Pain and pleasure on a spectrum, they can come in an IV drip or in a crashing flood. Both swing the pendulum back and forth in a predictable manner.
Sleep gets mildly disrupted, wake up to a somewhat humid room your eyes are crusty, back feels a bit sore.
Grateful to be here, grateful to be alive.
The mood wall. It plays news, music, uses a slight filter for the mirror (depending on where your trajectory will go for the day). It makes you look more gaunt and baggy, or maybe it tightens your skin to uplift your spirits before you walk out.
The shower water temp is a bit hot; the eggs are a bit overcooked.
You go through the same motions; these are pre-programmed as they have created a predictable dopamine ride to prepare you for the day and harness your cortisol awakening response. You dry your hair this way, put on your socks just so. You meditate. Since your minute motions are predictable, the smart environment knows how to tweak these to change your internal feed.
Traffic patterns show a delay you weren’t notified about, at work there was a last-minute meeting scheduled that you didn’t receive notice of a system update.
Maybe the barista doesn’t remember your name, though you’ve been there several times over the past few months. Maybe the pretty girl’s eye you’ve caught doesn’t happen to look up today, your chance to meet fades away again.
But what if you locked eyes and smiled? Fleeting moments of beauty- that’s what gets sealed in. “Core memories” If you use Instagram and adopt that vernacular. Smells, noises, swish of hair and a side look. That feeling hits you unexpectedly, whether scrolling aimlessly on the toilet or stuck in traffic. Hopefully not at the same time.
Those are what the hippocampus imprints, replays, and yearns for forever more. The forgettable laundry moments require discipline though, they are what are championed. You have to put in that dopamine groundwork to prepare you to appreciate the perfect gaze, that song that sends shivers, that sexual moment where you feel like a fucking animal and forget about the world.
You need the predictable to appreciate the moments of unexpected beauty. But what if predictable is pain skewed, and you are constantly fighting for the baseline? Using that IV drip from your phone to fart you along from 10-1, then to 1. Caffeine, Adderall, anti-depressants, Instagram, Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs leading you through the day. But the ups and downs turn into a seesaw attached to a jet engine. Up and down until your brain is whiplashed. No wonder It’s hard to fucking feel ok.
It’s all relative, all based on your programming. That day is set by the day before. The synapses clock in and clock out. They’ll eat what you feed you them. They grow diabetic from TikTok, or turn into David Goggins if you live off grid and make straw dolls for fun.
I’ve smashed the seesaw before. My ass got sore, my eyes were baggy, and I was having self-righteous arguments with imagined foes in the shower.
So I sat in a jungle staring at the wall listening to the rain. I stroked a female’s hair and held in a delicate fart to not break the silence. Sweat dripped off my face into rocks as I labored up a mountain at dawn. I congratulated myself for doing insanely normal human shit because I had forgotten what it was. Unplug the seesaw, instead, make it a bike ride over hills. Never easy, but not so abrupt.
Wanderthoughts 