Website owner:  James Miller

People's minds work in different ways



 
   People can live in very different worlds.  The way their minds 
   work can be very different.  The way they see the world can be 
   very different.  I know.  I know because the way my mind once 
   worked (when I was a young boy) was very different from the way 
   it works now.  As a boy I was a dreamer.  My mind was chock-
   full of vague, nebulous notions and ideas.  It was filled with 
   romantic, dreamy images of fun-filled evenings in mysterious 
   far-away places;  of lovely adventures, soft music and 
   beautiful girls --- adventures in a world where there were no 
   problems, no troubles, and no mundane concerns (i.e. no 
   concerns about such practical things as the cost of things, 
   having enough money, etc.).  These mundane practicalities would 
   have ruined the whole thing.  I was very enjoyably lost in a 
   beautiful world, an ideal world.  My brain was filled with 
   impressions.  It picked up impressions from everywhere --- from 
   movies, books and photos.  It was a mind that lived on imagery, 
   fantasy, musical melody and impressions.  The world I imagined 
   myself in was an idealistic world where all was good, where 
   everyone was honest and told the truth, where everything worked 
   out right.  It was a world of beauty.  I was a lover of beauty.  
   I was far removed from dreary, mundane, drab Reality.  Reality 
   didn't interest me.  I knew there was no happiness or fun to be 
   found in Reality.  I didn't want to see Reality.  I didn't want 
   to admit its existence.  I was afraid of it;  it was just too 
   ugly and depressing.  For the sake of my own morale and spirit 
   I didn't want to look at it.  All this is the way my mind once 
   worked.  The way it works now is the complete opposite.  I 
   swear all my brain has in it now is cold facts and figures.  I 
   am so close to cold Reality that I don't even know how to 
   imagine anymore.  My mind as it is now allows no impressions or 
   imagery or fantasy.  I couldn't imagine or fantasize if I 
   wanted to.  What is it that keeps me from it?  Knowledge.  
   Experience.  Facts.  I know I would be wasting my time and my 
   mind won't allow the indulgence.  Moreover, perhaps it is a 
   little afraid to allow it.  It perceives a danger there.  My 
   mind is now as prosaic, practical and unimaginative as a mind 
   can get.  Why?  It knows there is power there.  The power of 
   reason, knowledge, experience and truth.  It knows that there 
   is real danger when you get away from these.  But yet it must 
   be admitted that the world I once lived in was a rosy, 
   beautiful one and the world I live in now is a dreary, drab 
   colorless one.  Perhaps dreaming and fantasizing can be likened 
   to drinking alcohol and taking drugs.  It removes you from 
   Reality but Reality is sure to come back and hit you in the 
   face even harder for having removed yourself from it. 

   Mar 1983



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