The Places that you’ve come to fear the most

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This is one time, and this is one time
That you can't fake it hard enough to please
Everyone, or anyone at all
Or anyone at all
And the grave that you refuse to leave,
The refuge that you've built to flee
The places that you've come to fear the most

Dashboard Confessional- The places that you've come to fear the most

It’s funny how our mind, or heart to be exact, or whatever you called it works. Usually, every living creature has the tendency to stay away from something that “uncomfortable”, something that bear or will bring harm or potentially threatening to it’s self. For example, if we take a guinea pig, a lab rat (that white cute rat), they were placed in the environment with 2 kinds of bait placed in that environment. One bait is a big cheese, which connects to a cable with high voltage that will electrocute when the bait is touched. The other bait is a small cheese with nothing on it, no holds barred, no string attached, just a small cheese.

Through the experiment we learned that at first the rat instinctively will choose the big cheese over the small one. And after being electrocute once or even more, depending on the brain maybe, the rat will choose the small one, even after the bait position swapped, changed or placed in the different position. Maybe instinctively or it’s carved in their mind that they should avoid the bait. In the case of humans, well it’s a differently different story. Maybe because we are a more complex organism, or maybe because we are the most perfect creature (at least that what was claimed by some religion), or because humans are attached with intelligence and other creature that walks the earth are didn’t  have (totally arguable).

Humans, with the so called intelligence tends to acts defying their instinct. We could call it “death defy by will”, “mind over matter”. When our mind say “gave up”, our so called heart tells “don’t give up”, we usually choose to follow our heart (which is just another alias for instinct if you ask me, same shit different package). So what do differentiate humans from animal, the extra stubbornness? Or So called intelligence that more persistent than animal for defying the instinct?

Our mind, our heart, our memory or whatever you called it is fascinating, for example, a group of people were shown 10 various childhood images. Nine were really from their childhood and one was fake. Their portrait was pasted into a fairground they never visited. 80% recognized themselves to be there in the fairground (which never existed in that people life). Our memory or whatever it is can be twisted, manipulated, by circumstances or even by our self in order to protect our self.

Take love for example. Some people know that some love are just plain stupidity, we knew from the start that it wouldn’t works (maybe difference in religion, status, financial level, or whatever, bottom line: it wouldn’t works). Most organism knew when to stop, but human are just persistent. We refuse to surrender, we choose to carry on and make the most of it, even if we knew that it would end miserably, but we just want to do it for some reason that we don’t even understand. And when we fail, we always had a plan B that protects us from get hurts. Yes our mind or whatever it is, had a plan B, the state of denial. We could shut the whole world and protect our self from get hurt. Didn’t we all always use the term “I’d rather be with her, or have her even just for a moment than never had a chance to be with her”, it’s crazy if you think logically. Why bother to try it in the first place if we knew how it would end?

Another crazy example of love is when we get rejected, sometimes so badly that the one we adore insult us cuz s/he disgusted with us. It hurts but we kept coming back for her until we realize that s/he just not into us that s/he probably happier with somebody else. Than our plan B say “If this makes s/he happy, it can’t be that bad. If s/he happy, I’m happy for her/him”. Hell, even sometimes our mind or whatever it is could block our bad memory, not amnesia, it just block our bad memory so we don’t get hurt.

Probably cuz our mind has it own way of thinking, it has it own universe, it own way to work that beyond logic or beyond our understanding. Maybe that just the way it is. Sometimes our mind and heart work in the opposite way, but sometime their also work in the same way, it’s the check and re-check mechanism so we wouldn’t regret the decision that we will made, you know, didn’t sometime we ask our self about something? You know, sometime we called it sub conscious, or sometime we just called it heart, or maybe it just our mind. Hey, people said that we only use 6% of our brain, wonder what the 94% do? That maybe what we called our heart, our mind, our sub conscious. It is a great machine that allow us to face everything or just runaway from everything, to think of happy place every time we need an escapology or even sometime allow us to enter the place that we’ve come to fear the most.

Aditya Prathomo
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