# 4 – Our gap of choice.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus Aurelius.
I left the #3 episode of this series with this sketch. I introduced it with a brief description.
Now, I wanted to give you some further insight and explanation.
As you see, i am going very slowly on this. To comprehend this mechanism is crucial and could open a lot of doors...let's go step by step.
The purple dot represents us, our very self. The one grasping information from the outside, reinterpreting them and spreading out our own essence under the form of emotions, thoughts, words and actions. Let's say PURE ATTENTION manifested in a way so to be perceivable.
So, as we find an event which could be relevant to our existence, that event is brought inside our sphere of interaction, giving to it a positive or negative connotation based on previous experience of the same kind….or similar to that.
Just this, has already altered the shape of the event itself. The event could be anything, from a sound to a smell to something more tangible. At this point there is an exchange of information from our self to the outside and vice versa, which allow us to evaluate further the subject of our attention.
This is an elaboration phase, where we model an idea upon which we create a feeling based on this series of perceptions, to decide how to REACT on it...Joy?....Fear?....Distrust?...Acceptance?
The pressure, THE WEIGHT that we already assigned to that specific event will shape our response in emotion and so into actions that will lead again to another event. Cycle repetition.
The problem sits here: all the process described above, happens in instants and it is also automatic (at least until we take awareness into our GAP of choice). Meaning: cycles overlapping on each other if we are unable to detect them, creating several damages if we are talking about the negative ones.
Miguel (check his blog about philosophical quotes), reminded me of this quote by Viktor Frankl:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Now...since I got aware about this dynamic and how this is a deep automatism, I searched for a way to expand in some way that gap of choice so to be an ACTIVE part into it. How could I gain more AWARENESS?
My solution arrived just by looking at the way we do SPORTS.
Let me explain. Knowing how to ride a bike, doesn't mean I am actually able to ride a bike if I never had the chance, right? WRONG!!
No no sorry...it's right, it's right..ahahahah I was joking.😂
What you have to do, in order to be able to ride it, is to take the bike, get on the saddle and try to find the right rhythm of pedaling so to catch balance. After this, you also have to coordinate all your senses in order to dictate the direction you want to go in order to...survive basically.😂😂
Consider that riding a bike now is very simple because you did it many times, but it really involves a lot of sight/ear/movement coordination if you think about the first times you was learning the thing.
You know what happened the day my dear daddy explained to me how to ride the bike and actually gave it to me to get a try (without the bridging wheels)? I hurt myself a lot.😱
The second time? I sucked. The third? Not better. The fourth? mh...i found balance but I almost broke my neck against a wall...and so on...
Until THAT DAY...THAT DAY was GLORIOUS!!
I found the perfect coordination, the right balance, the right pedaling pace and I was perfectly able to direct my bike wherever I wanted. Street....breach...hill...beach...wherever!! And all this, without actually being a danger to me, my teeth, to the other people, walls, gates and cars.😁
I was ready for many brand new adventures!!
I guess you all understood the metaphor here...
Lancia☀️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwvWtZl2ICY
Some more in the monthly subscribers area.
Continue reading with a Coil membership.