This Is Where I End, and the World Begins
Skipping Class
The other day I was sitting in my MA psychology class. It was the first week of college and I guess third lecture. I did not go to attend the second lecture because it was raining. We only had one lecture and decided to go and watch Metro in Dino instead. Bunking my lecture to go watch a movie made me feel like I was 19 again instead of 29. The teacher was teaching us Personality Psychology. It was the first lecture of that subject, very interesting and the teacher was good too. As they say, there is no boring subject, only boring teacher. Thank God this was not the case here.
Freud, Guts, and Childhood Stages
So we started by learning about Freud and his world-famous theories. For the record, I thought the guy got guts, to say what he said about a century ago really took guts. So anyway, we are learning about psychosexual stages in our childhood. For those who have little or no idea about it, this is the very talked about Oedipus and Electra complex. The psychosexual stages talk about the organs where we have the most sexual pleasure during our childhood, and age-wise phase is the distribution of it. While teaching us, our teacher told us what Freud means by sexual pleasures. It is not sexual pleasure as we perceive, but the utmost pleasure the baby can have and it comes from which organ. She said very compassionately about how kids are discovering their bodies and what’s coming out of them. They’re very curious, and if you react to their curiosity the wrong way, you can kill that curiosity for life.
This Is Where I End, and the World Starts
While teaching that, she said a thing that stuck with me, like how kids are curious about their body while discovering their organs, how they must think: this is where I end, my personal boundary ends, and the world starts. And I was stuck and thinking to myself, this is so true. As adults, we never think like that. But the thought is so amazing: this is where I end, and the world starts.
The 99%
Another thought crossed my mind at the same time, which amused me even more. If you just look at yourself and tell yourself: this is where I end, and the world starts, and what happens outside of me isn’t in my control and if I can’t do anything about that. Then why should I worry about that? I can only control what is in my boundary: my body. And that’s it. I don’t have to worry about the world. Our lives would get so peaceful if we did just that. 99% of our stress and worries come from the outside world, the things we can’t control. If we just focus on what we actually can control, life would be so much easier.
Wouldn’t it?
