Concerning drugs, Wonderland, religion, and Don Quixote

On Facebook, Hubpages, and so many other sites, the prompt given to inspire us to write, is “What’s on your mind?” A more appropriate question, it seems to me, would be, “What’s your mind on?”

Neurobiology, and in particular brain chemistry, are two things which have fascinated me for several years now. I’ve read probably over fifty books about it, watched many of Robert Sapolsky’s lectures posted on youtube by Stanford University. I have written papers, and given presentations, and applied things I’ve learned to nearly every subject in my classes, from the relationship of rhythm and emotion, to the relationship of mental illness to artistic genius.

Interests are armored vests; we use them in defense of our selves.

The problem with this, is that I have a vested interest. I always have a specific use in mind for what I learn. I always want to prove that the delusional person is not crazy after all – that Don Quixote really is a noble knight, that Wonderland really does exist, and that hell really is as exciting as Dante says. I want to prove that the point of life is not happiness, because that’s something that I’ve never found; and if the point really is pleasure, then I’m wasting my breath trying to speak to a world when I should be using it to inhale or snort… mysterious substances.

The parts are greater than the whole.

But what we all forget, is that truth can never be expressed but by a paradox. Everything that’s real, almost makes sense logically, but does not quite. Love for instance – why do we value love? It is mostly pain. It is a lot of heartbreak. It is a messy, chaotic thing, that can never be controlled, but that can control us. Yet we give into it – we embrace it. We spend our lives seeking it. It makes us happy; we give up a piece of ourselves, and, if it’s true love, come all the more into ourselves for it. The parts are greater than the whole.

We try to prove a bit of reality to ourselves, and we can’t, and so we believe that the world is not such an exciting place after all. Don Quixote is not a knight; Wonderland does not exist; and the Inferno can get boring if you have to read it for school. But, we are trying to prove the wrong thing; we are trying to prove a final statement; nothing in this world is a final statement. The fat lady sings every time the curtain is raised, but it never means the show’s over. In living life, like any bad behavior, there is always a way to escalate.

Don Quixote is not a knight; he is far more noble than one. Wonderland does not exist, because that would imply that it exists in this world; it is far more alive than that. It comprises a different world, one more real in many ways than the one in which we spend most of our time – it is in the imagination and the mind. Hell is not the most exciting thing – Paradise is. (Just perhaps not in Dante’s Divine Comedy.)

Seek, and ye shall find.

Most of the time, we are both right and wrong, in a sense. Truth is a paradox. We cannot find truth in a blunt and concrete statement. We cannot make a statement that cannot be disproved. (Even this one.) Logic can yield anything you want it to, if you only know what you want to prove. You have to know what you’re looking for before you can find it. Seek, and ye shall find. Logic cannot provide an answer of which you’ve not already conceived before making the argument. It is easy to go in circles.

That is the role of religion; to describe things that we ourselves cannot define.

The relationship of fairy tales to religion

We can learn a lot about religion from fairy tales. Just like this world, the fairytale versions have rules. Each story generally has one rule, something that seems bizarre and ludicrous at the time, like “do not forget to invite every fairy to your child’s christening,” or “do not throw stones at glass houses” – or, relating to religion, “you can eat of the fruit of any other tree, but not that one.” And then, someone always says, “that’s stupid and it doesn’t make sense! I’m going to do it anyway,” and then goes and does it anyway and regrets it, realizing that it was tremendously stupid thing to do. The mortal is then cursed by the fairy, the glass house shatters, and Adam and Eve get banished from Eden. We lose something – a life that was complete and fulfilled, becomes somehow less.

But Sleeping Beauty not only wakes up, she ends up with a handsome prince. Three little pigs rebuilt the house out of straw, wood, and bricks (at least I like to think so). The human race gets redeemed, in spite of Original Sin. We never regain what we lost – whether it be years, a house, or Eden – but through making up with the person (or Person) who made the rules, we come into our own, and become something better than we were before. We become more like ourselves. When we follow a religion, we follow bizarre and seemingly ludicrous dictates – but they describe the world better than we can without them. And they prove to us that we’ve gone through everything necessary to be who we are today.

[Credit goes to C. for that last line.]

Becoming Don Quixote

Finding ourselves is rarely entirely pleasant; it rarely makes us happy along the way. The point of life is not pleasure, but love. (Even delusions suit us better than hard drugs.) The point of life is not happiness, but love. You need light and dark to make a picture; the world is more accepting of this in a painting than in a person.

People like Don Quixote get labeled nutcases, when they try to be something we think they aren’t. And sometimes it’s for the better; only a few people who jump off of buildings are actually superheroes. But sometimes - oftentimes, actually – the label is not correct. Labels are like logic – they never actually describe the truth. People are more complex than paper stickers and sharpie.

The point of love is life. The term “life” can refer to only a living individual, but also living things considered together (ie., “plant life”) – Same goes for love. A relationship fails if you become absorbed into it without retaining self identity. Love means not losing yourself; but coming more into your own by giving yourself selflessly to another person.

Deal dreams, not drugs.

So, the opening question – “what’s your mind on?” In my case, not mysterious substances. Except for the mysterious substances with which I was born; my brain chemistry is probably an amusing thing, considering that I am a musician, and we tend to be dealt interesting hands by nature and genetics. But, no – my mind is on life. …and occasionally, the impossible dream.