Viski the Dog woke me up a couple hours ago and I haven't been able to get back to sleep, I have just laid here thinking and now writing on my phone before my daughter wakes up.
Viski is getting old, is deaf, mostly blind, his teeth are gone and has problems with arthritis in his back and legs - it won't be long. We took him to the vet and got some pain medication so he is comfortable, hoping he will make it to see another Christmas as I think it would be a good memory for our daughter to have in this home that we were all together. I hope.
Memories are funny things and I was saying to my wife how I remember the Charles and Diana wedding as a kid, which was in 1981. I was two at the time and my memory of it is not great, but it is there. Though, it is also hard to tease apart what I remember from that time and what has been added to it from additional material, like archive footage, to reinforce memories.
I think a lot of the future memories we have are going to be tainted to some degree by the amount of images we take, as we will remember the picture of us being there, even if we don't remember being there ourselves. The brain will close gaps with imagination, effectively building false memories of experience that feel very real.
The brain has a hard time telling the difference between fact and fiction at times and the effort to imagine probably comes with some kind of sunk cost factor that makes the brain want to remember more. But, just the act of thinking changes us meaning that what we think will have a physical affect on what we will tibk in the future, as it sets up mental pathways that can become habitual.
In some ways, it can become like an obsessive compulsive disorder, where the patterns of though continually loop and with each loop, the repetition of the pattern becomes more likely. For example, while I like a good conspiracy theory, I find that a lot of the people who spend a lot of their time there, start to see the patterns everywhere, even if they don't exist and are just random events that their imagination is connecting to bring continuity to their story. Often, it also tends to explain some part of their life that is experienced lacking in some way, a reason why they are unable to do or have something.
It us not that they are entirely wrong necessatily, but they can attribute to much weighting to events that have less impact than they imagine. Likely, the little bits of fact that are right justify all that is wrong too, like the idea that there is a grain of truth in every lie, but that doesn't mean the lie is truth.
Considering how advanced and powerful our brain is, it is quite feeble in many ways with so many traps of thought that we can fall into or become lost within. Yet, pretty much everyone believes that their own thinking is clear, that they have a grip on reality.
For me, I used to be a decent thinker I think, but due to some health issues I could literally feel my mind fog over and while it has been somewhat returned with medication, it is a far cry from where it was and it's speed, depth and stamina is severely restricted in comparison. At this point, there is little I can do with it so I am pretty much ina. Flowers for Algernon position, experiencing myself degrade.
I wonder if Viski the Dog knows this in himself and understands that his time here is drawing to a close. I like to think he does as he has become even more clingy and wanting spend as much time as possible next to us and in our laps. While we are all very busy, we make sure that he gets the attention that he wants. I don't know if it matters to him, but it matters to us.
I think that this is part of the meaning of life where absent of clarity of what is actually meaningful, our imagination works to close the gaps and create a pattern for continuity. What we value comes into play and probably, most of us consider ourselves as good people on average, despite our shortcomings, but that doesn't make it true, even if there is a seed of truth in there.
I often question if I am a good person and sometimes think about the concept of Karma, which I don't believe in. I wonder if my own bad luck is my own doing, which some of it is, as it can be that I failed to perform or prepare. Sometimes this can mean that things that happen that are seemingly outside of my control might have been within my control had I performed better or taken care of what I needed to do earliet. That would mean that the pattern of negative in my life is me, but this also has to affect the positive too.
While our brain works to make sense of the world even if it has to make up a false story, the reality is that we can never do all the things we need to do to live our life perfectly. There is always only so much time and energy in the day, but an infinite amount of potential actions, with each leading to a complex set of more alternatives and outcomes.
It is impossible to know what is ultimately valuable in the set of possible actions, but I think looking after an animal teaches a lot of life's values. Though, that might be my brain reinforcing my memories and looking for a way to justify the thoughts it has and the actions it chooses to take. But, I struggle to imagine a world where the right thing to do is torturing an animal - yet some people seemingly can.
We all think and while most of us aren't going to change the greater world with our thoughts, we affect our world through our thoughts every moment of the day and night, as it is through them that we direct our life by building patterns of behavior, whether we are conscious of it or not. We can always find a story to tell ourselves that explains why we aren't responsible for our position, but we can also find a story that tells us why we are. I guess this is why it is called victim mentality.
I don't think my dog sees himself as a victim of circumstances - he just makes the most out of the opportunity life provides him. In his case, it is being close to his family and getting a bit of ham or sausage if that is what life offers.
It's a dog's life. A human's lie.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]