The Cognitive Condition Of My Brain Is Currently Compromised

How could anyone be sure if who they are is what they see in a mirror?

Memory is a wonderful selective. We cling to the peripherals in moments of stress, little slivers of reality that construct a defence against the trauma. But what is not of any certainty is the memory itself. Memories change because how we want to remember them changes. People who feature in our lives never play a consistent part. In this manner, we are all storytellers, because everything we witness becomes fiction in a retelling. We remember people and their actions in context of how we feel about them in a particular moment. Experiments! We are all each other's experiments in an encounter.

Why do we ask questions? If you just listen long enough, you hear everything you need to know. Observation is a rewarding conquest. I've watched people absorb each other's pasts until they could no longer distinguish between beginnings and endings, between truth and falsehood, ownership and possession. It's actually a great dissolution of privacy as they raid each other's lives in order to make sense of their own.

'Whoever has eyes to see and ears to hear will be persuaded that mortals can hide no secrets. He whose lips are silent speaks with his fingertips; betrayal threatens from every pore. That’s why the task of making conscious the most hidden business of the soul can be certainly resolved.'

What do we know about ourselves?

I have made some leeway with distinguishing between three commonly misused words: Emotions, Moods, and Attitudes.

I've concluded that emotions have physiological correlates – it can be seen from gestures, facial expressions. They often lead to an action, and result from a specific event. They beg the attention of an audience. This, readers, is what we practice in front of a mirror, because this is all we can control.

Moods are seemingly more complex. They have no sense of time or direction, and are not necessarily expressed physically. They also seem to have no apparent cause or source. A result of hormones, perhaps?

Attitudes definitely have a more cognitive, conscious component. It's a switch.

Reactions are not as appreciated as they ought to be. So much can be read in a glance. We need to learn to listen with our eyes. What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

“No amount of observations of white swans can allow an inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” – David Hume

Certainty is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences the certainty must have a feeling of the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional certainty will destroy a man.

I want my past transposed into an extravagant storyboard with the reassurance of plot. Like you, the reader, who demands the story, a reason to turn the page, I want an ending so that there could be a beginning.