"Two wrongs do not make a right" - a quote from move "Flawless"

"What's that old phrase about two wrongs a right do not make? That's nonsense! Sometime to make something right you have to do something just as wrong. ...oh yes, my cost it's worth 100 life times in jail."

--- Mr. Hobbs (from movie "Flawless")

Childhood and self-esteem

Image via Wikipedia

Agatha Christie said: "One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood."

If we take "love" - love in any form: romantic, family and friendship - as a proof of our life existence, love is certainly the most important aspect of life, because only if we appreciate our existence in the first place, are we able to fulfilled it. The more love we receive, the more meaningful and joyful we feel our life is. That’s’ why we all desperately search for love.

Unfortunately, all love we received from others is not completely secure. We could lose our lovers, friends and family members. Or, even worse, we could try very hard but still could not get others’ love. However, one kind of love we could never lose - if we ever get it – is the love from ourselves: self-esteem. A person with a true self-esteem would feel the most confident, capable and emotional secure in his/her entire life, because self-esteem is unconditional, which means we do not have to worry about losing it.

However, self-esteem doesn't come to us with life itself. Many people do not have it, or many people have to work very hard to get it. This difference, by psychological studies also my own observation, is mostly caused by our different childhood.

If all love we received from others are insecure, one type of love from others is different - the love from parents. The love from parents has the same nature as self-love – unconditional. Because of this nature of "unconditional", it is secure, so we don’t have to worry about losing it. Whoever have happy childhood, receive this unconditional love from their parents (or whoever raise them), would gain self-esteem easily from the beginning of their life. And because (it seems) that things we learned earlier in our life would usually stay firmer with us in our later life, these people (who received unconditional love from parents) would naturally hold their self-esteem during their entire life. And on other hand, those who do not receive such kind love during their childhood would have issues with self-esteem during their entire life. Some might eventually learned, some might not.

This is how I feel about Agatha Christie’s a few words which tells a universal truth of life.

Of course there are still exceptions, because life is complicated. Even those who have happy childhood might have to face challenge of their confidence under some specially circumstances, or, those who have unhappy childhood or even no childhood at all could end up knowing the best about how to love themselves. However, generally speaking, a happy childhood is a solid foundation of our self-esteem - the most important ingredient of our personal life happiness.

Fantasy vs. Imagination

After I post the Chinese version of "Fantasy vs. true stories" in my Chinese blog, one of comments mentioned about a quote by Miro (abstract painter):

Imagination is about something possible but didn't happen, fantasy is about something impossible. (It might not be the original quote)

And the guy who left comment went further saying that "too much fantasy may do more harm than good for people because it encourages people to be phony, but imagination is always valuable and important for our creativities, such as in art, mathematics or other science".

I thought he pointed out something very important. And I totally agree with him. It also explained why I could not really enjoy fantasy and why I like mystery fiction so much: I don't care about things that are impossible; those seemingly realistic scenarios in mystery books really show true brilliant imaginations.

Fantasies vs. True Stories

Image by Glimmerfae via Flickr

I can never really enjoy any fantasy stories (maybe I will try harder in future). The reason is simple, the true life stories are far more fascinating than any stories made by human's imaginations.

When we write stories, we are often concern about their "genuineness", because we don't want our stories look "fake", but reality doesn't work like this way - it only follows whatever happens. And the result is often beyond our understanding and our imagination.
That's why reality often looks fake; that's why when many people disbelieve some very simple clear truth, it only shows how limited our imagination is, how poor our understanding is.

That's why for me, life itself is the best fantasy work ever created.

Personal Life Experience vs. Reason

Image via Wikipedia

During my years' of CFS, I had an experience: whenever I had to mention my health condition, many people simply didn't believe it; whenever I mentioned to children, they accepted it without hesitation. Later I realized, the reason those people didn't believe me was simply because what I said did not apply to their own life experience, and for those children, simply because inside their blank mind they could not find any existent experience to against my assertion.

So I realized, that personal life experience can be "friend" of our reasoning, also can be "enemy", depend how we use it. If we use it as one of sources for our understanding of human nature, a rich life experience can certainly make our thoughts richer, makes us more open-minded; but if we use it as a the ONLY source for our "reasoning", it will certainly limit our vision, make us narrow minded.

Or, should I say, personal life experience without the guide of reason can only limit our thought; only with the guide of reason, it can go beyond personal, becomes knowledge and leads us to open mind, to wisdom.