Mindscars and Muscles

Mindscars and Muscles

Samuel Bird

I sat there in silence outside the gymnasium I attended, trying to build up the energy and fortitude to go inside and start my routine. I had burnt my arm pretty terribly from spraying boiling water and had not been in over a week. This broke my cycle of going every other day. I sat there with my head down, feeling low. If people were a rank order, I felt myself at the foundation, below everyone. I felt weak, powerless, and lesser. These feelings were coupled with the current concerns that were on my mind. Each of my problems was a foe, and not one I was sure I could fight, let alone be victorious. And my biggest foe: my mindscar. I closed my eyes and pulled in deep breaths of air. I felt this weakness within me be invaded by what I willed. I opened my car door and headed inside. I grabbed the dumbells I could barely lift, laid down on the bench, and began to strain every muscle in my arms and chest to expel those weights above my head. With shaking and huffing, I got the weights up, just in time to drop them down and start over. Time after time I began to also try to control the shaking of the weights. 

After this first set, I took the same weight and began to curl it up to my chest. The huffing became controlled breathing and the repetitions became slower and more intentional. I still felt pathetic and weak, but I knew I needed to start the process of ridding myself of such thoughts. I tore off my sweater and went back to the bench, to curling, to the bench, to curling, and back to the bench. I then began to do a series of pull-ups, chin-ups, tricep pull-downs, and lateralus pull-downs. Between each set, I became more deliberate and focused. This feeling of powerlessness slipped away and something began to replace it. Finding myself in my last workout, I raised the weights above my shoulders as the veins and muscles in my neck and side of my head bulged. In the last lift, my muscles gave up on me, and I dropped the weight to my side. I fell forward with my grimacing face in my hands as I sat with the intensely burning pain. As I was present with the pain, I welcomed it. There was no sense of fear or threatening, only an opponent, and the knowledge I could combat it. 

Like I have many times before, I walked out of the gym, not just more tired and shaky, but with this feeling of overcoming. My mind was able to both overcome itself and then the body. There are many benefits to taking care to build strength in one’s body, but the most important to me is this practice to show my agenthood and power to rise above that which confronts me. This exercise proves helpful in all facets of life, as writing this article takes fortitude. The practicing of this assuming of control is worthy in and of itself. If a mountain is taller than you think you can climb, start walking. If a river is too cold for you to be in comfortably, then go in with discomfort. If a crowd is larger than you have ever spoken to before, then speak and speak well. I call these “aggressive displays of power.” While there may be an admirable goal on either side of these endeavors, there is something that is intensely human at play here. You are confronting your world with a vision in your mind and a fight to bring that vision about. I think we can waste too much time reverifying whether our vision is good when we should be bringing it about. If you are not sure what to do, then start doing something at all. This may be surprising coming from a philosopher, but I think that the fruition of a concept is its application. I love to talk about other’s needs, but if I don’t let such convict me to act in their aid, I miss out on something incredible. I have made it as clear as I can, but my goal is you. I want your life to be the most it can be. I do not say the most good, beautiful, or true, because I won’t pretend I know what these are. What I can control, is providing people with real tools to empower them in their pursuit to exist. I believe in free will. Principally, I think that it is the case, however, there are always some strong counterarguments. What I can say is that pragmatically, a sense of control and power is vital. Inductively, I have noticed that people who find themselves less in control or responsible for their lives as people who don’t act to the exactness mentioned earlier. Therefore, even if free will is not the case, it is as good of a lie as I can come up with. 

On the opposing side of this assuming control is to not. If one were to justify this case, they would be excusing their behavior. While an explanation of inability can have a place, excuses to make one unable, do not. In my time, well-meaning people seek to find the causes of people’s suffering. The issue then comes when they find the causes as something that is not possible to overcome. They see this as being kind as if someone could have chosen the contrary and didn’t, they are responsible. So, they seek to save them from blame. This steals away the power that they need most. If it is so that I am to blame for my life, but I then also have control to alter it, let it be. I wish for no one to comfort them, saving them in this moment, by stealing their future away by taking their role in it. My philosophy butts right up against all unknowns with no pretension for otherwise. While I never want to tell you facts about the world I can’t know, I will do what I can to give you power in that world. 

Stories of heroes are still great, no matter their deconstruction. They stand outside the naysaying of those who say no to life and our will. In each story, the hero is confronted with the choice of climbing the pinnacle before them or taking all the multitudes of reasons they can’t and living a lesser life. This moment and its outcome are a contingent fact on the will and what it wills. Their path me be treacherous and their plight frightful, but this will is a fact that comes from deep within consciousness and needs no permission from the world around it. You may have wondered why these heroes, in fact, or fiction, can walk away with this with surprisingly little damage to their psyche. I am weary of citing contemporary empirical findings. Perhaps due to the strong lens that we see through, each society since the scientific revolution has used science to support what it already believed. Even with the most well-meaning of scientists, there is a constant shift such that the philosophers of science would never use the word “true” but rather something more modified such as “consistent.” Nevertheless, there are two psychological phenomena that I still find myself researching. The first is cognitive dissonance, and the second is the idea that the brain can be scarred by experiences. I find this powerful and fascinating. This burning imprint of memory on the brain leaves the user combatting a host of issues. In a test I refuse to cite in the eventuality that the findings change, two separate parties of animals were put through the same type of suffering that is ripe for causing these mind scars. In one party, the animals were given a sense of power and control while the others were not. The first group faired much better than the second. As I read multiple shelves of books on this damage to the brain, I find a damning outlook. There was this idea that the events that caused this were much lesser and they resulted in a life that was the same. This sense of being contaminated led me to dark places I hope no one stays in longer than is needed. I began to be rebellious and found these professionals missed what was found in these animals. I finally found a doctor who purported that these mindscars could lead to a mind callous that found the owner of that brain overcoming. This leads to greater strength and a deep sense of fulfillment. While this doctor didn’t get the same exposure, he understood how assuming control altered one’s sense of their role in the world. There may be times we are acted against in horrendous ways, but if we remember we can act back, we can remind ourselves we can alter what is to come to be what we desire. 

I had three friends I grew up with. Two of them were twins, and the other was my next-door neighbor. We all had painful homelives. Each of us had physical violence perpetrated against us often. Our response was to band together as our overactive minds that sought safety, also found great reasoning power. As time flooded past these friends of mine, my neighbor had become addicted to drugs, the first twin was in prison, and the final had pulled the trigger on a rifle aimed at the same brain that was so damaged. I have tried to reach out and give comfort to the others, but their hatred of seeing me somewhere they think they can’t go makes the conversations painful for me. I often reflect on the four of us and the little area we grew up. I keep getting caught up in how disadvantaged we all were and wishing I could have done something more for them. There is one thing that stands out as the most curious from this experience. How is it that we were so similar, and yet I have a rich life full of things that matter to me and all the resources I need? I can think of no way that I was set up to succeed relative to them. One of them was way smarter than me, one was more charismatic, one was more social, and all had more education and better health. A sense of guilt seeps in as I wonder at the randomness that made my life climb toward eudaimonia and their lives pain them. While it can be hard to compare one life to another, we can look at the satisfaction of those who live it. Here I am, writing a paper about something that matters to me to help people I love. How did fortune shine on me? While it did, the sun shone on the just and the unjust. What set me apart was this assumption of control. Once I had truly chosen what I wanted different than what I had, I began to make choices that brought that about. This gave me a sense that I could act and this trust in myself led to more extremity of exactness in acting toward my values. It is difficult to guess where my life will end up, but I can say I like the direction. I am in no way better than them. I simply realized, grasped, and followed through on this idea that makes my will more powerful than my environment. 

To these mindscars, there are a few therapeutic, pharmacological, and behavioral techniques currently accepted and recommended by current professionals. There is one that has proven to be quite soothing in the healing process to allow these scars to become stronger tissue. This technique is to take actions that find one feeling in power over the world that certainly has power over us. I have found a deep honoring and story building from the stories that make these scars, and then showing yourself just how formidable you can be, are the most effective. The strength of the frame allows one to heal with greater physiological resources. Perhaps the same is true of the brain. The same repetitions needed for the fibers of the muscle may allude to patterns of choice that strengthen the neurological fibers of the brain. 

A part of me wishes to steal you from a past that scarred you, to be with you to wipe away tears and to protect you from more threats. However, I know this is not possible, or even what is best for you. Rather, I seek to give you substantive conceptual tools to empower you. When I talk about gratitude, it is to give you a way to see life as meritorious. When I talk about forgiveness, I want you to have tools to heal relationships. When I talk about Esse Maxim, I am seeking you give you the deepest conceptual tool to help you address your existence. If I could give you one thing, whatever that thing would be, my reason for giving it would be to have an associated sense of control or power come from it. I do not wish to give you the delusional sense that you can be victorious over any dilemma you face and avoid mindscars, rather, that you know you have the sheer will to start to fight back and assume control.