Our ideas about who we are, what we know and why we act the way we do
British playwright Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is a play of ideas that questions our understanding of the past and draw attention to the futility and necessity of knowledge for the human condition.
"It's wanting to know that makes us matter," one of the characters declares. The essence of the human spirit is an enquiring mind.
Chemistry's origins lie in the ancient pursuit of alchemy, which was tied in the public eyes with magic and the Devil. Intellectuals were regarded with the suspicion in the Middle Ages.
In the Middle Ages the people asked the question:"How much knowledge is too much?" Today we compete against each to gain as much knowledge as we can.
The playwright Alma De Groen thinks the survival of the fittest is a social phenomenon as her play 'Wicked sisters' explores not only cutting edge research but delves into research ethics...
blackmail and intellectual theft. It is so easy to compete on a computer screen. The question is, why we act the way do.
World-renowned chemists Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann proved chemistry and poetry are not far removed by creating 'Oxygen'.
In a hypothetical struggle to award a Nobel prize to the discoverer of oxygen, they ask: 'Do you deserve credit if you do not understand the meaning of what you find or fail to tell anyone?
My countryman writer, Karel Capek explored the questions: 'Could an artificial human be mistaken for a real person? What makes us 'real'? in his early play that introduced the word 'robot'.
'I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.' William Blake famously has written, but what is that 'spirit' that always picks us up?
Is our faith that help to motivate us the work of divine or the result of activity deep within our brains?
Sometimes hope is the only thing we have left. The triumph of hope over our struggling for survival, the triumph of hope over experience.
The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present abides us all. It abides in every race, region and socioeconomic level.
Adults over 60 are just as likely to see the glass half full as young adults.
Our optimism doesn't erode under the tide of news about violent conflicts, high unemployment, tornadoes and floods and all the threats and failures that shape human life.
Collectively we can grow pessimistic but private optimism about our personal future remains incredibly resilient. Although it can lead to disastrous miscalculations it also protects, inspires us and keeps us moving forward.
Without optimism our ancestors might never have ventured far from their tribes and we might all be cave dwellers still huddled together and dreaming of light and heat.
Our brain is hardwired for hope. Our memories are susceptible to inaccuracies as the core function of our memory system is not designed to perfectly reply past events but to flexibly construct future scenarios in our mind.
Once people start imagining the future, even the most banal life events seem to take a dramatic turn for the better. Optimism starts with our mental time travel.
Our capacity to envision a different time and place is critical to our survival. It allows us to plan ahead, to save food and resources for times of scarcity and to endure hard work in anticipation of a future reward.
We all know that somewhere in the future death awaits for us all, but we do not despair because of our irrational optimism. Knowledge of death emerges side by side in our mind with the persistent ability to picture a bright future.
Our brain tends to engage in positive types of thoughts. When we do contemplate defeat and heartache, we tend to focus on how these can be avoided.
People with severe depression expect things to be worse that they end up being. People with mild depression are relatively accurate when predicting future events. They see the world as it is.
The problem with pessimistic expectations is that they have the power to alter the future in negative way. A brain doesn't expect good results and will fail to learn from its mistake so it is less likely to improve over the time.
Expectations become self-fulfilling by altering our performance and actions, which ultimately affects what happens in the future.
Often, however, expectations simply transform the way we perceive the world without altering reality itself. We do find the silver lining in every storm cloud.
Our brain is wired to place high value on the events we encounter and put FAITH in its own decisions. When forced to between two adverse options or two desirable alternatives we struggle to make the right decision.
But once we make our minds, something MIRACULOUS happens. We view the chosen offer as better as we did before and conclude that the other option was not that great after all.
This affirmation of our decision helps us derive heightened pleasure from choices that might actually be neutral.
Without this our lives might well be filled with second-guessing. We would find ourselves stuck, overcome by indecision and unable to move forward.
Yet optimism is also irrational and can lead to unwanted outcome. How can we remain hopeful, benefiting from the fruit of optimism, while at the same time guarding ourselves from its pitfalls?
Knowledge is key. Once we are made aware of our optimistic illusions, we can act to protect ourselves. And yet, we know that not everything we are able to explain and often our intuition, our sixth sense helps us to strike a balance to find our way.
Every now and then, a person manages to channel the vitality of youth that undefinable, natural, unprocessed HOPE, full of possibility and filled with anticipation for an endless future. And we cling to them as our lives depend on them...and they do.
'Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life' -Sophocles
“ What do you want to believe?”
Mariah asks herself,
looking at her wedding ring:
“ That a symbol of a perfect marriage
is an endless circle.”
Her husband calls and she closes her eyes.
She believes in him,
she sees him,
already
rushing to come back home to her.
He hangs up without saying good-bye.
Five years passes
until she realises,
he never held her hands,
never asked her what she wanted,
never stared into her eyes.
She can't talk
about the way
he could not look
her
in the eye
when leaving her for someone else.
Contrary to what she believed in,
a divorce is final in six weeks,
as if all the time in between,
means nothing,
the feelings
slowly dwindling
to the point,
where
they can be scattered
with one angry breath.
“ You should believe in miracles,”
her mother tells Mariah,
tells her to loosen up,
but the last time,
she did,
she nearly came apart.
Mariah imagines her life,
neatly slotted and tabled,
with everything
still in place,
her fervent intent,
to not turn
into her mother
with approaching age.
But today,
due to circumstances
beyond her control,
she has entirely too much time
on her hands.
Her mother raises her eyebrows,
Mariah just shrugs.
They are like that,
speaking without words,
knowing each other so well.
“ Maybe like eye colour,
and bone structure,
miracles are passed down
through bloodlines,”
Mariah muses,
feeling something
indescribable,
as her mother,
unexpectedly,
laces her fingers,
through hers.
Circles in her head,
who is she?
Compulsive and idealistic,
rejection sensitive,
poor self-confidence,
a tendency to overcompensate
and to catastrophize...
“You can't change yourself overnight,”
she hears her mother's voice,
again,
she knew,
what Mariah was thinking about.
It was a small ball
of cells
inside her,
made her aware,
she is not alone.
She named her Faith,
because
she badly
needed something to believe in.
And yet,
for whatever reason,
being a mother,
herself,
never came easily to her.
Motherhood
should descend naturally,
a little painful,
a little awe-inspiring,
but part of her,
now,
for better and for worse.
She wonders
often,
if other mothers
feel a deep tug
in their insides,
watching their children
grow up
into the people
they themselves
wanted so badly to be.
And yet,
she says to herself:
“Faith should have gotten
someone else as a mother,
someone who was good at this sort of things.”
“ Don't you know by now,
that raising a child is always a work in progress?”
Her mother must know,
how close she is to falling apart.
“ I want to grow old and be like you, the best one, you are.”
Mariah says softly to her mother.
She was sad once
that her mind
made her believe
something
that wasn't true.
She doubted herself,
once,
she was not a person
to love,
to him,
She wraps her arms,
around Faith
waiting for her breathing
to level,
before she let herself fall asleep.
Maybe this time,
she can do it.
Somewhere between
belief and doubt
lies faith.
Faith is the substance of things
hoped for
the evidence of things not seen.
“ What are you willing to believe?”
Mariah asks her ex-husband,
“ I had been waiting my whole life for this first time
with a man who knew me better that I knew myself.”
She reaches towards him,
but not expecting magic this time:
“ Falling in love has little to do with wanting someone,
it is much more enticing to me to be wanted,
and yet it never occurred to me that you were interested
in what you could make me into,
instead of what I already was.”
“ You were my wife. I loved you.
But, almost overnight
you became someone,
I didn't recognise,”
The light reflecting off his face,
this man has his reasons
for starting a custody battle over his child:
“ And now it's like history is repeating itself.
My little girl isn't acting like my little girl anymore,
I can't stand this happening again.”
“ You can't have her, she is mine.”
Her words are as quiet as the night,
the person who got lost,
in their story
is their child.
For seven,
Faith knows a lot of things,
she has learnt enough
of the world
to realise,
that the only way to leave your mark
is to speak and act like grown-ups.
She knows that truth
can cause a sharp pain
behind your eyes
and that love sometimes
feels
like a fist around your throat.
When her mother looks up,
Faith thinks,
that she has never
in life
seen anything so sad.
She walks out of the room,
leaving Faith to wonder,
once again,
what miracle might keep
her mother close by.
The sting of feeling unwanted
by her dad.
Why did he run away, leaving her behind?
She seeks solace in her new friend,
who may or may not be imaginary.
“ What are you willing to believe?”
She asks her parents,
who are not ready to listen,
but the hope-hungry world is.
Suddenly, her life is questioned
by the media,
the medical professionals,
the organised religions,
by atheists,
everyone has an opinion
but no one knows the truth.
She is just a child,
but she knows that
the best way to catch a butterfly
was not to chase it at all,
but to remain still,
that it made the choice
to light on your shoulder.
The power of healing,
they believe
she possess,
comes from inside her,
it is possible to die of grief,
so why can't someone by healed by hope and love?
But grown-ups around her can't see it.
She challenged them to think about their own beliefs,
and their never-ending questions
make no sense in her world:
“How can we be spiritual without being religious?”
“ If Christianity was grafted onto the tree of Judaism,
how to draw a line in the sand,
where 'us' start and 'them' finish, based on beliefs?”
“What if what you believe isn't as important as that you believe at all?”
An atheist argues: “ I have never believed that spirit comes from religion.
“Everything can be explained, there is no divinity.”
“ I want my daughter to be safe. I want her to be mine.”
Mariah keeps her voice up,
realising for the first time,
she can not let herself be steamrolled,
again,
by people and circumstances beyond her control:
“ Just for here, just for now, maybe we could give
each other the benefit of the doubt.”
The atheist wraps his arms around her,
still amazed by the lull of peace,
inside him now.
The thought catches him unawares,
pulls the world out from beneath his feet,
someone close enough to truly touch him
and suddenly he is ready to believe in divinity.
This is love. A place where people,
who have been alone may lock together,
spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection.
A place you go willingly, and with wonder...
and he knows,
you can believe something really hard
and still be wrong.
There is more to a person than a body and a mind.
A spirit that hints you might one day be greater,
stronger than you are now...
There are moments that open up your life
like a walnut cracked,
that change your point of view
so that you never look at things the same way again.
There are moments in your life when boundaries break down
and when the only step to take is a leap of faith.
Who listens when a 7-year-old girl has something important to say?
We don't have to accept each other's beliefs,
but we have to accept each other's right to believe them.
People have to decide for themselves upon a foundation
to balance the argument of belief and disbelief.
People have to accept that each foundation is so filled with shades of grey
that even the objective observers doubt the ability to see clearly.
There is room for doubt in every corner....except for love.
Who listens when a 7-year-old girl has something important to say?
Her mum's ears are wide open, now.
She can feel her daughter's eyes on her,
like the sun that touches the crown of her head,
when she steps outside.
She looks into her daughter's face and see accidents waiting to happen.
And then her vision would clear and she would see only love,
a well so deep that you could try and never know the bottom,
but only suck in your breath at its frightening depth.
She looks into her daughter's face and see her healing powers diminishing,
but Faith doesn't mind, she has her mother at her side.
Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
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