Putting your Best Face Forward in Everyday Life

I do not usually like to put a face to, or rather put my face on, my blog. It may be called “my” world, but I am an ideas person and prefer them anytime over looks, profiles and status updates. That said, here you have a photo of mine. Yet I am not perfectly honest in this picture. It represents a half-truth or a certain play on words / pictures.

The pilot here in cyberspace that has my face is at the same time both me and not-me. It has been attained through photo montage as I am not a pilot - and never have been - nor have I actually posed for this photo. It is a juxtaposition of two different situations, the picture was taken in another context and comes from another situation, yet with the help of technology I have created (or rather my wife has done it for me) a real-looking false image of my self.

The aim of this post, however, is not basking in my looks or technological prowess;it is more about a certain realization that came to me. It may be commonplace but it is nonetheless important to me and hopefully to my readers as well. As I was posing for photos that I was planning to put on a work-related site, my wife suggested I should change my attitude because apparently it showed negatively on the photos.

I was merely looking serious and was not thinking about anything in particular when the photos were taken. When I saw the resulting photos I was surprised about how serious I looked. In some of them I actually appeared scared while in others I even had the look of a serial killer! Needless to say those photos were not chosen for my work-site.

However, on the other photos where I looked as if I had just stumbled upon a brilliant insight or epiphany, where I was thinking happy and uplifting thoughts if you will, my face looked completely different. There was a certain glow, joy, relaxation, and even confidence seeping through. It was slight yet noticeable. So thinking you are confident actually makes you look confident indeed! A precious piece of advice for the job world out there.

And I kept pondering about it. If our face “shows,” as the song about being happy and clapping your hands incidentally states, then why not put our best face forward at any time of the day. It is only a slight adjustment. It is related to the idea of positive vibes or thinking. Why not look our best by thinking the best thoughts.

Others can really see it all reflected in your face. Of course, one should stay away from fake and superficial smiles and there is nothing wrong with feeling blue once in a blue moon. But as they say, smile and the world smiles back at you, why not try that approach once in a while. And suddenly, once you realize how your inner world connects with the outer physical appearance both you and the others will appreciate and benefit from that interaction.

Feeding your Feelings with Negative or Positive Thoughts and Thinking

We all experience, from time to time, strong negative emotions, such as anger, hatred, and envy. And we almost always feel bad about it, immediately reproach ourselves and feel guilty afterward. Rarely do we rejoice at such feelings, and if we do, we may be in danger of being put and locked away.

The problem is that when we feel negative about negative thoughts and emotions, it does not work out like mathematical equations where two negatives make a positive. It is rather like a fragmentation of the self that is at war with itself. It does not, as a result, help our cause. Feeling bad about a negative feeling perpetuates negativity. Instead of ridding yourself from the undesired feeling, you inadvertently make it worse.

So what should be done? Try this out as an experiment: Embrace your negative feelings. Appreciate them. After all, the fact that they are labeled and classified by us, society, and religion as “good” and “bad” does not preclude that they are still feelings after all. They may be opposites on the scale, but they still have the same origin.

Nevertheless, a strange thing happens inside when you stop fighting against your negative side: It slowly evaporates. Your negative side wants you to pour gasoline onto it, but when you deal with these feelings gently, they dissolve. 

Just like in a heated argument, the violence escalates because of continued use of insult and injury. Should one of the participants break the chain and suddenly show a sign of true gentleness or utter a harmless absurdity, the other would be confused. The other would probably claim that you are completely out of your mind, but the conflict would most likely not terminate in a brawl.

Also, next time around, your outburst of anger may be at a decreased level. Naturally, you will probably never really eliminate negative emotions, yet at least they will be easier to control. As a swami once said, you cannot stop your thoughts from coming, but you can learn how to surf.

One of the ingrained difficulties of our own Judeo-Christian society lies in our image of sin and our complex relationship with God. In the eyes of God, we are all purported to be sinners. What a negative perspective! By chastising yourself for your sins, you will continue the vicious cycle of negativity. 

Human beings are definitely no angels. Far from it. And yes, one should always strive for the good, whatever that may mean to the individual under the circumstances. Yet unfortunately, religion and religious authorities often emphasize the worst in human nature.

What about love and forgiveness? Does not God forgive our sins? Did Jesus himself not protect and give shelter to a “sinful” woman when he claimed that no one was exempt from sin?

In fact, we have a split image bequeathed by religion. God as a loving and forgiving authority and God as the punisher. I have elsewhere shown this discrepancy by comparing the ideology behind Moses and the Old Testament versus Jesus and the Gospels.

Along the same lines, I believe we would achieve much more control of our so-called sins if we actually forgave ourselves once in a while and gave us space and room to feel those negative emotions. In this case, positive thinking is a valuable tool, but it dodges the issue. If you just use positive thinking to combat negative ones, you are back to square one, meaning more thinking with more fragmentation.

Instead of feeding and fanning the flames of the beast within us or punishing ourselves for our misdeeds or supposed transgressions, we should embrace them and forgive ourselves. It does not mean nor justify that we acted in the right manner. It just means that everybody has to face the inevitable adage that nobody is perfect. But at least we continue trying.

Space-Continuum, Time Travel and the Illusion of Free Will

Do we have free will? If we do, how much free will do we have? Obviously, we can never have absolute free will because of the limitations that genetics (nature), the environment (nurture), our personal experience, our past, and other conditions of our surrounding impose upon us. 

Hence, there may be only a limited array of choices that we have at a particular moment in time; in other words, we do not have an unlimited set of options. There are many things that will not even occur to us in any given situation due to those constraints mentioned earlier.

Let us look at the following mundane scenario. I wake up in the morning, get up and have eggs for breakfast. Now usually I do not choose when to wake up; it is often based either on external circumstances, such as noise or alarm clock, or internal conditions, such as my body, regular sleep cycles or nightmares. Put differently, I usually do not have control over when I wake up so I have no free will or say in this matter.

Furthermore, my breakfast is also limited in its choices. I can only have what is available in my fridge / kitchen at the moment. Technically, I could go to the store to buy more items, but then again knowing how lazy and often hungry I am in the morning I choose to have what is there already.

Based on my taste palate and my desire to have a hearty breakfast, scrambled eggs would be the only option and it would be accompanied by a cup of coffee with a spoonful of sugar and no cream. I refuse to have bacon because of my concern for high cholesterol. 

As can be seen, in this simple example, I may believe I have free will, but others with enough information about me and my routine could quite accurately predict my behavior.

Now let us look at free will in terms of time. The arrow of time points forward, and it is generally assumed to move along the line of the past-present-future continuum. Notwithstanding, we experience the world from the crucial crossroads of the present; the present turns immediately into the past, while we have a sense of an unknown constantly looming future ahead of us.

What about my breakfast options if there existed the possibility of time travel? If I could travel in the past, I would be able to change the present, to choose to do otherwise by actively selecting to have cereal in order to show that I could act differently from how I had acted in the first place.

This is rather different from the fact that I would consciously choose now in the present to have cereal instead of eggs to prove my free will. One could say in this case that being led to prove that I have free will I purposely acted against my inclinations. That would mean I was compelled to act against my inclinations, and it was not really my independent free will. Anybody could have predicted my act of defiance.

In the case of time travel where I could choose a different outcome from what had actually happened, I would have the option to either a) do as I did in the first place (have eggs) or b) to do things differently (have cereal instead). The fact that I am not compelled to do as I already did once opens up a certain freedom of choice. 

Put differently, I have the ability to do otherwise and hence change the future. This is known as the “alternative stories theory.” It was a premise that “Back to the Future” explored in a playful manner. It is also one that is fraught with difficulties, such as the riddle if you travel to the past and kill your grandfather, would you still exist?

But let us assume I go back to the prehistoric time of the dinosaurs, how could I possibly change the course of history? Whether I know that the meteorite will hit the earth and make them extinct makes no difference: it will happen anyway.

Reading the renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking I realized something crucial. If we can go in the past or future, we assume we would still be the same. But Hawking claims that one alternative theory proposed by physicists tells us that we cannot transfer information along the time continuum.

That would mean if I go in the past I will become my past self, therefore not have knowledge about future events. Simply going back in time I might be deleting all the future information and data and find myself in the exact position I was when I was in that past situation. Hence I would make exactly the same choices and not be able to exert my so-called free will.

Second option, what about future time travel? It would be similar. I would incorporate all the data, basically filling in all the gap by the time I arrive where I will be. In other words, my future will be my natural present. 

Although I have traveled forward, it is like forwarding a movie. All the events are going to happen the same way, and I will be in the same position, only that time has moved much faster.

And yet another point. The past is often seen as fixed or rather transfixed. So it becomes solidified, and we cannot change the facts. What I did in the past everyone knows, and yet, what I will do in the future remains still fluid and at best can only be a prediction with the current means and limits of science.

But if I move forward in the future, then my past will be my future from the current state. Yet according to the movie example I was giving, if my future is my past, then it means that it has been determined already. By this what will happen in the future has already passed, and I have no choice or say in the matter no matter what I do!

That would then mean there is no free will although I have the illusion there is. Another illustration would be the sum of all the physical forces that are exerted on objects and matter in the universe. I cannot defy gravity, for example. A planet cannot choose which way to turn. 

We are equally in a web of interconnected events that define us both from outside and within. If we have free will, it may be so limited that it may be insignificant; if we do not have free will, then we may be even nothing but actors with lines that may be written by a supernatural creator!

I am quite fascinated by the concept of karma, but what if karma is set not in this life, but is a consequence of another life. If in another realm, one of the spirit, we had free will and, as a result, we must live out a scripted life in order to be free again. 

These are just hypotheses and mind games, and I am just sharing them with the universe in a moment of euphoric philosophical thrill. You must believe me when I say I had no choice to do otherwise!