After talking about the curse of being able to read someone’s mind, I’ve thought of a curse that is much worse – and one that we can all do. Guess what someone’s thinking. Make assumptions. What’s the old saying? Assume makes an ass out of ‘u’ and me. The mind is an incredible generalisation engine (i.e., it’s an expert on assumptions). This is a good thing and a bad thing.
It is this incredible ability to generalise that ensures you can sit in chairs you’ve never seen before because you recognise the general concept of a chair. It’s this same skill that lets your mind build a complete picture, a belief, a feeling or a thought out of practically no information whatsoever. It just helpfully fills in the gaps spun together with whatever mood you are feeling and creates a complete story. And if you’re feeling a bit lonely or sad, then guess what kind of story you’re going to get? Yup. A sad love story.
Generally, I’m an optimist. My mind tends to look at the optimistic outcomes to situations, and thus I fill the gaps accordingly and help bring about my own happiness. But occasionally during times of particular emotional upheaval or just the odd day like today, I temporarily get a “pessimist’s society” one-day pass. Then my bad, bad mind does the rest and I’m convinced that every decision that I have made in the last week or so with regards to relationships and dating is fundamentally flawed. To make it worse, the two friends who were going to be here tonight had to cancel because of travel difficulties so I find myself with myself, wine, a word-processor and my blog – and we all know where that leads.
Of course, I’m smart enough to know that my general state of mind is the portion of my mind that is filling in the gaps, so I have a good night’s sleep and feel happier tomorrow life will suddenly seem a little more positive. These are precisely the ups and downs that are smoothed out with a good relationship: right now, I could do with company.
The mind is a dangerous machine in the wrong hands.
I think I just put the wrong hands on today.
