"I wouldn’t upset my plan for anything. I’d rather upset life than the plan." The Anonymous Schoizoid
The left hemisphere doesn't live. It thinks.
It plans: "How to do this?" "How to tackle that?"
The best way to develop a plan is to break it down into smaller parts, categorize the parts, reorganize them, and tackle the task with an action plan.
It's a good process. It's a necessary process.
But it's a limited process. It's limited to the task before you, which may or may not represent a greater good or truth. And again, it's fine. If you need to be on that plane by 1:00 PM, you can't distract yourself with whether you're burning too many fossil fuels as you speed down the highway or whether you're damaging your soul by hurrying (rushing is a form of aggression). Sometimes, you gotta unleash your left hemisphere and let it do its thing.
And "its thing" inherently involves the process of "abstracting": breaking things down into smaller parts and reassembling them into a representation of some sort, like a map that shows us where to go but shows us nothing about the terrain itself.
It's a good thing. We need maps.
The problem is, modern culture is a culture of maps. We let our left hemispheres do their things all the time. Left Hemisphere 24/7. We're always abstracting and creating maps instead of appreciating the terrain.
It's a huge problem.
Christmas is coming up. It's a beautiful time of year. I envision the family together, Christmas music in the background: cracking cocktails, cracking jokes, crackling fireplace.
That's my left hemisphere at work. It's already abstracting: "Those high days of Christmas celebration will be like this."
But they won't be like that.
Life is never like you think it'll be.
And then when something doesn't come together like your left hemisphere said it would, you get angry.
You had this Christmas abstraction in your head, one that would make Norman Rockwell blush, and then it doesn't look anything like that when it unfolds.
And you're irritated.
Christmas is ruined.
It all sucks.
If that's you, you're an idiot (I speak from experience).
The only thing about the Christmas celebration that is ruined is your left hemisphere bulls* abstraction (all abstractions are, by nature, bulls***) of what the Christmas celebration should look like.
You shouldn't have built that abstraction in the first place and, if you allowed your left hemisphere to run amok and abstract anyway, you should've been ready to jettison the abstraction in favor of the flow as the celebration unfolded.
Only a mentally ill person would prefer the plan to life, and if you find yourself getting angry because a joyful event like Christmas isn't going according to a vague abstract notion that your left hemisphere (unattended, running amok) developed, you, my friend, are a bit unhinged: a bit too left-hemispheric, just like the Anonymous Schizoid who prefers his plan to life itself.
Don't be the Anonymous Schizoid. Don't let yourself come anywhere close to being the Anonymous Schizoid.
Enjoy this holiday season.
