Moments: we all have them

I wanted to take a few to give voice to moments, both enduring and fleeting. Often I go through life, dividing, subdividing, parcing only to come to the same conclusion repeatedly. Here I will digress, as an introduction. If you want to get to the meaty stuff, and skill the intellectual crapola, please continue to the next section :) Wherefore, I am so absorbed by moments that, frequently, I can completely alienate myself from 'living' and experiencing. Detachment is healthy, under the right circumstances, but I feel that I spend a good portion of my time experiencing and then reliving and evaluating through reflection. Reviews of experienced times, in themselves, are moments of reflections. However, I am taking the time to review another moment. So, this leaves me with quite the intellectual conondrum: Is the moment spent reviewing a previous moment displacing a moment through a mental preoccupation with passed events. Do you lose the present moment? Am I really wasting half my time reviewing and reliving passed moments? Ojala, do I review my review? However it works, I justify the whole thing through the following mumbo jumbo (yes, that is technical jargon): (1) Choice is often the derivative of passed experiences, (2) Each experience is purposeful, (3) some experiences have such an impact that your psyche fractures while you are a child, (4) the resulting protection mechanism created subliminally manifests in a life lense according to childhood experiences, (5) ultimately, every experience will help inform some decision within your lifetime -- clearly some more than others. Hmm, maybe that didn't come out the best, but it follows the enneagram. The enneagram is the oldest personality typing and is, truly, amazing if you can conceptualize and use what it has to offer.

Moments of Common Connection
My favorite moments, especially when meeting people, is the instant when you find something in common. Mi once told me that I have a knack for finding connections with people even before I meet them. This to the point that she suggested I could probably predict common ground even without talking to the person. Watching people act and interact has always occupied some part of my demeanor. I've always enjoyed contemplating the varying thoughts and processes people have when walking, buying, talking, conversing etc. It's very clinical of me, even calculating.

I'd like to rely on the surface explanation of clinical observation of people, but it really comes from a need for connection with people. It's not even that I need very many deep connections. More frequently, I find that mere connection, even in a superficial matter, satisfies my needs for finding common ground.

Anyways, I think common connections are so strong for people because they satisfy that initial Maslowian need of Relationship - the need of belonging to an identifiable group or grouping.

C and I spoke briefly about this the other day. It seems that small interactions like SMS or emails from people you know well, or even just met, make a rather large impact on your mood. This is especially true when you have some vested interest in furthing a common interest or connection with a person. For instance, I've met several people since I've moved here. There are some people who text me and my first response is, "cool, I like getting text. I will text them back later when it's convenient." There are others who text me and, truthfully now, it makes my day. I think it gives credence to the addage that "it is the little things in life that makes a difference."

Moments of Emotion
I have so many of these in a day I don't think I can recall half of them. In a sense, having an emotional moment is no more than affirmation that I am alive and functioning. I would guess that many people don't recognize half the emotional moments in a day. People are even emotional when they sleep. Maybe we aren't meant to recognize moments of emotion because they are so frequent and changing.

Moments of ------
Still more bothersome, are those moments when you are there but not there. I'm not sure I will do a great job of presenting this concept, but I'm pretty sure there are times when you can create a disconnect so stong that there is just ---- . I tend to have these pretty frequently, while they are cool and all, they are a little disturbing when I think about them interms of experiential components. To experience is to perceive. Perception is a nuerological amalgum of interactions and displaced ions. I'll find my text on this and link to it later, but really it's uber chemical.

When I have these moments I can be completely surrounded by people. I can carry on a conversation. My limbs work, sometimes even better than when I think about doing something. But the disturbing part of this is the fact that no one else seems to notice. I'm not sure I always notice until I'm reviving from one. It's strange though. Usually when I'm 'reentering' the experiential plane, I am separate from myself. My voice sounds odd, and I smell things I wouldn't usually notice. Most strikingly, my mind 'catches' me up by fastforwarding through whatever I am doing to get me up to speed. To be perfectly honest, I kind of enjoy the catching-up part. What I dont' enjoy so much is this constant idea of reviewing. Where was I for that few seconds? How does my body know to go on standby?

In any event. The above are my deep thoughts for the day. IT BURNS US,IT FREEZES! Anyways. No more babbling. Maybe something about stockholm in my next one :)