A Two-second Life-organizer

They say that your brain knew two seconds ago what you will be doing just now.

At exactly this moment your brain knows what you will be doing in two seconds from now.

I´m sorry to have to confess that I have no idea who those ´they´ are who say so. I would like to have some further information about the topic. But anyway, isn´t it comforting to know that somebody knows what you´ll be doing, even though you yourself do not?

All human beings are fallible and make errors. Sometimes we admit it, but there are also times when we hide it. Today I have all reasons to think that there is a human element also in that two-second system of pre-knowing.

In the morning I started prepairing a seminar. My point in the seminar is that small things and incidents that bring us joy in life, will also result in innovations. It is just the opposite to what Proust says. He is of the opinion that pain and suffering are the only real highways to learning.

Maybe Proust is more right than I am. However, recently we have had so many sad events taking place here in Finland that I decided to put Proust aside. What we need in our normal life just at present is hope - simple, authentic, every-day hope.

How do I explain my decision? It has become obvious that some of the consequences of the economic depression of the 1990´s appear with the delay of about 15 years. Children of those days experienced their parent´s pain. They are now young adults. Having one shooting incident in a school is one incident too much. We have had two of them. They are absolute exceptions, but very alarming.

Teenagers of those days are now adults. They may have insecure jobs and debt in the same way their parents and neighbours had when the banks collapsed and jobs disappeared in the beginning of the 1990´s. Those memories are far from being encouraging in the present economic situation of the world. Our suicide ratio has always been high, but current extended suicides are frightening.

What you see in your mind´s eye in the future determines what you do now, what you can cope with, and what you are able to plan for your life in the coming years. You might be unable to dream of anything magnificent for your future just at present. Anyway, you may still be able to recognize small things and events in your life that you have all reasons to be happy about and grateful for. Luckily Proust is not the only choice.

Instead of Proust I pick up Roger-Pol Droit from my bookshelf (Esineiden luonto, ISBN: 951-31-3046-0, original title: Derniéres nouvelles des choses. Une expérience philosphique).

Meeting fresh ideas equals experiences of joy. To my mind it is nice to know that there are two kinds of objects. There are objects you can put into a wheelbarrow and others you cannot. In other words, there are objects that you can touch and other objects you can reach only by means of thinking. Those reachable only by thinking can be subgrouped into ones comparable with the reflection of the moon on the surface of the sea and the other ones existing only as ideas.

On the empty pages in the beginning of the book I have collected some intereresting words: ´objects reachable by thought´, ´objects unreachable by thought´, ´part time objects´, ´dense objects´, ´transitional objects´, ´a bladeless knife without a handle´, ´an educated violin´etc.

People have different sources of pleasure. Roger-Pol Droit reframes jewelry as ´skin objects´. He says that we should be able to drill our head from inside out. He also says that a ticket is a sign of business and it only functions in business context. Learning to know all that brings me joy. To my mind the greatest blessing we have is other people´s creativity and intelligence.

Some time ago I went to check the Spanish shelf in the library again. Being in a hurry I just checked if there were any books by Juan José Millás. There was one - Laura y Julio (ISBN-13:978-84-322-1228-4). Starting to read it I realized that I knew the book. That was no reason to put ot aside. Second reading was equally enjoyable.

I didn´t remember - for example - that there are people whose essence is in the ideas they have. That is why they dress, in a way, in the direction inside out. When dressing up they cover their ideas layer by layer by clothes, make-up and hair-do.

Other people dress in the direction outside in. They, in a way, construct themselves by decorating themselves. Their primary message is in their appearence. They use their clothes, hair-do etc to tell us who they are and what they are worth for.

It´s two weeks since I read the book which makes it possible that my description is a very rough approximation of what Millás really says. Fortunately we in this case have the source available.

"Nunca se le había ocurrido que las ideas estuvieran por encima de las personas, pero quizá fuera cierto, puesto que eran los ideas, no las personas, las que movían el mundo. A diferencia de su vecino, Julio se movía en el terreno de las personas, de las cosas concretas, porque no tenía capacidad para elevarse al mundo de las representaciones. Ordenaba los objetos, mantenía limpia la cocina o el cuarto de baño, porque carecía de un mundo imaginario al que prestar aquellos cuidados."

According to Droit - and my own experience - this world is operated by objects. According to Millás and social constructionism it is operated by ideologies which are packets of certain ideas and thoughts. - If you think that objects are part of various ideologies, you might be right as well.

If you want to read some more about ideologies it is worth reading An Introduction to Social Constructionism by Vivien Burr (ISBN: 0-415-10405-X).

As to the human aspect of our two-seconds pre-knowlwdge system, you had better mark all business and other appointments in your agenda. I was wandering among ´part time objects´ and ´transitional objects´, when somebody called me. She was wondering if I was going to arrive in a meeting or not.

Tickets are a mark of business and so are credit cards. Taxis are nice. You need not open and close the garage door before leaving. Neither need you find any parking place when arriving.

On the back seat you can quickly check what the topic of the meeting is. You can collect your ideas. Yoy can plan how to turn the meeting into business profiting you and all other partners as well as their networks. In other words, you have time enough to make sure that your two-second organizer of life is synchronised with your short- and long-term goals - and that they are in harmony with your dreams.

I have a ticket and hotel reservation in Madrid in a couple of weeks´ time. That is part of my twenty-year dream becoming true little by little.