Compare and Contrast

No, this isn't a examination question. Not those 'distinguish between' questions which we do sometimes abhor when we do not have pointers to sieve out differences. Compare and contrast takes place outside the academic realm, be it or not we are poor in having sufficient resources to go about it. 

Indeed it comes without surprise that humans being social creatures, we always assess ourselves in someways to ascertain our individual worth and performance. We link all these to our own self-esteem, and also how we perceive ourselves to be effective in accomplishing tasks in life - self-efficacy. It has become a tool so subconscious that we are often warned against its inherent downsides of the never-ending comparative game. If you always compare your performance against the better, you will seem inferior. If you always contrast yourself with higher expectations of others, you will never be satisfied. Well, definitely the other way of comparing also warrants mentioning - comparing with someone inferior to u. Yes we sometimes do so as a self-defense mechanism - to ward off our sense of disappointment or guilt when we have failed to perform up to standards. Self-consolation. This makes us feel better.

Besides the relative assessment function of compare and contrast, what may be more subtle in the entire schema is the creation or emergence/awareness of the two end states which we compare with. Disappointment in failing your exams vs dejectedness when your relationship fail. Elation when you know your friend is coming over for summer vs Euphoria when you struck lottery. We have all these 'grades' or 'levels' of benchmarks created as modes for comparison within us. We do not always compare ourselves with others. More importantly, when we take ourselves as the barometer (which we do not so often), we open up ourselves to a greater platform for growth and development. 

There are a couple of ways which we can harness this internal comparative function as a springboard. Contrasting happiness felt today vs disappointment yesterday makes you feel the difference and magnifies your sense of elation. Explained in another way, that you feel 'much' happier today because you are reminded of the downtimes which have passed you and now 'things are so different'. Well of course, this may not be the biggest cause of your happiness - i mean we must give happiness its due credit to exist for a positive reason, of which it has its own capacity to generate feelings of pleasure. But these 'labels' in us do accentuate the difference.

In addition, it bequeaths us with the gift to appreciate and savor. Happy today, Happier tomorrow. We can appreciate why we are made more happier. Failed a dozen times, getting it right the final time - we certainly know how to savour this great feat of accomplishment. We compare how we manage to achieve results in other domains of our lives vis a vis how we are doing now and start motivating ourselves through perhaps understanding the value of determination. 

We are made many the wiser when we know how to compare against our own internal benchmarks, as opposed to the people around us, whose standards may bear little or no meaning in the context of ours. Comparing with others is often a great human temptation to overcome. It provides the most convenient form of assessment to know where we stand, to get a quick gauge, or rather the 'short-cut'/easy way out. It is not necessarily accurate and is not able to stand on its own as a conclusion to your performance.

OPT-imistic

Optimism has been studied as an internal trait by the many self-help movements, pop psychology. And even among the emerging field of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman has conducted extensive studies and experiments with optimism, publishing many books. One of it, Learned Optimism, reveals that optimism can be cultivated, but often have to be tempered with realism. Being overly optimistic, or constantly optimistic maybe be detrimental to us when it shifts us off tangent with the reality in life and perpetuate the 'things will be fine' mentality.

After reading a fair bit on optimism, i hope i can express some of what i feel being optimistic helps in our lives, and how we can strive towards being optimistic. Is it an option? Can we OPT into it? Recently i encountered a question from a good friend whose words seem to highlight to me the fact it is just human to be pondering about these matters.. matters that are very significant and yet we do not have ready answers for them. Maybe they are subjective, intangible. Maybe people do not realise that there need to be answers to these questions. Just like someone who questions about the existential issues - What is the purpose of life? Not everyone asks these questions all the time, while perhaps they do it at different stages of their life. So the question goes:

你说， 人，怎么才能天天能保持一个良好的心态，消除烦恼，保证几乎每天都积极乐观? 甭管是华人，洋人，还是火星人，那个积极乐观的心态究竟去哪里寻找？

This question asks about finding optimism in each and everyone of us. Where do we find them in face of all the ups and downs in life? Are people born with it?

Before i answer this question, let me first make a few disclaimers: that i am not a professional authority in this area (though i think there wouldn't be anyone who can claim to hold the right answer). So in this case just give what i mentioned a good thought, see if it makes sense to you, and take it with a pinch of salt if it doesn't :)

I believe my answers will not come as surprising or revolutionary to you, because they may be insights which you may arrive at after some thinking. But i first have to have you agree with me that being optimistic is a state of mind which we acknowledge its benefits, and our focus is where do we find this?

It is easy to say that the answer lies IN us. These statements are very generalistic, but not in any aspect less true. In fact, its usually the summary statement that we tell everyone. 'You Hold the Key'. Its all in your mind. Very familiar aspects in the humanistic psychology. Being optimistic is like having an inclination towards something. Its taking a perceived stance on the world around you. And so, as things happen always for a reason, does your optimistic thoughts possess an discerning origin? In simple layman words, does it have a reason to exist?

Indeed, i believe that optimistic thoughts rise from certain learned experiences and incidents that happened in our life. Thats one of the more widespread sources of optimism. As the word learned optimism seem to suggest, we learn all the time, be it from our own experiences, or that of observational learning. Experiences that left a greater impression on us, especially when we were younger, left an indelible mark on us which shaped our thoughts today. We too learn from our recent experiences, but as cognitive and discerning individuals as we grow older, our mind processes our experiences in a more astute and complicated way. So when we come into contact with the world everyday, our mind surfaces these predispositions that were ingrained in us over the years. But, of course all these can be changed.

Thats not a convincing source of optimism, isn't it? It seems to be a passive source, not an active source. Where can we FIND? Telling someone to find something in his or her own pocket does not really answer the question quite appropriately isn't it? (assuming that of course he checked his own pockets before). Then where should we DISCOVER?

Allow me to bring in analogies.

Optimism is like a well. There can be endless supplies of it, but u have to know where the source is. Just like digging for metals, they do not always exists as their pure metal. They exists as unrefined ores, or composite materials. Optimism is often embedded, and disguised in other forms. They not only need to be uncovered, they need to be actively refined and tapped into. One of these sources lies in appreciation in life.

One of my favourite quotes - appreciate your life, and your life will appreciate. Appreciation ignites a source of strength and motivation by paying gratitude to what you already own, achieved, or are in control. It reminds you not to discount your own potential, most importantly your potential to make a change or impact in your own life. You've come thus far through whatever means you have to your current state (whether or not you love your current status, it has nothing to do with your reality). Again i cannot over-emphasize this - whether you are or not satisfied with who you are, where you come from, and what you have achieved so far, it is only a comparative evaluation of our expectations and the reality. You can appreciate that you have achieved nothing. You can appreciate that you have been the last of the cohort. You can basically appreciate anything. Key is you must know how to appreciate. You must know how to take perspective. And that in it requires humbleness, and a heart to accept diversity in this world.

When you can appreciate, you will realise the vast territories of hope. You will acknowledge the expansive unchartered waters that give you plenty of room to grow. You will discover how wonderful a self-empowering opportunity you have been given to be in the current state of reality you are in. Optimism fills you because you have not precluded yourself to the land of possibilities.

Thats the essense of it. Whether you look at optimism as another chance you give to yourself, or the never-say-die attitude that see you persevere on, you'll be sure to know that optimism never comes easy. To be optimistic in face of a mismatch between your actual and perceived reality requires strength and courage. Your courage to belief. Thats another important source.

We all have aims and goals don't we? They need not be that lofty, they can be mundane like finishing my assignment by today, or passing my driving test the next time i take it. Take the latter as an example. We know that we have been practising all day for our driving test. Going up the ramp million times, reverse into those parking lots as if we had all the time in the world to do that, and driving the car as if we had own them. But you know, not all of us are talented in driving. Some are quite clumsy, not used to it etc. No one knows how to drive the car the moment he is born. The issue here is do we belief in ourselves that we will eventually be able to overcome all obstacles and excel in it? In other words, are we willing to belief? How you talk to yourself plays a big role in it. If you've had a pessimistic explanatory style towards your every little glitch in your driving performance, i bet you'd probably just feel like not touching the steering wheel again. But if you want to pass driving very badly, and are so motivated to drive a car, you'd probably tell yourself that you can surely pass it. Self-belief is raised. Self-efficacy is raised. And with this courage to belief, your worldview tends to be altered towards possibility and excellence. Failure is no excuse, failure is temporal. You will make it. Of course, the courage can be spurred on by a host of reasons which will be personal to you. You have to find them, you have to know what makes you tick.

In conclusion, optimism can be opted into, and is an active endeavour that each and every of us are entitled to participate. Conditioning oneself to be sufficiently optimistic will undoubtedly provide a strong impetus in what we do, or aim to do, which will be instrumental in creating a good quality of life.

Permission to be HUMAN

As much as humans seek acknowledgement and affirmation, what is less obvious but yet a truth in many of us is that we all sometimes do not give ourselves chances to be human, i.e. to be ourselves. The cloud of expectations hovering around us seems invisibly thick. These expectations can be imposed by us or by our friends, families or the society at large. The problem isn't with having expectations. It is when we do not meet expectations. It is when things around us do not seem to be happening the right way. And so we start to feel anxious, worrisome, angry etc. Woohoo, guess what happens next?

Of course, if there is a problem, fix it. Thats the most idiot proof and inevitable way out. Try as much to rectify as possible. Find the root cause of it.. see who or what was at fault. Usually its fine if we can isolate an external cause to it. But for those who have a predisposed tendency to blame themselves (aka having an internal locus of control, or perhaps even a pessimistic explanatory style), this finger pointing/fault finding episode usually degenerates into a thrashing of the individual's self esteem. Its me! All my fault! Why did i...? I should not have...! Worse still... I am stupid!

Of course, there are some errors which genuinely deserve us to take the thrashing, like they said, as a gentleman. They require us to 'Repent' (but certainly not for 5 years!). ok no pun intended. Having said so, many of us overstep this boundary in this blame game. Irrational magnifications of problems, coupled with habitual twisted beliefs about oneself, and selective attention to the negatives thrusts us into the core of unrelenting self-reproach and harsh evaluation.

We seem to have forgotten that we afterall possess the ability to misjudge, the capacity to make mistakes, and the capacity to be irrational. Yes, it is not an accidental relapse of our seemingly perfect human ability. I say again, it is not a relapse. We POSSESS these abilities to fall backward. We are born with tendencies to make mistakes. We have to give ourselves space to make them. And by that i mean the unconditional acceptance when bad things happen, and a haven to rehabilitate, and recover from these occasions.

It does not need to be something we have done wrong. It can refer to any form of dissonance we are experiencing. For e.g. we want to feel jealous, but we do not allow ourselves to by rationalizing for e.g that the person is our best friend. Or when u have let out an embarrassing noise in public which makes us feel very bad at ourselves. Well, things may be just not concurring to our perceived reality, but that doesn't mean we have to be emotionally charged over it.

After all, there should be mistakes made in life. There should be awkward moments. There should be uncomfortable situations. There should be jokes made at us. At times we ought to look stupid. At times we are stupid. If we give ourselves the liberty to look and feel out of place, we grant ourselves a ticket to salvaging ourselves from these seemingly undesirable situations.

Looking from an alternative perspective, thats how our lives becomes interesting. Thats how the scenery around us becomes so beautiful. The things that bursts our expectations, incidents that surfaces out of the ordinary, and the surprises that pops out our way.

Indeed, if we would only allow ourselves the right to enjoy them :)

Chirality

Linking life to chemistry is always interesting. And here marks the start of a series of analogues that have spun off my wandering mind, always connecting the dots and trying to think like a philosopher (which in fact may be a product of analysis paralysis)

My many years of chemistry education has taught me about chirality pretty comprehensively. The first time i encountered this term was in JC. Just knowing the + and - enantiomers. Then in uni we learnt about defining R and S. CIP rules, etc. And also from the perspective of symmetry, there goes another definition of chirality, one that lacks an improper axis of rotation (Sn).

Something interesting about chirality is the fact that you are the one and only one existing in the realm of molecules, because even your mirror image is non-superimposable, and thus dissimilar. Indeed, every individual is chiral. Yes, if you consider yourself as an object (the tangible), or your attributes & characteristics (intangibles). We are who we are because of many variables in life which we are different from the rest, arising from a myriad of different factors such as culture, upbringing, environment, dispositions etc.

Lets talk about our mirror images - who are they actually? I would like to advocate that they are how we look from others viewpoint, i.e. the side that people see us as. We are real creatures. How we behave is a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs. We act out our life to fulfil our inner motives. We hope as much to be congruent as possible with who we are as a person interacting with the ever-changing environment. Thats why  they are called mirror images - mathematically positioned to be equi-distant from mirror plane etc. It highlights the supposed perception of who we are from the perspective of others vis a vis our true self. We all know that sometimes its not always the case. Sometimes we try to present to others a false side. Lets leave that topic to another day.

There are similarities despite being chiral. But well, enantiomers share many physical properties and chemical properties, only different with respect of its behaviour to plane polarised light.  We as individuals share common social characteristics, behavioural responses and thought patterns at large. When we are subjected to ethical norms and society benchmarks, we are moulded into right-thinking individuals according to these beacons. We adhere to these beliefs that forge us to our identity as a group. These groups could be cliques, organisations, associations, institutions or even race, religion, and ethnic in nature. Important point here is that we are always classified, categorised and structurally defined to surface our usefulness and value in the world we live in.

In the 3-dimensional world, chirality gives specificity to the molecule. Enzymes in our body require specificity to function properly. Scents differ significantly just because of the difference in the chirality of one stereogenic centre. Chirality unleashes trememdous functional implications. Humans do as well. The attributes we have, the defining characteristics of who we are, are often have its value and implications in our lives. 天生我才必有用. This chinese proverb explains it all. However eccentric we are, we will always be complementary to someone. We will always be able to derive our self-worth in a meaningful way. 天底下必有你容身之处. You are the key. And there will be a lock. Remember the lock and key hypothesis?

Some of us then question - then how about the ability to change ourselves? If we are a bad person (from a molecular point of view maybe a pathogenic molecule or toxin), can we transform into something better? Well, i am a firm believer in humanistic psychology, and yes i will let you know how chemistry also endorses the human potential for change. Well you see, chirality in a molecule can be lost in many ways. Organic chemistry tells us that simple tautomerism may destroy chiral centres. Condensation reactions may eliminate chiral centres. In fact, a list of reactions may do so. Addition reactions can re create chiral centres. And here you go, a set of reactions that can eliminate and generate chiral centres. To take it further, assymetric synthesis allows you to synthesize the exact chirality at the atom of interest. Whew! Interesting isn't it? This begs the question: are we able to cultivate characteristics that we want?

I may have lost some of my readers in the last paragraph because of chemistry content. But nevertheless, i know you guys trust me that i know my chemistry well :P In fact, the concept of chirality in chemistry can have many interesting parallels in our lives. Share with me if you have some! You'll never know what happens when 2 chiral molecules react together. The potential is endless :)

When I Wander..

People wander. Since young when we made our first cries to the world, we started to explore the world. They were to us all fresh and foreign. We wander around all the time. We were undeniably inquisitive. Curious about everything that went round. And we expressed ourselves just as straightforward as we could. There wasn't any holding back. Whatever we felt we needed, we clamored for it.

But as we grew up, influenced by our environment and our upbringing, we learnt about the word 'restraint'. By incessant conditioning (operant or classical), our actions and expressions become abit more systematic and predictable. Some habits start to form, consciously or unconsciously. I would like to say that some of the innocence and fundamental traits as a child were, unfortunately buried.

As we grow smarter and smarter, developed cognitively, we learnt to think for ourselves, and start to reflect about our behaviour. With a brain, we inevitably put it into good use - learning arithmetic, picking up linguistic skills, but at the same time our brain had a role to play in emotional regulation, information filtering, and interpretation. Our brain machinery start to become a factory in which there was a supervisor managing the operation process. Things that we wanted, we took it in. Things that were not so desirable, we would always know where to hide it, dispose it, change it, or process it. We start to develop our own fanciful operating mechanisms and processes such as 'masks', 'emotional veils' and 'defences' that would serve in our best interest and protect us from all sorts of stimuli facing us daily. This marks the start of being more complex as a human.

And this trend progresses on inexorably, with us acquiring more high level and sophisticated skills, such as rationalisation, internal dialogues, disguises, facades, etc. They all seem so natural to us somehow. We can pull it off easily, sometimes subconsciously. Sometimes we become very 'fake' to others, and words like 'superficial' start to pop up describing a person.

It makes me wonder and wander at the same time, that while these skills serve perhaps an evolutionary need, whether we become subservient to them too often that they work against us.

I wander.....

And when one wanders, the mind is set free at once.. not complying any form of premediated mechanisms of the machinery. It is free to think about every possible matter and possibility. Things that would normally escape your thoughts. There are no rules. Our aspirations, desires (even farfetched ones) come knocking on us. And sometimes it seems like a fairytale.. so unadulterated, so idealistic, and feels just like reality (and then you would tell yourself, I WISH). And reality hits at you. Its not real. Or at least you would have to work towards it to make it possible.

I feel that wandering is just like a dream. When u dream at night, they say it is due to matters u think about in the day or perhaps some unresolved issue u have in your mind. When you wander, sometimes your brain goes back to these issues, and help you to seek out solutions, just like an automated machinery. The only difference is of course, it is much more free, though one may argue that many of these thoughts still tread within certain mental boundaries (i.e. we may not be thinking out of the box). How many of us ever have that experience of the AHAH moment when we are just doing something routine for e.g. having a meal, shower, walking back home, etc and we suddenly made a connection or found a solution to our life matters?

The mind seems to be more productive when we are not actively thinking of those issues which we wish to solve! Wandering does have its benefits. But we have to fully utilise these times of wandering. We have to use it to encourage ourselves about the possibilities of our lives. We have to leverage on the platform to remind us that we are larger than life, that impossible is nothing. We have to bring ourselves close to experience the abundance in life, and fit our current situation in a broader context.

Well sometimes when we wander, we can't really control its direction. And we maybe treading on dangerous grounds. Overly contemplative moods and pessimistic ruminations may blow things out of their proportion, and especially negative thoughts. Downward spirals often occur, and sometimes we get plunged to the deep abyss. There are times where it happen to me. And surely, it doesnt feel good. It saps up all my energy, and leaves me in a destitute state.

So when i wander, all sorts of things can potentially happen. As much as my mind is now free, the chain of events that follow wandering may not set me free eventually. Should we really leave our minds to wander? Is it really worth the bet?

Some people will get more positive returns than the other. They are in general more optimistic and have a larger generalised positive affect (what we describe in psychology) for a tendency to feel more uplifted and upbeat about things.I know thats not to a large extent true in me. But i still love to wander about the positive things in life. About how things will turn out well. At least i try to force myself to think about it, just like many people consciously seek to shut themselves out from the unpleasant.

Always trying to apply the law of attraction, focusing on the positives and making it a reality. Sometimes i really wish life is not so complicated. Humans can express themselves freely, and say what they want to the other person's face. But we can't. And i know i face a big problem at this. I nonetheless experience a rich amount of emotions behind my seemingly composed and nonchalant appearance.

And so when i wander, things that don't get expressed start to fill up my thoughts like air filling its space in a balloon. I know why i wander now, because most of the time, these issues remain unresolved. But they take time. They challenge me to move out of my comfort zone, and push myself to my limits. I just have to be wary of the emotional traps that may be unleashed.