Let me start by saying that no real research went into this. I was just sitting here listening to another round of screams coming from the TV room while the news was playing in the background. I heard one more MF’er echo throughout the house and it made me wonder how people can, and do, get so emotionally involved in a box full of wires that can’t scream back and why all of these questions and concerns never reach the people around them in their own communities. In a country of free speech, people sure are stingy with handing it out. I’m Slovenian, so YOU know how much I love FREE! I started to write got bored, and decided to make this not so long and just take one down a possible rabbit hole of perspective and possibilities involving stress and the main stream media, and individuals involuntary involvement in navigating an endless emotional hypercube.

Stressor (Main Stream Media)

Positive (mindful) response: “Things” don’t “happen” to you. They happen around you. One shouldn’t believe that they can fully understand all of the critical events that have happened leading up to a specific point in time based solely on their own experiences. This, therefore, allows one to create cognitive distance between the situation and there emotions. This, in turn, allows information to be informative and internally non-bias allowing for a perspective better suited to information gathering by seeing through another’s experience not allowing one’s self to be input into a situation that is “happening” to them through the medias use of unhealthy stressor presentation skills and stories. Doesn’t allow for the media to use your good qualities and associate happiness to anger. Keep your mind your own and not worry about the rest. Things are happening around you. They always are. End thought

Negative (Self-Serving, Self Centered Approach); You put yourself “into” the situation creating a fantasy where you are “living” the experience and conceptualize what it might be like and what that must be like.

Reaction: You are confronted with a stressor that is not fully understood so one reacts the way they believe one should when confronted with information from a “credible” source that they trust. To not trust involves research into the unknown and formulating new ideas and elaborating on other consensus while fighting with one’s own judgements regarding inferiority while competing in an imaginary contest called life. This loyalty is used against the individual to the maximum degree because of the platform we have created. Or the idea of what “things” are and why they happen to “us”.

Reaction: The misunderstanding of these emotions and perspectives creates more stress ( negative side effects of improper stressor inoculation practices) essential putting one into the hypercube because they have been told that it is safer than the outside world. Confusion ensues leading to unhealthy ideals of what is on the other side of the doors, what is going on outside, and listening to whispers of other people tell you how bad everything is on the other side just to keep you out of there area of the cube. The problem is that everyone within the cube are the ones that have decided to make the jump into the cube and have decided that a world of safety is more important than the world.

Reaction: One looks elsewhere to understand how to quench these negative emotions they have of the unknown by unwillingly accepting the information that has been presented to them that match the emotions they are experiencing. This, along with other negative stressors ( crappy food, smoking, family problems, money, etc…), is a toxic environment for anyone to believe that they are having proper thought processes in any moment in time. This allows the media the perfect outlet to convey ridiculous ideas that fuel anger, distrust, unhealthy competition, and all the while, blanketing the cause further and further that the hypercube they have created is the “thing” to blame. The tool and how it is used.

Reaction: As one goes through the emotional rollercoaster, the story changes leaving one no time to understand the emotions essentially leading them into another part of the hypercube. The trick is to get everyone to move at the same time. That way one doesn’t run into another so that conversation can’t ensue and if it does, “bad things” begin to happen to stray each other away. All conversation must be done through the hypercube walls. The hypercube ever expanding. Eventually go back to the same room, but most never know because they travel it alone getting ever further into the web.

Reaction: People begin to distrust those around them from the frustration and constant stress. It builds and builds and builds until nothing is left to think about. Everyone is driven away that has followed you so you are free to listen to voices in your own cell of the hypercube. You begin to find the only trust is in yourself and all that matters is your own ego and the pursuit of this fantasy just to make sense of it. They begin to tell their story to any and all without any thought of growth, expectation, or emotional trust, by essentially “becoming” what the room was meant for. Consuming. (Sorry getting off topic, just what came to me and keeping it)

Reaction: So much time and energy spent on figuring out the hypercube, that it is all you know. One only makes time for the situations they believe is the “right way” (usually because its what they know to be safe and therefore easy). Leaving no time for mindfulness, further drawing one to the perspective that “things” are happening to you. No real answer. No direction. No map. Just never ending speculation fueled by the hypercube itself. It has no end. It has no answers. No “left”. No “right”. No “wrong” You react, they watch, and date is collected.

Point of all of this crap? The possibility that the real asset of mindfulness, as a tool, is to train your mind to be efficient so one doesn’t waste their precious time and mind on thoughts that are never ending and therefore irrelevant. If one’s main objective is to find answers to questions, one should search for their philosophy ( the why to their questions) before they should seek an answer to a question. Might help. I have a few ideas of strategies to combat this, but will save it for later. Thanks for reading. Keep those minds going!