RICK OGDEN Questions Jacob Ghitis On:
* The Sum of it All *
Try to score highly as possible in this "game". Here is the one rule:
Jacob, if you have two distinct emotions before you finish reading this sentence,and if one of those emotions has at least three times the intensity of the other emotion, give yourself ten points, but only give yourself half these points if half the intensity of the stronger emotion is twice the intensity of the emotion you had just a few seconds before you began to read this sentence, but if you have more than two distinct emotions then divide the total intensity of all the emotions by the intensity of the least intense emotion, and give yourself seven and three quarters points if that amount of intensity is half or less of the intensity of the most intense emotion.
Ask yourself,
How many points did I just score?
How did I just now feel? What is my typical reaction to impossible
requests?
Why would I possibly ever care about such a seemingly worthless fact or put
forth the effort needed to acquire it? How much of life is like this for
me? How much is my life affected by me hitting similar walls of boggling
complexity and quitting any analytical processes?
How much minutia do I personally need to know about a person to be
"comfortable" in a relationship? How much do I really have to know about
someone's history and typical behaviors before I feel I can "compute" that
person's value or meaning to me?
How intimate do I have to be with a person's emotional experiences, before
I feel I am relating to that person? Can I ever really be confident that I
know how another person really feels at any given moment?
Why am I so unscientific about just about everything that matters most to
me?
Am I unscientific? Or, do I somehow know "stuff" about others that cannot
be indicated by qualities that might be incredibly hard to measure or
analyze? How much time, effort, and thinking do I avoid by trusting my
intuition?
Am I a fool? Or am I a "trusting soul?" Or, am I a sharp eyed, intuitive
psychic who rarely sizes up anyone wrongly?
In all this immensity, this universe, how much do my facts add up to? Are
my life's total points only available in a sub-note within a mind-busting,
science killing, eternity swallowing intellectual analysis that will never
be concluded?
When last I fell in love, what value did the minute flecks of color in my
love's eyes have for me? Why was I so sure of the total?
While gazing into my eyes, in a mirror, what should I do with all that is
seen?
*****
Rick,
The night prior to receiving this exercise, one of the features I dreamed was that I looked at a mirror set at an unusual angle, and I saw a young woman of unclear face, which caused me a sense of confusion.
Soon I realized that I was utilizing material from that night, looking at a 360 degrees view of the room in which Mona Lisa is seen at the Louvre. She was hardly visible. The association is with ambiguity, one of typical characteristics of her smile.
The room and the wide view refer to my brain and all things associated with its activities, at a moment when I feel that there is little I can learn more about what exists.
This is to show how problematic it is to respond to your questions, which are so intimate to your brain.
You will be surprised to read that the night before I dreamed of looking onto one eye of a beautiful woman I seemed to like very much, and saw a fleck of red color, which aroused the following question: I never cared to examine from near the eyes of any woman; why am I doing this now and what's the relevance of this observation? I had the impression that it was absolutely valueless, that the worth of that woman was measured by what I felt for her.
Only at this moment I make the following association: one dream referred to cognition and its ambiguities, the other to affection and what is it that has relevance for our most cherished feelings.
