“I look in
the mirror and what I see is that part of the problem is me”. This is the words
of a honest reflexive manager describing her/his inter-relations with
colleagues.
I am so
convinced that I have seen “elasticity” somewhere in positive psychology, but I
cannot find it and that drives me insane. So, for now, I shall have the joy of
defining it my way. The nice thing about dialogue is that it is a double string
of soft actions, almost like a DNA-helix, but it can move mountains. Like
others, I fear my reflection in the mirror of inter-being, because only
narcissists are the fairest of them all. The rest of us see the flaws in our
lived lives. But a mirror is an advertiser’s dream because it can do so much
more than reflect the true picture. Not only can it distort reflections in any
elastic way you may wish, but it can also deflect light rays. In this case, it
gives us the joyous power to deflect incoming messages to wherever we want
them. This is why I have a fear-joy relationship with my mirror. I am not
forgetting the horror of the seven year curse if I break it, but that is a
different story.
Elasticity
is the ability to look in the mirror of life, become aware of a flaw and then
morph into a flawless gem. Elasticity is also an advertiser’s dream because it
is more than the flexibility to take the knock, and mock your own flaw. It is
also more than the adaptive behaviour where you use your flaw to your
competitive advantage. You hide it when it spells danger and use it when it can
knock the competition over. To unlock the secret of elasticity we need to
investigate the realms of complex and quantum science. Just a word of caution,
the mind is not a continuation of the quantum universe because there are no
quons flying about. Complexity theory says that simplicity at a lower level
creates complexity at the higher level. If you stare down the funnel that links
the two levels, you see that simplicity is aesthetically pleasing. If you study
the higher level you will notice how the aesthetic values carry through to the
themes generated in higher levels of complexity.
I apply it
like this. We have opinions about ourselves, others and things. If my local
narrative is inherited from my community narrative plus, any bits and pieces I
generated myself, my narrative is two dimensional and rigid. Any damage to it
is almost permanent. Ex. I think apartheid is a good policy and everybody
around me agree with me (Remember we are self-centred. It is not they know and
I agree, it is I know and they agree, even if I only bought into the idea
yesterday). Now that apartheid has been trashed I must deal with it in flexible
or adaptive ways, because I do not have a deeper level to generate a new
different narrative. I’m stuffed. However, if I have bought into the narrative
that evolutionary pressure changes the pigment count so that humans can survive
sun exposure, then I have the tools to regenerate higher level complexity. The
lower level beliefs are elegant with a soft symmetry between meme and deed.
This narrative can take a bashing. Similarly, if I perceive all creation as
curved space-time and creatures as temporary areas of peculiar atom density the
differences between all creatures fall away. This multi-level narrative
unravelled my inherited narrative completely and is woven into a background
reality.
This is how
I see it, and this is how I do it, for now. I live my life like a rubber ball
and my mind jumps around like a super elastic ball. I reflect and reject or
recreate. My consciousness and conscience deepens.
