Our Invisible Hand

Sometimes I'm absolutely blown away by how much little control we actually have over our own emotional state and temperament. Day to day, minute to minute, our lives are strung together by a myriad of events and tasks essential to both our survival and enjoyment, but rarely do we take interest in the cause of our desires, wants, and even long term goals.

You're sitting at your computer, reading lines of text that I've written for a reason that completely escapes me, and all the sudden you feel something. A push? a pull? an unclear, indistinct feeling that simply demands attention. Suddenly you find yourself gazing around the room for a second, getting a drink of water, perhaps remembering to call someone you haven't been in touch with, the action itself isn't important because the interesting phenomena is that initial feeling, distraction. For some reason completely out of our control we are directed by a force, a sort of internal conductor in our waltz through life.

So what? Who cares if our attention escapes us occasionally, and we pursue other activities, right? If the scope of this humanly feature was that small, it wouldn't be that interesting, but it was probably the same odd, elemental desire the brought you to the computer in the first place.

We can almost look at life as being moved along by a series of spontaneous urges, and persistent ones. Persistent urges often relate to survival and ideas of happiness such as: relationships to other people (sexual and platonic), wealth, religious and spiritual pursuit, etc, While spontaneous urges are what occupy literally all of our free time (un-planned, un-scheduled time).

Much more to be said on this topic later, but as for now, try to consider the reasons for your actions and you might start to observe how decisions we claim as our own tend to be sparked by much more than just the conscious mind.