The Pearl: I Didn’t Do It
Written by Martin Vidal | 08/15/2021
Food for Thought:
Why Does My Trauma Make Me Feel Unclean?
I wrote this article to explore what, to me, is the darkest part of the experience of trauma: a sense of guilt. Trauma makes you wary of people, even cynical, and it acquaints you with evil in a way you can’t forget. People with relatively calm lives have always seemed to live a little more in the sunshine than I can now. They seem so free of the brooding, as if they’re completely unaware of this world’s sad underbelly. Worst of all, they seem more capable of love and trust than I am, which frankly just brings me to view them as if they’re somehow “good people” in a way that I’m not. It’s a subject that’s very personal to me, and one that I feel necessary to share with all of you.
Read it here.
Personal Development:
The concept of habituation is one of the most important pieces of knowledge for self-improvement. Habituation is the process by which our emotional response to a stimulus dies down after repeated exposure. This is why you might get tired of your favorite song after listening to it over and over again. Eventually, your emotional response diminishes as you continue to come into contact with the same stimulus for too long.
I like to frame this concept as a curse. Habituation is why sex with the same person gets boring over time, even if they’re the love of your life. Habituation is why you can’t eat your favorite food every day without getting sick of it. Habituation takes all pleasurable things and slowly makes them less pleasurable. I always begin by discussing the negatives of habituation because people so readily believe it when it’s framed this way—they see examples of it everywhere in their lives.
However, habituation is really a blessing like no other. It’s a fundamental change agent underlying human psychology. It allows us to adapt, and adaptability is the key to resilience. What happens when someone close to you dies? When you first become aware of it, the news tears a hole right through you. And when the days pass, the thought of them being gone forever still touches you to the quick. But after weeks and months go by, you find that the thought doesn’t bring on the same hurt it once did. They say, “Time heals all things.” It should be, “Habituation heals all things.”
No matter how sad you are, that sadness will eventually subside. If you’re afraid of public speaking, all you need to do is go out there and do it over and over again, and in time you won’t be. The same goes for a would-be doctor who has a fear of blood or the would-be traveler afraid of flying. Our emotional barriers are built to be worn down; all we need is repeated exposure. If you believe in the curse of habituation, then believe in the blessing as well. Lucius Seneca wrote, in On the Shortness of Life, “You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.” Chase your dreams knowing that your fears are just a bluff, just walls of mud built to fall.
For more content like this, see The Ambition Handbook: A Guide for Ambitious Persons.
Book Quotes:
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
“Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.” (p. 43)
“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.” (p. 44)
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching...” (p. 56)
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.” (p. 100)
“I remember you saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions—that they are always made too late.” (p. 104)
“The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance.” (p. 221)
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” (p. 222)
You can find the full book here.
A Song I Love:
I Didn’t by Amy Ray (feat. Brandi Carlile)
This is one of my all-time favorite songs. Musically it’s wonderful, and I love listening to it even when I can’t hear the lyrics, but the lyrics are superlative. More than telling a love story, it touches on one of the central themes in all of our love stories. The lyrics
But someone broke your heart
I didn’t
Someone played too hard
I didn’t
Someone stole your dreams
I didn’t
Someone got there a long time before me
speak of the long chain of suffering underlying human relationships. We’re each hurt by someone, or multiple people, and it leaves us guarded, defensive, and, inadvertently, primed to hurt others. It’s as if we’re all being subjected to some pain that has been traveling from person to person since time immemorial.
Love is about the mutual, emotional reliance between two autonomous people. It is allowing someone the key to your nerve center. It only takes one person who has gained access to this sensitive area of our mind to act recklessly to change us forever. “Someone broke your heart…I didn’t.”
Listen to it here.
A Tiny Thought:
Selflessness is a more effective selfishness.
Until next week,
Martin Vidal
Author of The Ambition Handbook and Flower Garden
Website: www.martinvidal.co