, having the patience and calmness to trace which causes lead to which effects.
I want to add that often we desire things without rational reasons. We want things just like a dog wants to chew on a pillow. Just as a dog clearly sees that it needs to do this, we too engage in the same kind of meaningless activities. And just as the dog ends up with a torn pillow and can no longer sleep on something soft, we find ourselves at a dead end, having achieved goals that once seemed important to us.
Our entire life, the reality that surrounds us, is nothing more than a logical consequence of fulfilling our desires. And if we don’t like the current situation, we just need to… stop wanting to fix something (or everything at once). It won’t help anyway. Stop. Calm down. Start over, little by little, removing the “want” from the agenda.
Fig. 1. A black-and-tan German Pinscher puppy chewing on a toy shaped like a chocolate dachshund.
Thank you for your attention.