A world without attraction is nothing but a messed up Tower of Babylon.
It’s one of the few genuine things that happen to us and take hold of our actions and thoughts, direct and give meaning to what we do, make us go through hell, come back, take a nap and then climb our way to heaven.
Even in marketing, PR and advertising, attraction is a powerful tool used on the masses. How can you resist what attracts you? You wait until time makes it easier for you to handle the emotions that seem to possess your behavior.
Unconsciously, attraction to others or other things will make your free-will mean NOTHING. As unreasonable as it is, attraction is NOT a primitive psychological mechanism. Do you really think your psyche would be so focused on something based on primitive motives like… the need to survive and reproduce? Isn’t this a bit too simplistic and quite unfair? Just because its so powerful and apparently irrational, attraction shouldn’t be dismissed as primitive, immature or unreasonable.
And most of all, they love those differences that become symbols of power, influence, social desirability and status. It is natural that in selfish competitive societies the dominant strategy would be to rule out the others by proving that you are not only different, but that your difference has something that anyone would love to have.
Modern people tend to differentiate themselves through commodified symbols of human value, wealth and status. This is mainly why over the years, after a long period of time in which people did not have access to so many things like they do now, the profile of a consumer is that of a person who wants to prove something and find meaning in what they can afford to buy, no matter how they manage to buy it.
For the mindless consumer it does not matter that bottled water tastes the same no matter what the brand is. It does not matter if that biscuit with extra cream costs more than a poor person would spend in a day; because that extra cream proves how special and powerful he/she is.
There may also be fancy and trendy mindless consumers who are so into specific media&socially constructed products, they may even dedicate a year of their lives trying to be the best fan of a cultural temporary by-product, like a superstar, a game or even a movie. While that person does her best to be a great fan, hundreds of people are dying because they didn’t eat for days. Actually they didn’t eat well enough for their whole lives to even have the power and energy to imagine the proportion of consumption that some other people enjoy just across the globe. It seems those people have so much food they even use color and shape to make it even more attractive for their apparently advertising – abused senses.
I do realize how lucky I am I am still alive and still able to have a decent job in a decent place of the world. It still amazes that the word “rich” can take unimaginable meanings even for me, not to mention the poor people trying to survive from this day until tomorrow.
I have got to take a little time,
A little time to think things over.
I can’t go further. One step into it and I’ll break. Please wait for me. Even if you will forget everything about me, just know this: I have to stop now and do it my way. On my own. I’m still strange. Just like any other stranger.
Lets just say we’re sailing in parallel universes somehow represented by a similar line on your world map and mine. The line is so thin you can’t decide where to stand, where I stand and where we should be.
The potential controversy of our relationship, when we first meet each other, as strangers, crawls on your sailboat and mine and there is a vague feeling everything could collapse.
A relationship is more like a battlefield
One has to carefully consider the conditions, climate, the eventual changes that might occur, the resources one relies on and the forces that come into play once the battle has started.
It is not necessarily a conflict, not at all. Nonetheless, the common denominator of the relationship as such may be, in the simplest way, THE TENSION.
Me and you interacting implies a certain dynamic, a certain imbalance, a certain exchange of information and emotions. This creates the tension which shifts the status quo towards an unstable state on a common ground which I call the battlefield.
There is a battle, sometimes a war. Sometimes explicit, sometimes tacit and strategic.
There may be no conflict, just THE TENSION. And both of us wants to conquer something: either a piece of heart or a piece of soul. We may very well just be at war because we can’t stand each other and we cant share the common ground upon which we have initially met and started our relationship.
At times and most usually we come to an agreement and define the boundaries of our relationship.
Again, we consider the general conditions, climate, changes that might occur in time… the resources we have and maybe the common goals we may share so that from time to time we could just make room for some cooperative behavior.
Cooperation is sometimes the best war practice in our social world.
After all, the selfish genes we all share had naturally evolved to make the best out of all our hedonistic, self-oriented, competitive tendencies, relationships included.
Touching is the explicit content of our unconscious thoughts; especially the thoughts that we try to hide.
You touching me is mind blowing. It takes me to another dimension. It’s all about who we really are and the relationship created between us.
What makes your touch so powerful?
Usually one cannot touch another if there is no eye contact. Our intentions and thoughts usually precede our actions, whether spoken or mimicked. There is more to your touch than there is to what you say while touching me. The touch of your hand is as eloquent as a testimony and as profound as an eye glance. Touching you accidentally is as vibrant as my most intimate thoughts read out loud in front of a microphone.
Whether I hate you or love you
Whether I respect and admire you or profoundly despise you, my touch will tell your body EVERYTHING.
Touch is a very powerful tool. That is why it is so important in any kind of human interaction, including sexual.
Thats why people say “Let the body do the talking”.
That is why people who like each other seek each other’s body. They need to touch each other so that they feel all that there is between the two of them.
You are to me what your touch tells me about you.
To me, trust is when our bodies talk with each other openly.
I feel like a risk-maniac on relapse sometimes, except that risk to me is pushing the limits of proper interpersonal behavior. I’m just fed up with “what you should do/what you should be like”. I stick to the common sense until it ceases to pleasure my cognitive senses.
If I were a feeling
… I would be called restlessness… What would you be, if you’d be a feeling?
I am very fluid in my behavior. I’m either calm and serene, like a whispering mountain spring… either alert, vivacious and sometimes chaotic, like a deluge in a rainy day…
Being myself needs to obey the laws of nature. That means I must be… mostly unknown and mysterious to myself, though anybody may claim that they know me and explain me very well. I must evolve, I must die and be born again. I must be wild and still easy to be tamed by anybody who is strong enough to take care of me for some time and then let me go.
So what’s hell? For someone I know hell is not feeling the warmth of love because the beloved is too far away and nothing can kill that pain.
For some other person hell could be allot of doubt, hopelessness, imagined or real problems, disbelief, grief or a great loss.
I know hell is pretty much everything I have, when something goes wrong and I feel like a fugitive in my own world. Hell could be when I’d rather run from myself because my own thoughts hurt so badly.
For the past few years I experienced hell in a more peaceful way. For example, you know, when you feel like you don’t wanna see anybody because if you do anything will irritate you so much, you might just start a fight out of nothing and not end it unless you go to sleep – well tat doesn’t happen to me anymore.
So my hell is quite poetic right now. Pain crawling up on me, entering every pore, penetrating every fiber of my being.
I guess what would best describe my hell would be Katie Melua’s song – It’s only pain.
And why do I go through hell right now?
Because we both know we can’t go through it together. Because it won’t happen and we know it.
IT is a placeholder for whatever you choose.
Yes, it hurts to lose you. I wouldn’t have ever had you either, but knowing I already lost you is quite terrible. It makes me think what am I worth if I can’t be meaningful enough to have you in any way at all. Of course, there is this bias – that I should have you; that I should make you mine some way or another. Actually, it’s all about a stronger relationship. When there is a stronger connection between things, both parts own each other, in the sense that whatever one part does is due to the action of the other part.
So why does it hurt that I don’t have you?
why does it hurt I don’t influence you in any way? Why does it hurt I don’t have a closer relationship with you? Why this exclusive pain?
Of course when we become fascinated by something, we’d like to make that thing our own and somehow acclaim it as part of what we have done or part of what we can do. It should be the same: if I look up to you, if I admire and care about you in a special way, I’d definitely love to say… you know… he did it because of me; he is like that because of something I do or say.
Now that’s fascinating (because you already are) and flattering at the same time.
Isn’t this the reasoning behind any crush?
I mean, you’re sure there will be no special relationship with that person, but the fascination and desire is still there.
So it hurts you won’t have the honor and delight to influence the person that fascinates you so dearly.
Have you ever realized that emotions can drive you safely
…towards something you wouldn’t have achieved otherwise? Do you remember when you did something because you had so much anger and hate deep in your heart, that the only thing you could do to survive those stabbing emotions was to focus on something that you wanted to do, but lacked the motivation to do it?
…Do you remember when you started to work more because you rejected the idea of belonging to that wonderful working class which gets to an office, works their ass off and then gets by with a compulsive shopping spree every weekend? does this sound familiar?
…Do you remember that it used to drive you crazy and make you feel stupid – that your parents always took their time to explain you how things work for real, in life… and that… in opposition to that, you decided to just be yourself? And look at yourself now: you’re pretty fine, aren’t you?
Well there are things in life you cannot control
Such as emotions. Or motivation. Or desire, dreams and your own chatter inside your brain. And somehow, whether painful or uplifting, this emotional burden that you carry around with you… does somehow drive you somewhere. It’s like floating on this big ocean and you try to control ship with just a wheel and some hand-drawn map that you carry around… when you know you actually carry this weight with you and it makes the ship lean in one direction.
Oh well
The point is all these emotions come from somewhere. I don’t know… maybe a fight, maybe something went terribly wrong… it wouldn’t matter. But after the storm, you know your ship is heading something.
It’s not that it kills us in time, it’s just that we like it
In a group you don’t have to know everything. If the group has a functional purpose, such as that of being a good sales team in the sales department, you can depend on one another. I mean, John can be good with key account clients and Charlotte an have it all during business meetings. You can be at your best if John arranges a meeting with some decision maker at company X and if you make sure that Charlotte gives a helping hand.
Wouldn’t you love what makes you look better?
And since you’re really nice with everybody and you know when to switch from “fun” to “nasty” and then “demanding” – some will try to please you or you may try to please them. And the day goes on thinking how awesome your intervention was during the coffee break.
Of course, only if…
You don’t have any meeting that day. During meetings you have to listen to your colleague talking about something you already made a decision about, on your own. Ah, yes, and the chatter around you – your colleagues talking about the guy who’s doing most of the talking during the meeting.
That is groupthink in a more subtle way
And you know its not the best thing that could happen to your sales team in the sales department, but at least it makes things work smoothly.
I have this strong feeling that most of the time that I have/day – I spend it @work or doing something related to my work. For so much time work has been a great part of my life, so great that there are few things left that distract my attention from it. But there comes a day when…
You realize that you need to de-focus from work so that you can concentrate on building something valuable. My actions in my work-group are mostly group oriented and sometimes group validated. I have worked on the latter part, so that what I do is mostly the result of my decision. What I need to do next is generate knowledge and do something significant. This should make my work worth it
Investing time, investing effort, investing self discipline.
The strategic investment at times conflicting with personal socially constructed needs… makes the whole process more difficult.
I feel sometimes the feeling of self accomplishment is achieved through more that one general goal. To be specific, one might need a family, some good friends, some fun and some sort of awesome job to feel fulfilled.
I feel I have to focus on one, maximum two of these. The combination of it all wouldnt work. So the question “How have you been lately?”
… could only have one meaning to me:
“What have I accomplished lately, through my work?”
I’d be terribly dissapointed not to have an answer to that.
