"He made me love him without looking at me."

I've been thinking a lot today. Some of it about what I wrote in the previous post.

Is it good thinking? I don't know yet. We'll see, in the eventual. I have to combat instinct, so I need to learn to really master my own mind. It's amazing how many things I can relate to the topic.

I haven't really done my homework this week, it's going to kill me either tomorrow (in the form of a test) or on friday (in the form of two, possibly three, tests). Instead, I've been reading Jane Eyre, which has really caught my eye this past week and a half. I only have a hundred pages left, and it is all entirely fascinating. I never knew Bronte could be so hilariously witty (as well as ideally, romantically, perfectly sentimental, as the quote in the title shows), I've heard, but I've never truly known. Today, volume two, chapter nine, was perfect. I couldn't stop grinning ear to ear and laughing in study hall. It was priceless. I'll take another moment later on to share these quotes as yet only alluded to, if you're unfamiliar with the book. Reading Jane Eyre creates a sort of calming influence on me, time flows by without a glance, and I am able to be lost in the softly swirling, watery smoke all around me. It is a welcome escape from unwelcome thoughts. I lose myself easily in this enigmatic other-reality. I hate to see it end, for what will I read afterwards? I hardly know yet. I have a feeling it will be "The Picture of Dorian Grey," or . . . I don't know. We'll see. Time knows.

I believe I almost like "Jane Eyre" better than any Jane Austen books. Jane Austen is almost too distant, too separately ironic and sardonic. Charlotte Bronte, in writing Jane Eyre, created a heroine we can really feel. She makes you see every aspect of her personality, good and bad, see every good and bad event. She makes you actually see her characters as human beings, and make you love and hate them at your own will, instead of tainting them with black or white. Their shades are subtle. Rochester is understood in his selfish need, his desperate grasping for, something pure in his own hated life. He tells Jane, early in their peculiar relationship, "Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre: one of the better end; and you see I am not so. . . Take my word for it, - I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that - not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent." You might despise him if you did not understand the full reasons, the full depth and thought behind his actions. With Bronte, you get the entire picture (despite the novel having been written in first person), which makes this novel so much the better. It is, indeed, more complete than anything Jane Austen ever created (and believe me, I never knew I would in any way scorn Austen's books). Her characters are splendidly human, with such doubts we are all plagued with, such hopes and pains.

Anyway, I need to do something in the way of accomplishing something for today rather than pretending to accomplish something while just musing away at nothing (puzzle that, if you will). I need to do a little homework, if I can. I will, then, end this now.

May a good night and good day follow after, in whatever succession they please.

Behaviors and Habits

Forewarning, this is long. Possibly incoherent at times, or repetitive. The reason being that I originally wrote this in my notebook, killing my knuckles for a little over an hour. Regardless, I need to share this somewhere. Here is as good as anywhere, I reckon. This comes from a somewhat related topic which I’m “studying” in my psychology class: learning, conditioning, reinforcement, and so on. A facet of it struck my mind and I began writing on it, soon finding I could not stop.

An Essay on the Training of Behaviors and Habits
Taught behaviors – behaviors and habits learned from the consequences behind them. So what habits are so unsavory within us? What behavior do we need to be rid of?

Simple things in the minds of teachers. The clock gets close to the bell, the bell rings, students get ready to go either at or before. From elementary school, where the teachers wished students to be prompt, we will not dally for fear of being late or reprimanded, scolded for tardiness. Similar with when they call your name for attendance, you answer automatically and immediately to avoid being marked late, to avoid being punished or yelled at (or even embarrassed by being singled out in class).

How does this translate to life? The willful actions of our day, the purposeful choices. Are they truly willful, or, in some part, reflexive, reactionary, without thought? How much of our day is learned instinct, or primitive, natural?

You’re hungry – so you eat. But you can train your body to be hungry at certain times – with varying amounts of food (less and less, or always more per day) – whether you truly are hungry or not. If your body is used to it, are you truly in need of something to eat, or do you simply want it because you usually get it?

In childhood, as a baby, you start out, at mealtimes, where you’ll only eat what you’re hungry for, what you want. Dessert comes after a meal, whether a wholesome meal or a McDonald’s Happy Meal (it makes no matter). As you grow up, you get dessert if you eat such and such amount, or if you finish or clean off your plate. We are trained, then, to eat everything we have at supper to receive the expected reward – dessert. As we grow older, we clean off our plates, hurriedly or slowly, with no thought to whether we are full or not. We do so with our minds fixated on one thing, one objective: what we get after. We pay no mind (keep track of this idea) to how we get there, we simply want it (in this case – dessert) so we do what we have to in order to get it. Sometimes the reward is playtime, a certain toy, the permission to watch a show, the ability to finally go out with your friends. Again, it makes no matter. The reward is still enough to train your mind to eat quickly to receive it.

This is similar, as well, to other habits you might, unknowingly, be trained to perform. Just as you can train yourself to be hungry, you can train yourself to wake up at a certain hour, or to become sleepy at a certain hour. You get up early instinctively for school or work, and thus (in time) your habit of sleeping in on the weekends is hindered, prevented, or made harder or impossible. You stay up late during vacations, and thus you’re not tired when you need to go to bed early for school.

Back to the food and hunger issue. There is also the social side of this gratification. How easy is it, truly, to eat healthy in a household full of fast-food junkies? To eat sparingly in a home of binge-eaters? You may pull it off for a while, but they’re very set in their ways (unfortunately). One individual amongst many holds only so much sway in the way things are run. Mob-rule, eventually, inevitably, rules all. The single individual succumbs to the overwhelming majority, unwillingly at first. Over time, their mind assimilates, they adapt and slowly evolve. In the course of things, in a general sense, they become just like those they resisted. The adoption of habits is unwilling in the beginning, but the body is trained well and easily. To survive, to get on with as little resistance and strife and unpleasantness as possible, we eat what they eat. This is a general idea, but true. The mind is unwilling to be alone when conformity is possible. Over a large sum of years, a married couple gradually comes to resemble each other, an owner resembles their dog (either in personality, temperament, habits, or appearance), friends resemble friends, family – family, and so on. Individuals, together for longer periods of time than brief or cursory, tend to adopt similar habits and behaviors. This can be good, and it can be bad. Stronger individuals tend to hold greater sway over what the outcome will be, over what the prevalent habits will become. It is to be hoped that the stronger individual has the better habits, but it is not always the case. Thus comes about the inevitable distortions in our genes, our personality, and our instinctive habits. It happens. With great difficulty is it avoided.

This might explain something toward the “Freshman 15” where incoming freshman are suddenly exposed to a larger population of individuals with undesirable habits (in this case, eating the wrong food, drinking, etc, to create an unsavory weight gain), and thus succumbs to the majority. Some might term this peer pressure, I say it’s more instinctual, the fitting in and the need to. Peers need not apply pressure: it’s habit to conform.

So to attempt prevention, to allude to the blocking out, the extinction, of the habits we do not want, the breaking away from past and surrounding (ie. other people’s) behaviors, what must we do? Incorporate negative results, sharp and painfully conscious consequences? How?

There is a drug for alcoholics, to reduce their instinctive habit of turning to alcohol for solace. It is a fact that they became addicted, over whatever period of time, because of some reason or other, because becoming drunk provided escape or created a positive emotion or desired result (the reasons vary far greater than I can provide of my own imagination). The drug, however, makes them sick, nauseous, makes them throw up, if they drink any alcohol. This is meant to train their mind, to create in them an aversion towards the carrying out of said habit. A negative consequence to reinforce the unconscious, and also conscious, action and reaction. The body and mind are trained. But the participator must be that: a willing participant. After all, a certain amount of awareness is gained in maturity and creates stubbornness to change, stubbornness to accept and believe the needed results. This absolutely affects the entire process.

Awareness is both a good and bad influence. One must be able to influence one’s awareness, not simply one’s actions, or the consequences attached, in order to generate true change. There must be a sharp, poignant, highly memorable and influencing consequence for the consequence itself to have true sway over the mind. In addition, a negative consequence must be lasting, it cannot be fleeting or of an instant, in order to leave an indelible impression and memory. If the negative consequence is fleeting, the likelihood of its memory influencing the individual's behavior in the future becomes extremely unlikely.

Take someone who is allergic to something, and digests or comes into contact with the source of their allergies, an event which can be fatal, or extremely painful or unpleasant (in some circumstances). That person then learns almost immediately to avoid the source, when aware of what caused the unwholesome, un-enjoyable experience in the first place. Same with a diabetic: lack of/too much of one thing or other makes them perhaps so ill they need to go to the hospital to avoid death. As a result, they then learn what to eat, and what not to eat, and how much or when, to keep from experiencing the same event. Someone forgets to look both ways before crossing the street and they get hit by a car, perhaps break a bone, get rushed to the Emergency Room. The experience, often highly traumatic, prevents or conditions the individual, influences their reflexes, so that they refuse (either consciously or unconsciously) to cross the street without assuredly looking both ways first. Painful, traumatic, vivid events or experiences create a strong reflex. We learn immediately, and are aware (whether willfully or unknowingly) that we want to do all we can to avoid having to undergo the same experience again.

It is the same with one’s actions causing the death or extreme injury of another, the shock of the result is often enough to strike most painfully in one’s mind, and establish a change in one’s behavior to avoid the event in the future. Drunk drivers, kids playing with guns, criminals, and overnight visitors to jail, the list goes on endlessly. But, in usual cases, if the event is unpleasant enough, one’s behavior evolves to change and decrease the possibility of a recurrence.

Is it possible as well to condition individuals to eat better foods? Introduce another factor, sickness, nausea, a hospital visit or other potentially painful memory, to prevent them from indulging in the wrong things? Change behavior by giving one a harsh, negative consequence?

As long as the reactions are able to sneak in under awareness. If we are aware of any possible method of getting past the negative result, if we have any memory of a time when the repeated indulgence of a food produced no negative result at all, it is not possible to change behavior. Consciousness must not be able to intrude on reflex, on nature, and one must be able to change nature itself to secure overall change. Permanent change – acquired only through assured constancy. The wrong action, the one you don’t want to occur, must without doubt occur in conjunction with a negative result. Otherwise, the mind is trained to extinction of the positive action, and all process reversed.

You must be always in awareness of negative consequence if you indulge, or all will be for naught, all to no avail, the positive habit extinguished and thought useless. A smoker will smoke forever unless they get cancer and know they will live only if they quit smoking (provided they actually want to live in the first place). If their condition neither improves nor worsens, or in fact continues to worsen as it had before, they often will continue to smoke or take up the habit again. If their condition becomes better, they will continue with the new habit of not smoking at all. Relapse into the old habit is often less likely the more the positive result continues. Sometimes one’s own awareness and consciousness intrudes on our better instincts, and the results will matter little to the habit the person indulges in. Thus, it might take some trial and error, some few times, to truly instill the new habit and one’s better, stronger, awareness of the better quality to it.

The negative result in relation to a negative behavior always influences the fostering or extinction of a positive behavior or habit, provided it is consistent and immediate, so as to see and know, with absolute conviction, that the two are related, are consequential, not coincidental, are significant and a matter of course, and not simply another unexplainable event.

One will continue to smile if smiled back at. If repeatedly frowned at instead, the action will cease. It is similar with a class clown, a recluse, or any number of individuals and their actions and behaviors, as well as their attitudes toward it all. If the recluse has only unpleasant experiences or memories when they do go outside, the memories are likely to only reinforce their reclusive habits. A class clown is laughed at, found entertaining, and he is egged on, by this encouragement, to continue with his antics. Reverse the results, and through inculcation the habits and behaviors will also reverse.

Avoid generalizing the stimulus, the catalyst, too much, or the influence of the negative result, and especially the negative result upon the undesired behavior and its influence upon the negative result, decreases into inconsequentiality, into nothing, nullifying the process entirely. Do not have any great number of actions (ie. more than one) create the same negative consequence, or the individual will not relate the specified, undesired action with the negative result. The likelihood of the individual connecting or relating one action with another result becomes less and less over time when generalized with too many preceding actions altogether.

This, as I think of it, attains, then, a similarity to something that happened with me rather recently. The beginning of a desirable habit, of instilling said habit, which was hindered in the process by an experience that resulted in a visit to the hospital. Hyperventilation (a scary, sharp and vivid memory), in which the original behavior (or what I had thought to be the true catalyst) was the introduction of unfamiliar equipment I had never used before. I, in some recess of my mind, attributed the use of that equipment to my terrifying experience. As a result of this negative consequence to the positive behavior, I subconsciously, unknowingly, weaned myself off the equipment and the use of it for fear of a repeat episode. I felt my issues with breathing, my conscientiousness of such a basic function, were a direct result of the behavior. Thus, this positive behavior and habit (using the work-out equipment) was virtually extinguished, a process helped along by the lack of positive results in weight loss, which had been the original, desired result and positive consequence all along.

So if the desired habit is to exercise, to produce the desired result (ie. losing weight) something needs to be added to increase both the likelihood of the positive result in carrying out the correct behavior and to increase the negative quality to the negative consequence for the carrying out of the wrong behavior. Rather complicated. Essentially, we need a harsher, more memorable and distinct negative consequence when we do not perform the desired behavior (ie. exercise). If you don’t lose weight when you exercise, you won’t see the point to it. You will not directly see the positive consequences (feeling better overall) because you are more focused on the obvious result, and thus won’t exercise further. If you injure yourself nearly every time you do exercise, you won’t want to exercise at all, no matter that the exercise itself is not the cause for the injury. You need some significant positive result to instill the desire, the need, the instinctive want, to exercise. Loss of weight, better grades (significantly better), more positive attention (in relationships), compliments, more energy, etc. If I was becoming more tired, getting less sleep, as a result of exercising, I was then less likely to want to exercise. There needs to be pointed, obvious, and positive consequences to pursue and maintain a good habit and behavior until it becomes second nature, instinctive, habitual.

The positive result for the positive behavior and the negative result for the negative behavior must coincide, or else the individual will be in a perpetual mood that denigrates the desired, eventual result. Spoiled in the positive or miserable in the profuseness of the negative. Either way becomes too extreme for continuation, such extremes become too much for the parties involved, and the chance of perpetuation decreases exponentially. If spoiled, the individual may take the positive results as a matter of course, they may take the positive results for granted, and eventually cease the positive behavior. I need not explain why the ‘miserable’ side would not be allowed (in the individual) to continue. These two extremes must be evened out. Failure creates greater desire to succeed, but there cannot be too much failure, or the desire to work towards success becomes less if an individual comes to believe that the work toward success creates no greater possibility of better results. If you fail more than you succeed, or you succeed only minimally, will you actually want to continue working? More likely, most individuals would lose the desire or will to pursue and maintain the positive behavior when the negative result occurs more frequently than the positive, or when the positive results satisfies less and less.

In essence, behavior can be taught and changed, provided the individual is aware of the change, is willing towards it, and provided there are consequences (both good and bad) for every action that said individual is attempting to alter. Behavior can be changed in every instance, but it becomes so very second-nature, so mindless and instinctual and habitual, that it takes effort and purposeful action to begin changing at all. Over time, the mind should adopt the desired habits, and thus change permanently, for the most part, the natural behavior of the individual. Of course, these things vary, as well. I speak only from a singular view point. That is the very definition of an essay in any case: an analytic and interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view. You see? I did my research. I have learned, through childhood experience, to make sure I don’t use a word in the wrong definition or context, to not attempt to distort the actual meaning of a word. Of course, things still slip my mind, but that is neither here nor there.

Parachute

I'm glad I stumbled over this song. Two versions below. Regular, which is the hyperlink. The acoustic version is the one embedded. Enjoy.

She Is Love - Parachute

Acoustic:


The band is called Parachute, formerly Parachute VA, formerly (again) Sparky's Flaw. I think they were started in 2001, but I don't know exactly. It's been rather hard to track this band down. But, I still enjoy them immensely. I listened to them sing this song for New Year's Eve in Times Square, and they still sounded great. I love it when I find a band where the main singer can actually sing, or at least, sounds like he does when recorded.

Falling in love . . .

Can't Let Go - Landon Pigg

Also, this song (below) makes me smile, a lot. Very nice voice, quite smooth and perfectly perfect. Wouldn't you agree?

Writing.

I keep trying, trying and trying and trying, and yet, still, I cannot write a damn word that I want to. I have so many poems stuck in my head, blocked from the world, and they're all jumbled up in my mind and my heart and yearning to be written. But I can't. I try, I do try. But I can't.

I have random lines sketched all over my notebook, but still, nothing works. Nothing I write are the words that I want. I'm getting tired of it, but still I try. Here a line, there a phrase. I read so much else, hoping for something to spark that perfect word and set it all in motion. I listen to music all day, wishing something will make me see the poem I keep missing.

But it eludes me. That poem. It eludes me, as everything else does. And I am getting tired of it. I am getting annoyed, and frustrated, and depressed, and desperate, and just plain tired. Exhausted. Bone-weary. Where is the vision, the clarity of sight, that I have so dearly missed? Crushed beneath the steel-toe boots he insists on wearing specifically for me. And who is he? I don't know. I ask myself, and I don't know. I ask, and try, and fail, over and over again. It's starting to feel unstoppable, inevitable.

PS

"I know what I'm doing," I tell myself. "I know exactly what I'm exposing myself to." I have a memory, I know all the shit he's done, and the shit he hasn't. Each memory highlighted and outlined in its own right. I may be vulnerable, but . . . I can't help that. I just have to do this. I know no other way.

Daddy Dearest . . .

I sent him a letter last monday.

Was I an idiot to try? Am I a fool to think that there is a human being in that wretched man?

Do I make myself seem even more pitiful every time I do this?

Answer to all of this?

Yes.

Daddy dearest, daddy dearest, did you run away from me?

. . . yes.

I really want to get angry right now. I'm working on it. In the meantime, I have a playlist on my computer which is helping. (Ironically enough, the playlist from a mix cd that I decided not to mail to him. Pathetic much?) By figuring mail times, if he even does write back, I'd get a letter on monday.

Do I seriously expect one? Nope. As my mother said, I'm simply 'beating my head against a stone wall.' I might add, 'repeatedly.' He obviously doesn't care, so why the hell do I keep doing this?

. . . I tell myself that I still want to give him the chance to redeem himself, no matter how ridiculous I might appear in the whole farce. I tell myself that I don't care, but maybe I do. Whatever the truth is, I do know one thing: I'm waiting on something that won't ever come. I have two months left before I graduate high school. I haven't spoken or heard from him since before 8th grade. Does that answer my question? Yes. It does, without reserve.