You've got a nasty bite... what's it like?

Imagine a snake, any snake...

Do you believe this snake hunts down humans? Like it directly seeks them out? I think we can all agree, no, otherwise snakes would be banging on our doors trying to get in.

Ok, now imagine yourself as that snake... What are you doing all day? Doing snake things like lying around, looking around, finding shelter getting warm, looking for food, looking for a mate, having snake babies...

Cool, doesn't sound too far from the average human year...

Keep imagining yourself as this snake.

Now you're minding your own business and a human steps on your tail.... what do you do?

Probably lashes out and goes to bite the source of the pain yes?

Did the human do it deliberately... maybe, but maybe not too. Either way, it hurt getting your tail stood on and without thinking you wanted to protect yourself.

Switch back into a human mindset... When someone stomps on your 'tail' accidentally or deliberately, what does your 'bite' look like? What is your venom made up of?
It's really important to know how we inflict pain upon others.

If you can't figure it out or you don't think you have a 'bite' start with what you know for sure you don't do. But you have something, you do something.
And if you still can't think of anything, if you wanted to hurt someone in a socially acceptable way (where you still looked like the good guy) what would that look like?

Suffering is optional!

I decided pain doesn't always equal harm, sometimes enduring pain can be for your good.

Quote by haruki murakami: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Is this too much apart of who you are?

It is not necessary to be loyal to your suffering.

Is radical change more painful than the pain in the now?

Is it more inhumane to make something change drastically even if it's for the better then to just leave it how it is knowing that they can handle it because of it handling it for such a long time?

My Pain Is Worse Than Yours?

Who's pain is worse? The person feeling it.
S. Phelps

Fear is hiding in places you don't think to look

The same fear of relationship pain is paralleled to the 'fear' (masked by lack of desire/stubborness) of receiving 'help'. Both involve opening up and risking the chance of being let down once you let them in.

Hurting People Hurt People

If someone is mean to us, we take it personally,  but what if you knew that someone had just lost a loved one like a spouse or a parent? Do we still take it personally,  or do we rationalise that their pain is being transfered onto us? There's a good chance that most mean deeds spring from outside pain and unresolved feelings.
Hurting people hurt people. Try not to take it personally, otherwise you'll be hurting too and may pass that on.

Comfort in Pain?

I have a different angle thought....

If physical (coupled with thought) pleasure is more random and takes more and more to receive/enjoy it and our bodies change,  could physical pain be comforting because it's consistent? In a world and mind that is so unsure and inconsistent, could apart of the pain appeal be because it's guaranteed? Because it's simple and it's the same in any language?  And if you do get used to that level of pain,  isn't it much easier to control and increase the pain than to increase pleasure?
So if you are one of the individuals that 'get' this world and take delight in it,  in a way you are the luckiest of all because you'll enjoy it for the rest of your life if you choose... Guaranteed!

Pain, Punishment and Pleasure

Pavlok electric shock punishment

Crowd funding

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pavlok-the-habit-changing-device-that-shocks-you

Promo video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYvpvz_bzmI

I read an article today that really stood out.  I looked more into it and it's basically a company that wants to keep you accountable to yourself by punishing you when you don't do what you say you want to do.

Pain is iinevitable in life,  but I believe you can choose to a degree where when and how that pain happens. 

I like the idea,  there are two types of people,  those mainly driven by reward and those mainly driven by undesirable consequences...  'carrot or stick' philosophy. Both work,  it just depends on the type of person and the choices you make.

An explination I found:

First, you could dangle a carrot in front of the donkey, fooling the donkey into thinking that if he pulls the cart far enough, he’ll get to eat the carrot.

The second is to prod the donkey along the road by hitting him with a stick.

If the donkey is motivated by the ultimate reward of a carrot, the stick won’t be necessary,
but if he’s not really all that interested in carrots, then the stick will be employed.

Either way, through reward or through punishment, the cart driver gets what he wants.

Contributors Justin Taylor

Science says that pain and pleasure are in a lot of ways, intertwined,  a paradox where pain causes pleasure. 

http://m.livescience.com/27462-relief-makes-pain-feel-good.html

Some philosophers would say there is no pleasure without the contrast of pain.

I could go on as pain and pleasure is a passionate topic of mine,  but I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes. 

Haruki Murakami: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Loss

This thought came about when I lost a very detailed post yesterday, the android app likes to delete all the text you've typed when you stay out of the app window for too long... but I digress.

Loss is a part of life, but I think it happens way more than we acknowledge and we (in the english/western world) seem to not know how to handle it... what is loss anyway?

The emotional aspects associated with investing and the negative sentiment associated with recognising a loss.

That's one definition I looked up....
My definition... loss is the absence or withdrawal of something you perceive to be of value.
the key word for me is perceive... you can ague 'reality' all you want, but you can't argue someone's perception, because it's theirs.

How do you handle loss? I'm trying to learn to do the pop psychology method of ...

>acknowledge>feel>time>acceptance.

but how much time do we need? and what is time anyway... what makes it time? lots of other losses or other events... why does it take so long for the brain to let go? I think when it's a part of our identity... when that's lost, it is very difficult to just grieve and let go as you need to build or fill that loss with something new, and that does take time for a lot of (to me) obvious reasons.

I had a very close friend ... distance themselves from me, for reasons that to me don't seem plausible, but regardless, this person was a big part in shaping my adult hood and how I think today... and now they are not there... a lot of time has passed and the worst thing about the whole process is, i'm not sure what I've lost... I have friends come and go, but this has really effected me. Another thought is that, although I am a massive advocator of 'hope'... there are rare circumstances where it is counter productive and maybe that's in play here... I can't do the process of grief because I have hope that it will be all back to how it was. so hope is the deferrer of the grieving process... Then I guess it just comes down to choice... what do I want to do? what can I control? and if I do move on... what's stopping me from letting them back in as time passes again?

So for me maybe there's a couple of types of losses...
Those losses that are absolute, ie, someone I cared about died.
Those losses that are intangible losses ie the early period of a job prospect that you don't ever hear back from.

So the first style of loss... for me, is easy to deal with, I use the modern Psych method, but what about the second style? I guess apathy solves a lot of problems, but some things you just invest to heavily and all your doing is pretending not to care. I guess this is why in the dating world it's 'safer' for your mental health to be dating multiple people to avoid caring too much about one person.

It doesn't sound like much of a solution, but maybe by trying to figure it out how to move on is one of the best ways to move on..... maybe.